Neck Training: Is It Worth It?

One of the most frequent questions I get about gear in my gym is about the Iron Neck. I get DM’s, emails and texts from husbands/wives of clients asking me for my thoughts. Everyone wants to know if I think it’s a good investment and worth purchasing.

It’s encouraging because it tells me that people intuitively understand the importance of training their neck, and are interested in actually training it, but don’t really know how. If you haven’t been exposed to much neck training, you probably aren’t going to have a great idea about how to go about it. If you’re old enough, you’re going to remember this machine, and that may be it.

The crazy thing is, for as long as I can remember, I’ve read, consumed, and executed dozens of programs written by great minds (in the realm of contact sports), and very few of them had any neck training included. In a contact sport, and in tactical training as Josh Bryant recently pointed out on Table Talk, it’s really hard to understand why this is missing. His own recommendations fell as little as 2 sets per week for someone who previously had done no neck training, and that making a world of difference.

Concussion Prevention?

There are studies that seem to back up the efficacy of neck training, particularly in preventing concussions. From the Collins et al. (2014) PubMed article directly:

They note concussed athletes had smaller and weaker neck strength compared to uninjured athletes. They also note every one pound increase in neck strength leads to a decrease in five percent chance of sustaining a concussion. Eckner et al. (2014) also illustrate smaller and weaker necks lead to greater risk of concussions compared to athletes with big and strong necks.

Logically this makes sense; less chance for head displacement on impact is less likely to cause the brain to move inside the skull causing injury (the definition of a concussion).

What if the force is great enough that even a muscled and robust neck couldn’t hope to make a difference? I work with combat athletes, grew up playing hockey and unfortunately suffered concussions myself, like many athletes. I wouldn’t bet that all of us could have entirely prevented these with neck training. After all, people are literally hunting your head in some of these cases.

A meta study in 2018 took a look at trying to classify to what lengths you could reasonably expect training your neck to go to help prevent concussions. Unfortunately, their results didn’t exactly bring in a ringing endorsement for neck training as a whole:

In basketball, lacrosse, rugby and soccer, increased neck strength seems to lead to fewer concussions, but in hockey and football, neck strength does not seem to effect concussions.

They went on to say though:

Researchers concluded anticipating a head impact and allowing the cervical neck musculature to brace for the impact reveals less head movement and acceleration following the head impact, which may lead to less concussions.

…while also outlining that a true standard still needs to be established before we can comfortably say that neck training has the ability to prevent concussions.

This is reasonable to me, as the demands and reliability of your neck being ready for the sports outlined above are quite different. The force a fully equipped safety tackles you with is much different and less than a soccer ball or impact from a grabby midfielder.

So a fair enough assessment in my mind is to say that neck training does not hurt your chances of reducing concussions, but it may not be overly helpful if the impact is hard enough. To concentrate only on this though, is short sighted.

Sports and Strength Performance

Does that mean neck training is useless? No. I don’t think so, because we haven’t gotten to the other side of all this. It is something that hasn’t been studied so well, and you have to talk to coaches and strength coaches about: when your neck strength aids in your performance, or just helps you do things better.

Some sports simply have a high requirement for neck strength and stability in order to properly participate in. On the far extreme of “you need neck strength” is racing, particularly Formula 1. It’s not unusual for drivers to experience high G-forces on turns at circuits while staying well above 100mph. Multiple time world champion and recently retired driver Sebastian Vettel said recently in an interview that he felt he was in great mental and physical condition to race if he still wanted to, but was very quick to point out his neck was not up to par after not racing all year.

On a similar side of the spectrum is just about every form of grappling sport you can think of. A strong neck almost creates a fifth limb you can use to pin, post or attack your opponent with. An idle, weak neck is likely to be attacked and choked. An idle neck leads to an easy shot for any striker.

But it’s not just the muscles above your shoulders, it’s everything under too.

The moment you try on something like an Iron Neck or any neck training device, you notice that any rotation on your neck’s axis forward results in your upper back feeling quite… active. When drawing your chin down and your head back and up straight, you feel a sensation through the back of your shoulders unlike any other induced by certain exercises. Charles Poliquin used to point on the need for making sure the neck was strong in order to properly help someone train their rotator cuffs. Train your neck in the way I described, and you’ll understand why very quickly.

Recovering from Neck, Shoulder, or Back Injuries

This is all purely observational, but have you ever noticed that when someone returns from an injury to their back or neck, there’s a timidness to the way they move? In other words, they have to get their feet back under them before they start doing the things they were accustomed to doing.

What if some exercises helped promote this a little faster than others? In my experience, neck exercises are in that category of exercises that can stimulate something in people to help get them moving a little better that much faster.

One of my those exercises I like for individuals with upper back or neck injuries specifically is a simple standing neck flexion resisted by a light band or 10-15lbs. Having someone do that is a lot more friendly to jump back into than simply having someone jump back to sports, the mats, or contact. It’s a ramp up.

In the end, neck exercises are not something to base your whole training program around. Rather, they’re useful accents and can be a gateway to better performance outcomes and increased confidence. To call them throw-ins is harsh, but over-promising outcomes may disappoint you.

All that said, I’ll keep training my neck.