The neck muscles you can feel when you are tense are not the ones holding your head up. Those are the surface muscles, the upper trapezius and levator scapulae, and they are doing a job they were never really meant to do full time. Underneath them sits a deeper layer that does the quiet, constant work.
Knowing those muscles exist changes how you hear almost every cue about your neck and shoulders.
The muscles you never think about
The deep neck flexors run along the front of your cervical spine, close to the bone. Longus colli and longus capitis are the two worth knowing by name. They are small, they are not designed for force, and their job is endurance: holding your head in a good position, hour after hour, without complaint.
At the back, a matching group of small muscles does the same thing on the other side. Together they behave like guy ropes on a tent. Nothing dramatic, just steady tension in the right places.
What happens when they stop doing their job
The surface muscles step in. Upper trapezius and levator scapulae are strong and happy to help, but they are built for movement, not for standing guard all day. When they take over, three things follow.
- Your shoulders creep up. The classic desk posture, shoulders somewhere near your ears, is usually this handover in progress.
- They get tired and sore. The ache across the top of your shoulders by mid-afternoon is a muscle doing overtime on a job it was not hired for.
- Your head drifts forward. Which increases the load again, and the cycle continues.
This is why massaging the sore bit gives you an hour of relief and then the ache comes back. The sore muscle is often the symptom. The quiet ones underneath are often the cause.
How we work on this in class
You will not find an exercise called deep neck flexor training on the timetable. What you will find is an instructor guiding where your head sits while your arms work, and asking you to lengthen through the back of your neck before you move.
On the reformer this becomes obvious quickly. Lying on the carriage with your arms in the straps, there is nowhere for a jutting chin to hide. Your instructor sees it, adjusts you, and your body starts to learn the position.
One thing to try today
Sit tall. Without tipping your head down, draw it back very slightly, as though you were making a small double chin. You should feel something switch on low at the front of your throat, and nothing at all in your shoulders. That is the group. Hold for ten seconds, release, repeat a few times.
If your shoulders join in, ease off. Less effort, not more.
Where to go next
Finding these muscles is the first step. Building their staying power is the second, and that is what How Strong Is Your Neck covers.
If neck pain is a regular visitor rather than an occasional one, it is worth a proper look. Malvern Physiotherapy Clinic is a few doors up on Wattletree Road and the physiotherapists there train our instructors, so anything they find carries back into how you are taught in class. More on how that works.
