It’s probably due to my wrestling background, and the fact I often view training as a survival thing but I never understood why people would completely disregard training their neck. Part of it may be the fact wrestling had me training neck within my first year or so of training, and the fact I’ve stuck with it since, if only intermittently.
I’ve heard otherwise strong kids worry about injuring their spine/cervical vertebra doing it. Do they not realize jacking up the neck will make it almost impossible to do just that? It’s the most important bodypart for being bulletproof.
Collisions,falls, making it much harder to man handle you. Training neck is very useful, but completely ignored by almost all.
At the gym a while back one of the kids there was talking non-stop about injuries. Thinking about old-time strength feats I decided right then and there to test bridge presses, I’d never added any real amount of weight to them before.
In the past I’ve done headstands, and can hold them for a long time. This is what probably allowed me to run headfirst into a 440lb guy during an amateur sumo match, and walk away just fine. With the win.
Obviously I’ve done a lot of bridging both front and back due to high school wrestling, and a refusal to stop training neck.
You can flex the hell out of your neck in every conceivable direction.
Isometrics and dynamics can work great. The most effective way I’ve found for hitting the front was having a buddy hold a towel while standing and me on all 4s leaning my head into the towel. A unique play on manual resistance isometrics. I found they work better positioning wise with the towel, not the partners hands.
You could try headbanging, I’ve heard it works for some.
Best overall though is to wrestle 10+ hours a week. Nothing grew my neck faster than wrestling season, particularly since my practice partner’s style involved a lot of patty cake(constantly pulling down on the head as main means of attack/set up)
Over the years I’ve at least trained my neck intermittently with periods of obsession particularly if I’m in any manner of fight sport. Just last night I had the urge to use my neck harness which is always a part of my gym bag. I sat on a bench,braced hands on knees and did 50 reps with 50 lbs, and using a couple forced reps to get it doing, and a few at the end I did another set of 50 with 75lbs.
Now the neck harness is probably the easiest way to know/track your volume, and progressively overload, but often it seems to leave my neck far too stiff, which no other method does. I’m not saying don’t use it, I’m simply advising that it may not be the smartest idea to use as your primary method of training. It’s a good way to know and show your strength though.
Don’t have a pencil neck. Build a neck so large that people are intimidated by it. You’ll be far better off for it. Old Timers focused on big necks for a reason. They’re an important part of manly physique.
Recap:
Train Your Neck!
-J