Hey friends in this video I'm going to show you the three best exercises and stretches for neck
pain that's coming from cervical spondylosis. My name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I'm a specialist
physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel is dedicated to
helping people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections,
and pain medications. please consider subscribing so that you don't miss out on any of the helpful
videos that we post every single week. Now these exercises are going to be done lying down on your
back. So find a comfortable place that you can lie down, it could be your bed, maybe the floor on a
mat. Or if you have a couch or an ottoman or some space that's comfortable to lie down on, that will
work just fine for you. And if you can't quite see the video from where you're lying down, you might
watch this video first, just to prepare and then go do it and maybe check back in case you need to
make sure you're doing the exercises correctly. You'll need just one thing for these exercises
a pillowcase. I've got one right here, you could use a towel or anything that you're willing to
tug on. And it's going to go around your head and neck area. So get your pillowcase ready or your
towel. And what I like to do is just fold it in half the long way, it doesn't have to be perfect.
And then I twist it or I might fold it again animals fold again and then twist it from there.
Just to get it into a loose twist like that, Oh, hold the ends. And I'm going to put that
behind my neck and slide it up to the base of the skull kind of right between where the neck
and the skull attach. That's where it's going to rest, then what you're going to be doing is
decompressing your neck bones, because in cervical spondylosis, you get a lot of compression to those
bones and discs and all the joints in there. And so we're trying to take some pressure off
to prepare the movements you're going to go through so you maximize the benefit of the
exercises we're going to do next. So when you pull the pillowcase, you'd be pulling and upward
towards the ceiling and upward like towards your head in between the two. So at a 45 degree angle
from the surface you're lying down on. So it's gonna look like this and that, I'm going to pull
right in the hips and get this around my ears. So it's comfortable, it's not going to fold my ears
and pull a guy here a little bit upward like this. That's about a 45 degree angle or so I'm
not measuring this, I'm just guessing. But I'm not pulling straight up this way because it'll
slide out and I'm not pulling towards the ceiling because it will make my head fold up and that's
not the goal here it's it's to slightly lift the head, but mainly pull the neck in that direction.
And then once you achieve the right position and you get the tension going, then you're
going to bounce slightly and you can turn your head a little bit and pulled in that direction.
Then the other way and pull in that direction you might get joined some pop and click doing
this sometimes that happens. It might not and that's okay, you're still getting the force needed
through the neck to decompress the spine and get that much needed depressurization decompression
in your neck, I would encourage you to do this for one to two minutes.
After that people typically get diminishing returns, I mean, it feels good, and it's not
gonna hurt you to do more in most cases. So you could do this for as long as you like, he just
we got to get to the exercises eventually don't miss out on those because there's huge benefit
to doing those exercises that we're going to do next. So once you've done this long enough,
you can set your pillowcase aside next to the neck curl exercise for cervical spondylosis
It looks just like this, you're going to first shrug your shoulders up just to take
some tension off and then relax the shoulders. interlock your fingers just like this and put
your hands behind your head. Then you're going to lift your head with your hands and do about
60 to 70% of the work with your hands and subtly help out with your with your head and neck.
So it looks like this. I'm not picking up all the way I'm going maybe about halfway between line
down and picking up all the way. And then from that position, I'm going to make a double chin.
So I'm going to shove my chin into my neck and even my chest a bit.
And it's this unflattering position where your extra chin comes out. If you've got folds in
the area, everybody's got folds in the area for the most part. And you're gonna hold it
like this for about 10 seconds and what I want you to feel is the muscles working behind your
throat hanging out my you might not feel it, the first rep or two might take you five or six reps
to get it. But as long as you feel these, these muscles behind the throat, they're called the
deep neck flexors. As long as he feels working, you're on track what I don't want you to feel
are these big muscles in the side of the sternocleidomastoid and the ones even further
out to the sides or on the back of your neck. If you feel all those other muscles working. Then
two things you're doing this exercise incorrectly double check that you're pushing your chin into
your neck and chest. Or you might just be so over compensated that you have to use your other
muscles to do this motion. If that's the case, then you need to go even more Apart from your
hands into a very minimal double chin play with the edge of the motion, just to feel those deep
neck flexors working and only go as hard as you can before the other neck muscles start to fire.
