Un-Tech Your Neck

In this episode we discuss the tech-neck epidemic, its implications and strategies to straighten up and keep it that way! 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let me ask you something. How do I prevent the technique when I'm on my computer all day long and looking down at little children all day long and always on our devices? Educate me. How how can we what is the best thing? Because we all do it. And now I'm going like this.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Well, hey, yeah. The first the first thing we need to do is bring some awareness to the problem. So step one is to get out of denial that you have a problem with it. Right. Right. So, you know, that's the same thing, you know. As soon as you talk about hydration, uh any other things, like everyone picks up their water bottle and starts drinking.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah. So, you know, you're But I think a lot of people don't even know that they're starting to curve. Like when you when you see young people these days, some young people, I'm talking in their 20s and 30s, and you start seeing the posture of their body, that forward posture. I mean, it makes sense why, but I think people don't even realize it unless they saw like a video of them standing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Well, here's the here's the thing. When someone, you know, when people usually notice is when someone has taken a candid photo of them. And they're like, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. When whenever you pause for a photograph, you know, you're like, yeah, good posture, everything's working right. But when someone takes a candid photo of you and you're just, you know, doing your normal thing. Talking to someone like that. Yeah, people are like, oh my gosh, like I didn't realize how much over I was.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

And so what's really important about this is gravity's working on us all the time. So gravity is pulling us down into the earth, and one day it'll finish the job, right? Shoulders back and down. Um let me raise this mic up a little bit. That'll thank you. But gravity's pulling us down, and the more that we are stacked on our skeleton or over our center of mass, the better. And so everything we want to do to help prevent this tech neck, to prevent this hunching over, to prevent yourself from like walking like this when you're 80 years old. I mean, doesn't that look just like those people up, but it wouldn't it wouldn't do anything at that point because your spine is basically fused. Um, but everything we want to do is we want to get the our center of mass as close to um or our whole alignment as close to our center of mass as possible. And so if you thought about drop dropping a plum line, which is a weight on the end of a string, uh from from your ear lobe, it should pass directly through your shoulder, directly through the center of your hip, directly through your knees, and then to your ankle bones or those little nubs on the outsides of your ankles. And so that is gonna be a good representation of your center of mass. And almost nobody, and especially it's at the top, right? Almost nobody has their head back on that plumb line. And the things that you can do to help that are posterior chain strengthening exercises. So many of us are in what we call an upper crossed syndrome pattern, postural pattern of dysfunction. And that's a lot of words that sounds like a degenerative disease, but really it's just postural dysfunction.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

So I bet you're working on this with like every client that comes in.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I have that, I have it like bookmarked in the book that I show the picture. It's like folded over everyone.

unknown 3:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

But basically, it's a crossed pattern of tightness and weakness, and so you essentially have um muscles that are tight and then opposite muscles that are weak. And so for upper cross syndrome, the muscles that are tight are our upper traps, these you know, ones on top, the pecs from being kind of pulled in like this. Yeah. And then you also have the uh perispinal muscles, like the suboccipital muscles in the neck. Those don't really get talked about as much, but those are definitely tight in most people.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Right, because everyone like carries their stress all up in the jack.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Yeah, well, that's because like when your head goes forward, you also tend to kind of go back like this. So you're you're shortening those muscles as well. And so that's a cross, that's the pattern of tightness. And then with that, the deep neck flexors in the neck, which do segmental flexion down, those are weak. And so those get weak from being in a stretched position forward like this, and then the muscles in the mid-back, basically the muscles that pull your shoulder blades together, yeah, are also weak. So because you're like this. Yeah, and everyone, you know, when they come see me, they're like, I just need some stretches. I need some stretches for you know, my these tight muscles. I need I need a massage, I get a massage, I get a massage every week. It doesn't get better. It's like, well, okay. And the main reason for that is, yeah, we can stretch the pecs, we can, you know, decrease the activation of the upper traps with massage and dry needling and things like that. But unless you strengthen the mid back, unless you strengthen the deep neck flexors, you're never gonna get to you know fix that um that upper crossed syndrome. So we really need to do posterior chain exercises because we're constantly being pulled anteriorly.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

That's the back of the body. So what are the main muscle groups?

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah. So well, the main muscle groups are you know, you have your upper quarter muscles, your scapular stabilizers, um, the muscles that you know retract your shoulder blades. You have the muscles that add rigidity to your spine, your lats, your traps, your, you know, those muscles. But then you also have your glutes, your hamstrings. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

And those muscles are I think a lot of people like deadlifts and you know, hamstrings, all that, a lot of people are doing those, but probably neglect or may not think about doing all the upper ones as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Well, what's interesting is when you when you have someone who has trouble increasing their weight, especially in the Romanian style deadlift, which is the one where you're sort of hinged all the way over, but is high and back, knees are bent, but your shin angles are up and down. Yeah. And that's the one that we typically teach people because it is almost on the complete opposite spectrum of the squat. Yeah. And so we really want them doing, you know, both ends of that, you know, the Romanian style deadlift is all the way over on the hip hinge, the deep squat is all the way over on the knee hinge. We want them doing both sides of that and then fill in the middle with other exercises. But the limiting factor for the Romanian style deadlift is often the lats.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And so it's their ability to pull that shoulder blade back and down and keep that squeezed while they're lifting the heavy weight off the ground. And then what happens is as soon as they try to pull the weight, they start rounding through the upper back, and that's a stop because if you keep going with that, you may not do it the first time, you may get it off the ground the first time. Yeah, you may get off the ground the second time, a hundred times, but eventually you're gonna you're gonna injure your low back.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

