Nagging neck and shoulder pain? It’s something we’ve all experienced at some point in our lives. And with more people the ever working from home with sedentary work roles it’s now the number one complaint that brings people into the physiotherapy clinic.
So, I want to share with you some of my most useful tips from the treatment room to help you avoid unnecessary discomfort.
Top Tips
20 minute brisk walk
Taking a brisk walk has been proven to significantly ease neck and shoulder tension. Make sure your arms aren’t in your pockets so they can swing freely and your shoulders can enjoy the movement too. A brisk walk will also slightly elevate your heart rate, increasing the much needed blood flow into the muscle to help them relax. A lunch break or after work is a great time to do this.
Don’t ‘sit up straight’
Yes, that’s right! Don’t worry about perfect posture when you’re sitting, to be honest there’s no such thing! The tension we can feel around our necks and shoulders when we’ve been sat reading or at the computer too long is actually because of the lack of movement. So if you want to slouch a little, that’s fine, just make sure you don’t stay there for hours. Keep changing your posture little and often. And when possible, try working standing up and just take mini breaks to move away from you computer every hour.
Stretch and move the whole of your body
When your neck feels stiff you’ll want to instinctively stretch it, right? But the neck is just one small part of your spine! We have muscles that run the whole length of the spine, so by simply stretching the neck we’re missing a lot of the muscles that influence what we feel in our neck and shoulders. So try stretching out the whole of your body.