'Can Pilates hurt my neck?'
Hurt - No. It shouldn't anyway.
Can it cause some discomfort / pain?
At times, yes. What's important is to be able to differentiate between pain that signals danger or the sensation felt from working the muscles. We tend to panic when our necks burn or we feel muscular struggle (which needs to happen for a muscle to strengthen) but when we train our legs for example and feel that sensation of the muscle working hard, we accept it.
Our necks are pretty darn strong, they hold our heads up all day long. So they need to be trained well and treated just like any other body part in that sense. It's called balance, and it's partly what Pilates promotes.
We can train or support our necks through exercise while holding the back of the head as pictured. This wouldn't be to pull the head off the mat or jam the chin to the chest. It would be to familiarise yourself with the relationship between the abdominals and the neck. Holding the back of the heads provides a support which allows us then to work the LENGTH of the neck through the exercise. The hands not only act as a load lightener for the neck, but also to guide the crown of the head away so we can develop our muscles to be both strong AND long.
The support from the hands allows the abs to really fire up without distraction. Often when we really pull a tight connection on the abs, the upper body starts to lift off the mat naturally. Holding the head allows the crown to follow the line of the spine, working that longness of the neck, an important part of neck training.
When we practice Pilates, there are many exercises that suggest our hands being behind our head and mostly this is for feed back to encourage a longer neck position and to stop the head from leaning forward. When the head starts to lean forward it tends to close our chest, and can tease us into flexion, which may not provide the most effective positioning for the movement.
It's 2023, everyone is talking about 'Tech-Neck'... Let's go against the grain and get our necks healthy and happy ESPECIALLY if we use devices a lot of tend to tilt our heads down for long periods. Remember : if it's screaming at you, ease off on the neck work, if it's muscles getting a workout, let's keep our necks long so we get the best out of the session!
Most people have a neck inconvenience (let's say), once in their life. It's helpful to us teachers to know if your neck is a bit tender or anything else, so we can make sure you have a comfortable workout, because you CAN have a very good work out through neck niggles, remember that!
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