Build a Thick Neck With These Exercises
Many people will be curious after reading the title as only a few people in gyms around the world train their necks while the others have a pencil neck. It might come as a shock to them that you could develop the muscles in your neck.
Just like other muscles in your body, the muscles in your neck can be developed through training. Although you’ll need to be careful while training your neck as a small mistake can lead to an injury.
Neck Rotations
Many people these days have a desk job which makes them lean onto a laptop for the majority of the day. The awkward position while working on a laptop can cause problems like cervical pain and headaches.
Spending five minutes on rotating your neck in the morning can get you incredible results and fix the neck pain happening due to working on a computer. Neck rotations are also the easiest exercise on the list.
Neck Bridges
We get into the serious business of developing a thick neck with the neck bridges. The neck bridges are commonly performed by boxers, MMA athletes and wrestlers in their training. These athletes take a lot of hits on their heads and having a strong neck keeps them from being knocked out.
The beck bridges are hard to perform and when you’re starting out, they should be done under the supervision of someone who knows how to do them correctly. While performing the bridges, hold the position where you feel a tension in the neck until the tension starts to fade away.
If the bodyweight version of the bridges feels easy, you can add resistance by placing a weight plate on your chest. Start with performing the orthodox bridges and once you get better, do the neck rotations as you get into the ‘bridge’ position.
Neck Curls
Neck curls are fairly easy to perform, but you need to make sure your ego doesn’t get in the way. For the neck curls, place your chest on an incline bench, so your body is aligned from the top of your neck to your toes.
Use a head harnesses or simply hold a weight plate at the back of your head. Slowly lower your head and then raise it so your chest is lifted an inch off the bench. Hold the rep at the top and the bottom of the movement.
You can also perform this exercise on the cable pulley machines or with resistance bands. Both of these variations will add constant tension on your neck throughout the range of motion.
Shrugs
The trapezius muscle forms a big part of the neck and training the traps can help with the neck development. For the shrugs to help get rid of the pencil neck, make sure you maintain a full range of motion.
While performing the shrugs, try to touch your ears with your shoulders and hold the rep at the top of the movement. Perform three sets of 15-20 reps on each exercise. You can adopt a barbell shoulder shrug routine or a similar routine with dumbbells shrugs. The same approach to training the neck as the calves.
Do you train your neck? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
*Header image courtesy of Envato Elements.
