Exercises For Neck Arthritis: How To Improve Posture For Less Pain And Stiffness
More than 85% of adults over 60 have some degree of neck arthritis. Symptoms of neck arthritis can very from person to person. However, even minor pain and stiffness from neck arthritis can make it hard to concentrate at work or fully enjoy your favorite activities. While pills, injections and surgeries help manage symptoms they do nothing to treat underlying. This leads to worse long term outcomes. Improving posture limits impact on your neck to treat neck arthritis. The following exercises for neck arthritis are some of the best posture exercises to incoporate into your daily routine.
Brugger's Postural Relief
This postural relief exercise should be used by anyone who spends long hours seated in front of a computer. It's a good idea to bring awareness back to your posture and engage muscles in your back at least once every 20 minutes.
Chin Tucks
Forward head posture occurs when our head starts to jut forward during long periods of sitting. This places more stress on your neck and over time leads to neck arthritis. The Chin Tuck helps fix this poor posture and get your spine back in proper alignment for less neck arthritis.
Chin Tuck Holds
For some people it's not enough to simply bring awareness back to their posture. Regaining strength and stability will help KEEP you in this posture. Chin Tuck hold target your deep neck flexors to help stabilize the neck to prevent forward head carriage from happening in the first place.
Birddog
Exercises for neck arthritis need to the strengthen the entire body. The birddog is a low impact exercise that engages your postural muscles (posterior chain) to improve posture.
Back Extensions
A low impact exercise that engages and strengthens your spinal erectors (posture muscles). This low impact exercise can be incorporated early into you strength routine for better posture.
Banded Rows
Improving posture requires strengthening your back to improve muscular balance. Strengthening your back requires lots and lots of rowing. The banded row is an easy introductory exercises to engage and strengthen muscles of your back for better posture.
Facepulls
The facepull targets mucles of your upper back (at the base of the neck). This is one of my favorite exercises to restore front to back muscle balance to limit impact on your neck and treat neck arthritis.
Banded Row With Hinge
The Banded Row with Hinge is one of my favorite full-body posture exercises for neck arthritis. Maintaining the hinge postion engages all your postural muscles while the row targets the posterior shoulder muscles.
Exercises for neck arthritis need to include improving posture, mid back mobility, and strengthening your back. Incorporating these posture exercises with a full body strengthening plan is THE BEST way to ease the pain and stiffness associate with neck arthritis and avoid pills, injections and surgery.
For the last 10 years I’ve been working with adults to help solve chronic joint pain, keep active, and maintain their lifestyle as they get older. To get started building the strength to solve chronic joint pain, be sure to download my free guide ‘Solving Pain With Strength’ below.