So going back to this exercise, I'm going to lift my head with my hands than double chin,
and I'm going to hold it there for 10 seconds. And what I like to do is just force my chin into my
neck as much as possible, I get a bit of a stretch on the back of my neck into my upper back even as
long as that stretch goes away right away, it's fine, it shouldn't be a big deal, you're actually
doing good stuff for your neck as part of what we want. But if you have any lingering symptoms,
that's not the best, it's not an emergency or terribly wrong thing. I wouldn't worry too much,
but you don't want to have any lingering symptoms afterwards like lingering pain,
lingering strep sensation, or any symptoms that go out anywhere else that's a sign of you probably
got a nerve problem that you're irritating. Don't proceed if you've got that going on,
lighten this up or stop completely. That'll be rare most cases. Right, so let's do my head,
double chin. I'm feeling those deep neck muscles working behind my throat.
It's pinpointed like right behind my Adam's apple.
And we're doing 10 reps by the way. I might not do them all I lose count. But count 10 at home.
lifting my head, double chin forcing mentioned into my neck here. I'm shaking even a bit here.
And then relax. Rest your arms if you need to. My arms are okay, but your arms may get tired.
So go ahead and rest them if you need to. Hold the double chin and then relax. And you should be
warming up these muscles right behind your neck, they might even be getting very tired already. You
just don't want to get the muscles on the outside, like these big sternocleidomastoid muscles working
or further out. That's not a good thing. I got to repeat it because it is you're going to make your
situation worse if you're strengthening those muscles. it's that important. So once you did
10 reps of that, now you're ready for a mobility stretch exercise combination. So it's an exercise
in that you're going to fire those muscles again, and you're going to move let's just
like this double chin, and then slide your head over to your ear. And then go to the other side.
And do 10 reps like that to rest if you need to then double chin again when you're ready.
Three double chin and siphoned your your shoulder for double chin,
your soldier your other shoulder maintain the double chin, relax between reps, double chin,
year to shoulder, your shoulder. And the double chin is really important because you decompress
the spine and then make it move uniformly meaning every vertebrae is forced to move insert in
cervical spondylosis. Some of those joints get stuck. Some of those bones are very good.
But when you fire these deep neck flexors and you've decompressed it with a pillowcase,
now you're ready to move better, and you're going to loosen up the stick parts of your neck.
So double chin, the Seidman side bend. And then after you've done the side bending 10 times you're
gonna go into rotation. So same thing, double chin, but this time you're gonna turn your nose
towards your shoulder or towards wherever you lie down the floor of the bed, or the couch. So double
chin, and then turn and then come back to the middle, don't hang out there. Same thing with the
side bending, you need to hang out there, double chin, and then turn, double chin turn, double chin
turn, you can just keep going if you want, you have to stop in the middle you don't want to.
The point is that you keep that though I like to build in a break with patients if I see them,
just turning and then they kind of give up their neck and their head lifts up like that, you got to
double check that your double chinning and then turn, it's a waste of a movement for your neck.
You're actually feeding into the problem if you're if you're not double chained down,
you have to keep that double chin whenever you're rotating. So guys, after you do this exercise,
go through them again, do the pillow case distraction from decompression exercise.
This should allow you to get up off the floor or the bed wherever you're lying down and feel like
you warmed up your neck muscles so you've gotten stability, and then also gain mobility, your range
of motion should improve. Repeat this every day I'd make this into a routine that you do every
morning before you get up. It should help you to feel better in the morning. A lot of people have
tons of stiffness in the morning. So you want to do this first thing in the morning and then if
you've been sitting for a while or towards the end of the day, it really as needed. Go through
this routine. And as you get faster at it you can take as little as two minutes to do this
whole routine so that you can get mobility fairly quickly. I'll be doing a video real
soon. that talks about cervical spondylosis in more detail and the differences between
cervical spondylosis in arthritis in the neck as well. So watch out for that. Don't forget to
subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss out on that video. And please give
us a thumbs up on this video so that this video can be seen to other people on YouTube that might
be needing help with cervical spondylosis thanks so much for watching. See in the next video. Bye