chronic neck injury & gaining upper body strength

hi everyone,

I have an ongoing chronic neck injury & want some tips as to how I can increase my upper-body strength without hurting myself.

Injury:

I've had chronic neck pain for over ten years. I've had x-rays & MRI's all of which came back clear. I've been to multiple doctors & specialists but no-one can give me a definite diagnosis, although I suspect it's muscular. The neck pain also causes severe headaches which are the main symptom & the most difficult to manage - sometimes the headaches are that bad that I wish someone would just knock me out. Therefore I like to do what I can to take as much care of my neck as possible to avoid the headaches - it makes it very difficult to hold down a full-time job when I have a blinding headache all day every day. I take what pain-killers I can but when the headaches are bad, pain killers don't even touch them. I just have to tough it out.

I think the problem was caused by straining my neck & shoulder muscles when I took up a new sport. Unfortunately I've never been able to fix it.

I'm yet to find a doctor that takes the problem seriously. They all seem to have the attitude of 'oh you just have a headache, go home & take a paracetamol'. I've wasted so much money trying many many doctors with no luck. Therefore I'm kind of on my own in terms of pain management & I have just had to figure it out by trial & error.

Objective:

To gain some upper-body strength. I'm really lacking in upper-body strength as I find it really difficult to do any strength training without hurting myself. The biggest problem is that my neck never hurts at the time, it's always the next day, & therefore I can never tell until the next day (when I've given myself daily headaches for as long as it takes for me to get to accupuncture). I've tried personal training, but again, as I can't tell at the time that I'm actually hurting my neck I stopped doing that.

eg I tried to get the ball rolling yesterday & did two push-ups. In the course of living my life I also helped to move a few folding tables. Today I can hardly move my neck.

I can't continue to play my sport because I'm simply not strong enough in my upper body. Yet as per above I can't even do a couple of push-ups without hurting my neck, so I have no clue what to do.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Sorry, can't help you.

I can sort of relate here.
I have 3 bulging disc's in my neck and experience really bad tension headaches because of this.
i went from 6-8 strong pain tablets a day to 2-4 a week now with 4 things.

1. Find a good psyio who can do release work and dry needling.

2. Posture, if i focus on my posture at work (desk job) i get no pain at all, the days I get lazy and lean on the desk are the days it kills me.

3. Technique, i had no idea how bad my form was until i found a PT that focus's on it more then anything, as you mentioned you tried push ups, well currently the only thing that really sets my neck off in the gym now is push ups and sit ups.
Push ups because when i fatigue i raise my shoulders and tense my traps.
Sit ups because when i fatigue i lift myself up with my shoulders rather then my abs.

4. foam rolling and stretching. I was never a person to stretch but since buying a foam roller i try to jump on it twice a day and really roll my back and shoulders out as much as possible and this has helped heaps with keeping the muscles loose and stopping the headaches.

Have you ever considered that something else is causing the headaches/migraines and that the pain in your neck is the headache/migraine (given that the base of the skull/top of the neck is connected to the eyes)?

You haven't got anything to lose, so I would consider a few things:
- having my eyes tested;
- if you already have glasses and you are short sighted, take them off when you read from paper; and
- removing the following from your diet, 1 at a time to try see any difference: caffeine, flavoured protein powders (or any other flavoured goodies), chocolate, oranges/mandarines.

As a migraine sufferer (from age 12 -> 24) until April last year (when I switched from flavoured whey to unflavoured pea protein), I've tried all of these.

Otherwise, I'm not really sure. Keep hunting until you find a good physio?