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Deep Cervical Flexor Activation and Progressions for Stabilization 2
0Deep Cervical Flexor Activation and Progressions for Stabilization 2.0 is a series of exercises designed to help target and strengthen the deep muscles of the neck. This program focuses on activating and strengthening the deep cervical flexors, as well as providing progressions to help stabilize the entire neck and spine. It consists of a series of isometric, dynamic and endurance exercises that progress gradually in difficulty. This program is suitable for both experienced and novice exercise enthusiasts and is an
Transcript
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This is Brent coming at you with yet
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we're going to go over progressions for deep cervical flexor activation. Those
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commonly under active muscles of the cervical spine related to both the upper
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body and cervical dysfunction, the longus colli, longus capitis and rectus
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capitis anterior. I'm going to have my friend Rob come out and show some of
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these progressions. Now at the end of our previous cervical flexor
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activation video we kind of ended with this idea of putting somebody against
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the wall them working on their retraction their cervical retraction, and
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then starting to integrate some of our other upper body activation exercises,
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for example bilateral external rotation. This looks pretty good, it's pretty tough
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just to maintain that position. What we're going to do in this video is we're
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going to find ways of progressing this. So if I have Rob stand a little forward
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from the wall I can get this, this is just one of those smaller stability
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balls guys, I can have him put his head against that stability ball, walk his
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speed out a little bit so that now he's leaning and now he actually has to
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actively retract, and there's resistance against those deep cervical flexors. I
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would probably start just trying to maintain this position, pull out a
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stopwatch 15 seconds, 30 seconds. Can he hold this position for 60 seconds, but
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then of course we can start integrating those upper body motions once again. We
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can go back to our bilateral external rotation.
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One thing you should I should mention too that I'm starting to notice with
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Rob as we're doing this, is this ball is actually a much more instable
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environment right than the wall. So not only his his deep cervical flexors
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having to work harder against the resistance, they're having to also work
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harder just to maintain optimal alignment of his cervical spine an
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interesting progression to think about. Now another exercise maybe we could work
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on is scaption, so Rob knows scaption and we'll keep cueing him to try to keep
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his scapula depressed, keep working on that upward rotation. Maybe I could go in
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a couple different directions here, I might add some light resistance, I could
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maybe work on his mobility and see if he could maintain retraction both of his
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cervical spine, as well as retraction and depression of his scapula. See if you can
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go all the way up,
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and then I could get really really tough have him put both hands on his
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hips to start, and then have him see if he can work on just one side while
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still maintaining this perfectly center line from nose down to sternum, because
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every time he lifts an arm, realized now we've created an unbalanced force that
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these muscles have to work against to keep him center. Pretty tough, bit of a
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challenge. Alright i can see Rob straining actually a little bit and of
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course we've been going on here for a couple minutes. Now if Rob could do that
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well, I might progress even further. We're going to have him go ahead and get into
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quadruped position. Now the nice thing about quadruped position is I can actually
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now place a little bit of load right, via gravity to his deep cervical flexors. Now
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to retract is against gravity and although this is going to look a little
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silly, the resistance I'm going to use is actually a stability ball. You can move
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forward just a little bit, takes a second to kind of get somebody aligned on
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this, but if I let them go into flexion, just let him relax, let him go into the
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forward head posture that maybe I'm trying to correct, and then I have him go
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protraction at his scapula, retraction of his chin right, that chin tuck. Now he has
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to lift this ball against the force of gravity as well as just the resistance
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of pushing into the ball, is a little bit of further resistance. How's that feel?
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Yeah it's a pretty tough exercise. It doesn't take a whole lot of weight, the
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weight of these stability balls is actually significant for these muscles.
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If I was to go to larger stability balls that's actually a significant increase.
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If he happened to master that, once again I can go back to this idea of
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integrating his upper body activation exercise, in this case maybe a little
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core. I'll have him activate his TVA, once again cue retraction and then he can
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start on his marching of his hands without rotating at all, and once again
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now we have a stability challenge, we have an asymmetrical load challenge.
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We're starting to integrate some other stuff like his TVA, this is all wonderful
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ways of challenging and progressing these muscles. He could go into scaption,
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for me
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that's great, and actually fairly impressive. Guys I think you're going to
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find this to be a wonderful challenge for your patients. I know some of you
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guys have been working on those deep cervical flexor exercises for a long
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time, and wondering where to go with them. I hope if you guys progress to these
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exercises, you see some long-term change. You see some increase in strength, and
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hopefully people stay with this better posture for a little longer in between
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