neck pain|tight muscles

Neck pain may not be the obvious complants but you will often many people you know, including strangers, stretching their neck from side to side to relieve tightness in the neck and to ease neck muscle tension.
In fact, you may already be one of those people doing the neck stretches since a lot of people feel some neck tightness and stiffness. You may be doing it frequently and you may have noticed some feeling of relief when you hear a popping noise or click in the neck. This noise may come from a displaced tendon or a myofascial band or ligament that moved back in place abruptly when the joint is stretched. As the neck is stretched, the joint capsules may also be stretched making more room for displacement and escape of gases in the joint fluid known as synovial fluid. This fluid is a joint lubricant and has nutrients and dissolved gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. When the gases escape from the fluid, a popping noise may result.
It is however important that the click or popping noise in the neck, should result easily from a slow smooth stretch. Do not perform rapid stretches or forceful stretches or maniplulate yourself just to hear that click or pop since you can get injured.
When you are performing passive self-stretching exercises or when someone else is helping you to perform a stretch, there is more force transmitted to the muscle. There is the chance that you can over-stretch the soft tissues that are stretchable and still not have enough stretch force penetration to relax tight areas which may be deep inside the muscle.
The muscles that are most responsible for neck tightness are the trapezius, splenius capitis and cervicis, sternocleidomastoid and levator scapulae muscles.
Trapezius, splenius capitis and cervicis: When these muscles are tight without pain, the person will have difficulty with neck bending and looking down since these muscles are involuntarily stretched. When these muscles are in pain, the person will have difficulty looking up since these muscles have to actively contract. Therefore to stretch these muscles, the person should bend the neck and chin down. To actively contract these muscles, the person should bend the neck backward and point the chin up.
Sternocleidomastoid: This muscle is responsible for head and face rotation to the opposite side. Therefore, if the left sternocleidomastoid muscle is in pain, the person will have difficulty looking to the right since its contraction brings on pain. If the left sternocleidomastoid muscle is chronically tight and shortened, the head will be tilted to the left with the chin pointing to the right. You will be able to see the taut, cord-like sternocleidomastoid muscle at the outer part of the front of the neck. The splenius cervicis and capitis muscles also have weak capacity to rotate the head to the same side.
The sternocleidomastoid muscle is also responsible for bending the head and neck down. Therefore when this muscle is in pain, the person will have difficulty looking down due to active contraction of the muscle. If the muscle is tight, the person will have difficulty looking up due to involuntary stretching of the muscle.
Splenius cervicis and capitis and the levator scapulae muscles: Inclining the head to one side is performed by these muscles. If these muscles on the left side are tight, they will have difficulty with inclining the head to the left and the person will usually incline the head to the right to stretch these muscles. Difficulty inclining the head to the left can also be related to pain in the right trapezius, right sternocleidomastoid and right levator scapulae muscles.
Since the trapezius, splenius capitis and cervicis are the muscles commonly injured due to the constant lengthening contraction imposed on them daily, head movements are mainly controlled by pain or tightness in these muscles.To relieve the pain or tightness in the neck muscles, the treatment should be directed toward the trapezius first since this is the largest muscle and spreads over multiple joints.
The trapezius muscle is usually very tight and to get this muscle to relax, the treatments must include selective activation of individual muscles. In treatments using eToims Twitch Relief Method, selective activation would be directed to the entire paraspinal muscles, latissimus dorsi and the gluteus maximus muscles. Neck tightness usually will not get significantly better unless the mid back and the lower back muscles including the lower limb muscles are released of the tightness and spasm within these muscles.
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