Red light challenge.
This is in dedication to a good friend by the name of Rand. There was a day when his neck decided”I’m done” and it was not going to hold his head up anymore. I have never seen full cervical paralysis from muscle fatigue while riding downhill trails. It tells us all whom ride bikes that training your neck is an important consideration for endurance athletes or prevention of neck pain.
The average prevalence of Americans in general to have neck pain is 23% which is higher in women and must be higher as a cyclist (Hoy DG, et al., 2010). The previous studies regarding sports with long periods of flexed positions such as cycling are at risk of neck pain (Asplund et al., 2005; Wilber et al., 1995). Triathletes have also shown a high life time prevalence of neck pain about 48.3% due to multiple sports including cycling, swimming and running.
The quick fix that is easy to do on a daily basis is what we call the “Red Light Challenge”. It is a simple way to stabilize the deep neck flexors and improve the endurance needed to handle the 1000’s of mini whiplashes we endure during a typical mountain bike ride.
Everyday we all drive to work or school and don’t have much time to workout or even focus on our neck muscles. When have you ever heard of somebody saying I’m going to the gym to work on my neck muscles. Never... So here is a easy way to get those muscles trained and out of the way.
When you reach a red light, I want you to gently tuck your chin and retract your head into the head rest. Hold this for at least 3-5 sec and repeat. Do this as many times as you can before you need to refocus on driving. If your an endurance athlete, I would suggest holding the chin tuck press the entire time the light is red for the longer endurance demands.
A good rule of thumb regard how much neck endurance and how much needed for my rides will depend on many things like head weight, neck length, posture, bike fit, helmet weight, ect., but typically for every 20-40 min of cycling you should be able to hold a front plank chin tuck press for 2 minutes without difficulty of shaking. So if you ride for 2 hours, you will need to show me 4 sets of 2 minute planks to rule out fatigue as the reason for you neck pain. Go test yourself and fix it.
One more thing, pushing harder is not always better. The deep stabilizer muscles are turned off if you overrecruit the bigger global muscles by pushing too hard. My rule I’m the clinic is to only push back at 10% of your max. We need to stay under 30% to ensure we train the right muscles and avoid pain or headaches.
Hope this helps,
Dustin Hancock, PT, DPT
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Specialized BG Fit Certified Level 2 MTB specialist
Natural and Newton running coach Certified
Polstar Pilates Rehabilitation and Performance trained
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