Updated October 15th, 2022
Introduction
How many times have you woken up with a tight or even locked neck and said “must be I slept wrong”? It is all too common for many of us, but to be honest, the way we sleep usually isn’t the issue. Just in case you disagree with me, I do have a section below on sleeping positions and postures that could cause some neck pain.
Most commonly, our neck pain and stiffness is caused by what we do throughout the day. We spend too much time looking down at our phones or computers, which makes the muscles on the back of our neck work too hard. Think about the last time you held a bowling ball (or something else heavy). If you held that ball close to your body, it really wasn’t that heavy. But if you had held it out away from your body, your arms may have strained or felt weak after a while. Even though the weight of the bowling ball didn’t change, its position altered the way your body responded to keep from dropping it.
I will go through all of the common causes of that dreaded neck pain and tightness below, but first, let’s get nerdy!!
Anatomy
As shown above, we have muscles all around our neck to help keep it stabilized. The muscles on the front side of our neck help to flex us forward. Can you see why those muscles become so tight? We use them ALL DAY. The muscles on the back of the neck become lengthened and weakened because we spend so much time in a forward-head posture. As you can also see, there are muscles that run from the neck down to the shoulder blades and back. This explains why the pain may not just be in your neck.
Common Causes of Stiffness
The most common cause of neck stiffness and pain is poor posture. We spend the majority of our days with our heads too far forward, both at work and at home. If you would like to learn more about posture in depth, CLICK HERE.
Other causes of stiffness include:
Excessive time on a computer.
Using our phones with them down toward our laps (causing the head to tilt forward).
Keeping the head rotated or tilted in one direction for too long (during conversations, working, travel, etc.).
Dehydration causing muscle tightness (more on this in the future).
Sleeping and/or lying down in poor posture.
Sleeping Positions
Although it is not the most common culprit of neck stiffness or locking, our sleeping postures can have a big impact on how we move during the day. Spending 6-8 hours in one position can either be very beneficial or harmful for our overall health and movement. We will provide more information on this topic in the future. For now, I have displayed pictures below of good and poor sleeping postures for side and back sleeping (since they are the most common positions.
Good sleeping posture is shown on the left, poor posture is on the right.
One key takeaway from these pictures is that less is more when it comes to sleeping positions. Thicker pillows tend to place our spine and head in a way that is not optimal for movement when we wake up. Think about how we slept as newborns. Mom and dad didn’t give us a nice thick pillow to prop our heads up right? At least I hope they didn’t. Many children don’t get a pillow until they are 2 or older. This is mostly due to suffocation risk, but think about what a poor sleeping posture can do to a developing spine. There is growing support these days for people opting to not use a pillow at all. I do not personally practice this, but I can’t disagree with the theory behind it.
I have also included a link to my favorite pillow below. I personally use the butterfly pillow if I had some pain or stiffness in my neck that day. It keeps you in the proper position and helps me sleep for longer on my back.
(As an Amazon Associate, Peak Movement Health earns from qualifying purchases)
Exercises
If you happen to wake up with a stiff or locked neck you have one job: MOVE. The best way to eliminate stiffness is to get the muscles around the area moving and warmed up. I’m not saying you need to push through pain, because that will just cause more. You need to find the motions that work for you and stretch or move your neck to the point just prior to pain. I tell my patients, stretch to the point where if you went any further you would punch me, then stop. Both because it is good for them and I don’t want to get punched. Anyways, give these exercises below a try and let me know how it goes!
Conclusion
Like any other area of the body, the neck craves movement. It is able to move in more directions than other body parts, which stresses the importance of frequent movement and proper positioning. Many people just do a few neck circles or side to side movements when they feel stiff, but this is not the cure. Proper posture and frequent intentional stretching/movement is more effective in curing and preventing a stiff neck. Just remember, your next move is your best move.
DISCLAIMER
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