About two months ago, I pinched a nerve in my neck. I was doing incline bench, when I felt something slip on the left, rear side of my neck. My head was tilted towards my right shoulder, and I couldn’t bring it up to center until a couple hours later when I was able to see my chiropractor and he was able to adequately loosen it up.
I’ve been seeing my chiro for about three months now, and when this happened we had just started focusing on correcting the curve in my neck, so it was more susceptible to injury. I took about two weeks off, and then re-injured it at the gym, this time directly behind my head, right along my spine. I took a few more weeks off, and the pain had subsided quite a bit and I’ve been lifting for about three weeks ago. Until Saturday that is, when I screwed up the right, rear side of my neck this time.
My chiro has told me that when you pinch a nerve, the muscles around it clench up to protect it and take a while to loosen. I have had numerous adjustments and they have helped, but obviously not enough since this has been a recurring injury. Each time I have done it, I have been doing some type of horizontal push or pull motion, either rows or some type of press. My form is good, and I always focus strict attention on it.
The point of this boring tale is to see if anyone else has had a similar injury, and what they have done to correct it. I’m to the point of insanity since I can’t work out, and when I was lifting, my strength had gone down close to 20% on most exercises, not to mention the detrimental effects to my physique. Deep tissue massage is a possible treatment, perhaps ART? Thanks to all for taking the time.