Eccentric Retraining Deep Neck Flexors
- The patient is lying on their back with their hands clasped behind the head.
- Instruct the patient to only use their arms to lift their head up so that the chin is drawn toward the chest and a stretch is felt through the back of the neck.
- Once the head is brought up fully the patient is told to hold this position for 5-10 seconds, then slowly lower the head back to the table segmentally from below up, using the deep neck flexors eccentrically to lower the head back down to the table and assisting the movement with their hands as needed.
- The hands only support the head as needed and an emphasis is placed upon keeping the chin down as the head is returned back to the table.
- They repeat 3-5 times.
- Eventually as the deep neck flexors become stronger, the hands should no longer be needed to assist in slowly returning the head back to the table.
- The goal with this exercise is for the patient to be able to segmentally flex the neck and return back down to the table segmentally without using the hands to assist with the chin staying down throughout the entire movement.