And that's because you're putting posterior disc pressure every time you go and you lose that upper butt upper back um retraction and stiffness and rigidity that happens when you activate the traps and the lats. So when we have someone who is, you know, starting to ramp up their deadlift weight and really start to work on these posterior chain exercises, we need to fill in, fill that in with a lot of rolls, pull-ups, yeah, you know, different types of scapular stabilization exercises. Um, you know, you'll see people on the glute ham machine doing like extensions, those are really good. Nordics, all kinds of things that are really going to help you, you know, keep a rigid upper back so that you can hinge truly through the waist without having those flexion moments through the low back.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

And is that neck, those neck muscles you're talking about, like the the front and the back, do those just naturally get stronger as you're maintaining good posture, doing like squats and things like that, where you're keeping your head up kind of up?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Uh it's tough because Or do I need to do like a You do need to some neck exercise? And that's gonna help with mobility. So, like if you're having like a headache or while you're yeah, while you're working on stuff, you you know, yeah, especially if you have like a crick in your neck, like those things are the best to do to get back that mobility. But to say, you know, just doing like squats where a lot of times people are putting a barbell on their neck, and then that's not necessarily gonna help with the neck stuff. When you are doing deadlifts, though, we do want in an ideal world, a lot of people can't do this right away because they need to kind of look up to get the extension in the thoracic spine. But when they develop more control over those upper back muscles and those um scapular stabilizers, then typically they're able to extend or get the thoracic spine into a neutral position while the head is maintaining that neutral position. And that's really optimal. So when you're doing your deadlift, your sort of eyes are your head is moving up and down with your body in that neutral, in that neutral position. And that's the best. We take what we can get though. So sometimes if we have to start someone out, we just want them to make sure that they're not gonna hurt themselves, and then we work on some of those finer mechanical points later.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Um now you prefer, tell me why you prefer a front squat with the bar or kettlebells or whatever it is to the back, to it, like having that bar on the back.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of a different conversation, but just briefly, I think that you know, as we get older. Now I do I do back straight. We do both, yeah. You do both. I do like a pad though.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

But I'm putting in like the disc, like the spine, you know, like we were talking about straightening the spine.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

If you don't have a lot of meat on your upper traps, if you don't have a lot of muscle mass there, and you're just putting, if you're feeling a lot of just bone, bony pressure on your spine right on the base of your neck, probably not the best idea to be just loading that up, especially if you're having any pain or symptoms. I worry a lot about stenosis, like developing like a narrowing of that um of the spinal cord area inside the spine. That can come from just like putting a lot of weight all the time on there and not having really good spinal alignment that you're maintaining on a on a regular basis. You know, someone's probably gonna come after me like back squats are the best, but you're not against that. I'm not against somebody especially as you get like older and older. Yeah, like just be careful, make sure that you have some good mass. Use a pad. Yeah, I use this this plastic thing called a stingray, which is kind of like I mount it onto the barbell and it just kind of fits and distributes the weight. We also have like a Mars bar that kind of comes over like a roller coaster thing that just distributes the weight across there, so you can still load the lower body a ton with a ton of weight. In fact, this thing weighs more than a regular barbell. But um, I do like front squats because of the the weight is pulling you forward. So you're having to uh you know maintain that posture even more. And what you find is that you get a lot more core activation with that. You're not typically able to lift as much weight. So for your athletes who are trying to really get some numbers up on their squats so that they can be explosive jumpers and sprinters and everything, you need to still probably do the back squatting, but it's great to fill it in with some front squat.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah. Let's talk about the core then for those sitting all day long, which is nice people. I mean, a lot more people have standing desks these days and the walking pads, which is probably great for a core in what we're talking about with the back posture. But core, it's got to be so important for those of us that sit most of the time.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

It really is. And and you touched on something, you know, bringing up the sitting, and as it relates to that upper lower cross syndrome, which we don't have time to talk about lower cross syndrome today, but but basically, you know, when you are in a seated position, you know, you are tightening the anterior muscles and you're stretching or stretch weakening the posterior muscles. Yeah. So like your butt is being stretched around the curve of you when you're sitting, right? So people, a lot of people talk about like, I can't get my glutes to fire, I can't get my glutes to fire. And it's because they've been in this inhibited, stretch-weakened position all day long. And then you're you're like, okay, I'm going to the gym, and you don't do an activation warm-up. You just kind of start doing your warm up, doesn't start doing your deadlifts. And then what do you know? It's like you hurt your back because your glutes aren't working. Or you go for a run and you pull a hamstring because your glutes aren't working. And so, you know, you brought up the core, and what's happening on the front side is kind of the opposite of what's happening on the back. You're getting, while you're sitting all day, you're in that folded over position. Everything is getting tight, even though we're not really contracting it. Yeah. Right. So it's just like putting the muscle in a shortened position, and it just sort of accommodates to that, even though it's not necessarily getting a lot stronger in that position. Normally we think about like you shorten a muscle, it's contracting, it's getting stronger. That's not necessarily happening. Core is not. It's just getting tight, right? Um, so you know, and we also, I mean, the core is such a thing to get into where, you know, when we're activating, a lot of us when you like flex down your core or like try to tighten your core, you're kind of like, you know, pulling down like this, squeezing down.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

