Stiff Neck Pain

I usually realize that, when I get a tension headache from my stiff and tight neck muscles, they're usually cold. Cold muscles are prone to injury and any athelete knows that. First time I noticed this I warmed my sore neck muscles and the pain left and my neck felt a lot better. So I realized that when I feel the headache approaching I need to warm my neck muscles and I need to warm them fast.

After some testing I found several methods for warming your neck muscles. Some are free, some require a couple of bucks.
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First thing one needs to know to fight bad posture is actually muscles anatomy. Some basic knowledge just to know what stiffens and how to relax them. The muscles one needs to know is the upper back muscles and back neck muscles.

Looking for a book

I like to read and, to learn something well, you always need to read a book. Hear-say knowledge will never rise to the quality of a book. I went to Amazon, my favorite online store, and started browsing the anatomy books just to learn all of them were $50-$75-$100. Wow! I'm not paying 75$ for an anatomy book that only has to cover my stiffy neck muscles. It's overkill.

Searching and searching I found a book that actually sparked my interest.

Strength Training Anatomy - by Frederic Delavier

As I'm a long time customer with Amazon I could look inside the book online and the images and details actually blew my mind. And the price way below 25$ was all I needed. I didn't need the theory inside top-dollars anatomy books, I wanted pretty pictures of muscles to do furthers research and know what I'm dealing with in my quest to defeat the stiff neck pain and tension headache.

This book was perfect and kick started my muscles' anatomy know-how. Trivia: I bought 5 copies after I got the first one and gave 3 away as gifts. Each that received one was amazed by the quality of the book.

Know that we know what we're dealing with we'll have to find methods of fighting back.

In my quest against the stiff neck pain and tension headache I had to document myself a bit. Understand the case to fix the effect. I studied a bit of anatomy, headache materials, relaxation, stretching methods and some old-school or self-developed tension heache fighting techniques.I will cover them as time allows me to post on this blog.

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Bad posture is the root of all evil

It all starts with bad posture. No matter how hard a computer user that sites in front of the computer for extended periods of time tries, one will always have a bad posture. It's not about the way you sit but it's mostly about the lack of movement.

Computer postures are bad or less bad. None is good as extended steady positions can only harm. Muscles need to move to stay warm. Standing still will put a lot of tension on the same muscles and they will grow hard. The harder they grow the more chances are to get the stiff neck pain.

And the tension headache is right around the corner.

The evolution of the problem:

1. Bad posture (long time with little moving)
2. Stiffened neck muscles (bit of pain)
3. Fully fledged raging tension headache set to burst the back of your head

This is how it works for me. In time I started to learn and see the signs forseeing the headache. In steps 1 and 2 you still have a fighting chance to fix the problem before it kicks of hard. But when you reach step 3, get ready for the pain.