Lower Cervical Extensor Activation Taping

Lower Cervical Extensor Activation Taping is a method of taping designed to engage the neck extensor muscles, providing support to the cervical spine. This type of tape used is often a kinesiology tape that creates a targeted support to the underlying neck muscles. When applied, it can help promote optimal neck posture, improve range of motion, and reduce neck pain. This taping is an easy-to-use, safe and effective way to address a range of neck pain

Transcript

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This is Brent of the Brookbush
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Institute, bringing you another taping
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video. In this video we're going to do a kinesiology taping technique that I use
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to reinforced deep cervical flexor, or cervical retractor activation exercises.
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These are for all those individuals with neck pain, cervical dysfunction, that
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forward head posture, as well as some individuals with thoracic spine and
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scapular dyskinesis. Now the technique that we're actually going to use is not
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deep cervical flexor activation taping, but it's going to be lower cervical
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extensors taping, and we'll explain that as my model Melissa comes out here. Now
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let's just use our imaginations here for a second, so I want to reinforce this
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position, which deep cervical flexors longus coli, longus capitis,
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rectus capitis anterior, these are the muscles that we get thinking about. But
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to take those being that they're on the anterior side of the cervical spine, I
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would have to put tape I guess here, right, and then it would have to
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pull back that way, so that I reinforced this chin tuck position, and I don't know
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about you guys, but I'm not very comfortable putting two pieces of tape
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like this right, like if I actually want my patients to come back. So I think we
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need to come up with a different technique, and there's actually a
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technique I learned from Perry Nickleston over at the rock tape workshop, which was
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lower cervical extensors taping. So what we're going to do for this, is we're
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actually just going to put a piece of tape just over the front of the upper
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traps, at the angle of the of the neck here right, where that neck makes that
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bend. And then my lower cervical extensors, which lower cervical extension
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is part of that retraction that we need, to cue somebody to do, are the splenius
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and semispinalis cervicis muscles, which go down to about T5, T6. So I'm
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going to tape, and bring it all the way down, just along T5 T6. Now the only
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thing we have left to figure out, as you guys know I kind of don't like to put
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tension in the tape. I like to lay down the anchor with no tension whatsoever,
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use tape off tension, and then the tension that we put in the tape actually
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comes from putting them in as shortened position as
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possible. In this particular technique what I'm going to have you guys do, is
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you're going to kind of push somebody into a little bit of thoracic extension,
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not lumbar extension, but thoracic extension. Make sure their as chin tucked
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as possible, stand up in the kind of like this super posture position, and then
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you'll lay down the tape. This will be the shortened position for those lower
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cervical extensors. Now once again we have to move a sports bra around, we have
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to get the tape directly on skin. My recommendation is to have your patient
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or client for female, hold their sports bra down, and then you can go ahead and
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move the strap without risk of pulling their top down in the process, especially
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with the sports bra, because the elastic is usually pretty, pretty strong. Alright so
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I'm going to go ahead and pull that down, and you can do one side at a time. If
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you're only doing one side, or if you're doing both sides, pull both sides down as
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long as they're holding on, everything should be fine. Alright, now what I'm
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going to do is I'm going to create my anchor, once again 2 to 3 centimeters of
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paper, i'm going to tear off, and I'm going to fold back that other side. Put
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that right over the front of her upper trap here, at the angle of her neck. I'm
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going to cue her back into super posture again, no not scapular retraction,
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relax your shoulders. Yeah make sure they don't go into scapular retraction
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because that will make it tough to lay down the tape, and then you're going to
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go ahead and lay down the tape. I can use that little pull through the paper
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technique that i did in lower trap activation, and we see there, we end right
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at the spinous process of T6.
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I'll have her test it, how does that feel, good. Alright, now I'm going to go to
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the other side, there you go. Alright another thing you guys, I'm from the side
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just so you guys can see the tape, another thing that will make your female
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patients a little bit more comfortable, female clients a little bit more
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comfortable, is if you stand behind them rather than to the side of them, so that you
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don't have a view of their chest. That will also help. Alright so I'm going to
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put this tape just on the anterior portion of their upper trap, at the angle
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of your neck. Cue her back into super posture, bring that down. I can use my
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pull the paper through to lay down the tape technique. Make sure I give the tape
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a little bit of a rub. You can use the paper just to kind of go over the tape,
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so you don't catch the tape with your fingers, and once again that's just to
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create some friction. Make sure i warm up the adhesive a little bit, because this
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is heat activated adhesive, and then once I have that tape in place, I'm going to
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make sure i replace her clothing without catching the corners. One thing that will
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get tape to come off very fast, is catching the corners of the tape with
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clothing. Alright you can go ahead and relax, how do you feel? Good, you can see
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her posture is here, and of course my hope is that, that cueing for lower
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cervical extension, as well as upper thoracic extension, will help keep her
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posture a little bit better. The stretch on the skin if she goes into bad posture,
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hopefully we'll keep activating these lower cervical extensors, which means a
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little bit more activity over time, even without me cueing her. Which hopefully
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leads to faster results by improving or carry-over from session to session. Thank
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you Melissa. So there you guys go, that is lower cervical extensor activation
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taping, which generally i use to reinforce deep
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cervical flexor, or cervical retraction exercises, for those individuals with
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neck pain, cervical dysfunction, or forward head posture, occasionally
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individuals with upper body dysfunction, but I know is stemming from the upper
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thoracic spine. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I look forward to bringing
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you many more techniques in the future.