But actually, the core muscle we need to think about when we're sitting and when we're thinking about our posture is really underneath that. It's the transverse abdominis. So not that um rectus abdominis, which is more of the six-pack muscle, it's underneath that, underneath the internal, external obliques, also, but it's the transverse abdominus which wraps around from the back to the front like a corset. And that muscle basically pulls in. And to get that muscle to fire appropriately, we really have to have what's called a reflexive loop of contractions. So it starts in the pelvis, actually, by getting the pelvis into a good position. And you will, you kind of like before you have any dysfunction with this, you kind of do it inherently. But like, you know, they always in PT school, they always taught us like when you go to grab a door and pull the door toward you, like a millisecond before you start to pull the door, your pelvic floor contracts so that you pull the door toward you instead of pulling yourself toward the door. And so it's kind of like a grounding contraction.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

But the pelvic floor will contract, and then you can get the transverse abdominis to contract, and then you can be more assured that your multifidae, which are tiny little stabilizing muscles of the spine, really deep to the spine, provide that global stabilization. I always say, like, imagine you have a stabilizer stack of blocks on your hand. If you turn those sideways, they all fall down. But if you take your other hand, come on top, now you can turn those blocks any direction and you're not going to have those shearing forces. That's what the multifidae do when they're all working together. They also have individual roles of allowing you to eccentrically flex forward and concentrically extend backwards. And so having that good segmental motion through the spine is really important. Yeah. And that's why I'm whenever we have a low back pain patient, I'm always doing segmental dry needling with stem because I want those multifidae to wake up and fire. And they always get off the table too, and they're like, oh my God, that was so painful. And then they bend forward and like, oh, it feels better.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

You've done that to me. I remember the my upper back when I was having like some back issues.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Great in the neck, great in the low back. One of the definite go-to treatments. But yeah, I mean, sitting, we really need to, you know, you're gonna get yourself into bad positions when you're sitting. And that's why, and you know, we can, you know, we have some videos, I think, of the 90-90 hip lift, but that's why we always get people doing getting on the floor, getting their heels up, driving their low back into the floor, pulling the hamstrings down, squeezing the adductors to kind of wake up some of those posterior chain muscles because you've just been turned off all day. Yeah. And you get your you help to realign your pelvis a little bit and set yourself up for your workout. So, you know, I think if you don't have a good warm-up routine and you've been you have a desk job, that is like one of the lowest hanging fruit that you can do to make sure that you're getting yourself ready for your workout. Yeah. And then, you know, the original question of how do we prevent tech neck? How do we prevent yep, get that, get those shoulders back. You know, it's a it is a combination of stretching and and and strengthening, mainly strengthening for most people. Yeah. But also you can do a lot to set up your environment. So not having not holding the phone down here. I mean, we we see people in our neighborhood, right? Walking. Going for walks, going for walks, they're walking the dog and they are literally just looking down straight down at the ground.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

No wonder you don't see me coming on the sidewalk on the Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Well, you know, I saw some videos where there's been some influencers out there like talking about how unsafe it is. And maybe not so much where we live, but like in these places because you're you know, you're walking out of a store, it's at it's at night, you're not looking at your surroundings to see who's looking at you, and you're by yourself, and next thing you know, you're being trafficked.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

You know? So you know Well, that got dark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So, but I can see it. Yeah. So so the worst thing to do is, I mean, it's great if you're going to strength train or if you're gonna hit workout or whatever, but the worst thing is to just go, you're sitting all day, you drive to the class, you don't warm up, or maybe you do a couple stretches, but it's not really activating, it's not really warming up correctly. You pound the workouts, the next day you're stiff, you're sitting at your desk all day. You think, well, I'll go to yoga, that could help. But like this the the activation is also helpful. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Not that any of these things are and I love yoga, but yoga doesn't really involve a ton of pulling.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah. And that's like it feels good in the moment. I usually I'm I do that too. Like I just love it.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And it's a great strengthening thing. There's a lot of strength to it. And you know, I'm sure there's someone out there who can argue, well, if you can get into this position and get into this position, like you're doing more of a pull. That's not happening to me when when I go to yoga.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

It's like and of course it's a great thing to do, but it's not for this purpose.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

It may not help, even though you feel like you need to stretch a lot of times, it is strengthen or activate or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

All right. Well, we'll we'll work on this.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Let's get it going.