If this is a family portrait of you,

Then you may be a close descendant of a giraffe or some trainer/therapist who thinks that directly targeting the neck muscles will result in injury to the cervical vertebrae.

Well nothing can be farther from the truth, especially if you compete in a contact sports like – rugby league/union, gridiron or Fighting Sports such as kick boxing, boxing, MMA, Wresting, judo, BJJ or any other form of full contact Martial Arts. If you do one of these sports, then doing some direct neck work is going to be your insurance policy.

If you fall into one of these categories some work to your neck extensors, flexors & rotators may be in order. Most people train upper traps but they are only elevators and upward rotators of the scapulae (they lift the shoulders), that insert onto the occipital protuberance (base of the skull). That’s not to say that trapezius muscles should not be trained as they are a large muscle and definitely do add to the stability and overall look of the neck, but don’t neglect the rest of the neck musculature.

Training the neck is very underrated; it can increase upper body strength, decrease the risk of serious injuries from neck cranks, head high tackles, scrumming, prevent neck stiffness after being punched in the head.

“This is why you don’t see many wrestlers get KO’d in the UFC because they do loads of neck strengthening drills incorporated into their training”.

Here are some tips for incorporating neck training into your regimen now. If you’re a wrestler, you are most likely doing neck work but give some of the exercises a go to change up your routine.

For beginners (and that’s a beginner to neck work! Not training) start off with a little neck work: 2-3 sets, every 5 days. If you have never done any direct work to the neck before then start off slow. Otherwise you will be driving around like batman for a week, after about 3 weeks move to 2 times per week.

Neck Training is best done first up as it excites the nervous system and will increase your strength on your upper body lifts for that workout. most fighters are only going to be lifting weights 2 x per week as fight training is going to be most important. Due to these time constraints you don’t want to waste your time with a lot of fu fu body building isolation exercises for the traps.  You will get plenty of simulation from military presses, parallel bar dips and deadlifts, but if you have been doing deadlifts for a while you could add in some snatch pulls or cleans as a variation.

After about another 5-6 weeks (and this is going to be an individual thing depending on how well your neck is recovering) start to add it in to most of your warm ups & cool downs so you are doing it almost every training day. Once you get more advanced with it there will be minimal soreness, as the neck musculature are small but with good blood flow they will recover quickly.

Get REGULAR neck massages, especially in the beginning stages. This will keep the muscles in good condition and pliable, as tightness in the fascia restricts contraction of the muscle and will slow down progress. Try some of these exercises below so you too can have that Matt Hughes look (remember chicks secretly love traps).