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PE1 neck pain

Started by Kage, December 23, 2013 · 9 Replies · 433 Views

Kage

Man, four days ago I must have really screwed up.

I've been running the PE1 loop for a while now, as the im has been lagging. Also, wanted to get more comfortable in the PE itself.

So restarted it and worked my way up to week 10 again.

Normally, I do it balancing on a point just above the hairline - but watching the videos over, the athlete in the demo is balancing much more towards the forehead, so I tried going into more extension. Normally, I also do it on a hard floor, but since I only have concrete for a couple of weeks, I padded it with a folded blanket, so the padding got quite thick. Additionally, I tried depressing the scapulae during the hold, to put more tension in the system.

Must have been a bad idea in there somewhere. The hold itself was heavy at 4x60s, but it felt alright, though the head positioning felt a bit more awkward balancing more towards the forehead.

The day after, I felt like I had pulled a muscle or injured something very close to the c-spine - not a good feeling and I thought I'd lay off the headstands for a while, or even just go straight to PE4. Not worth risking a spinal injury. The next day, it was worse. And today I woke up in the morning, groggy from sleep and had a severely painful twinge in my neck, like I had no muscles on the left side intact and all my weight was on the spine itself. I couldn't even move my head cause it was excruciating. Crawled out of bed and I realized that fortunately it seems to be all muscular. Dull ache all the time, can barely turn my head, hurts in some arm movements and can't touch my chin to my chest. And sometimes the muscle spasms and it's like being stabbed with a knife, real strained-muscle type pain. Think I must have ripped some fibers off or something. Feels deep to the trapezius somehow, hard to pin down, but it seems connected both to the spine and the scapula. And hard to ID which movements hurt the most, although its definitely anything connected with moving the head.

So I guess it's at least 3 weeks off HS and then slowly starting PE1 over all the way from scratch to rebuild some strength and confidence in the movement.

But it's weird, I felt I had control of the movement while I was working, though it was hard.

Anyone have any idea what I have done wrong here? And what I should do to rehab it? I'm not gonna do anything for a few days, cause the pain is quite bad now. But then I need to start easing into it so I don't end up with any muscular imbalances or stiff muscles on one side.

How do you guys use your muscles during the balance? Put the scapulae in any specific positon? Feel it mostly on the front side of the throat, or do you tense everything? Do you distribute the weight evenly between head and hands? I read a yoga article saying those guys put most of the weight in the hands, but I thought the idea was to strengthen the muscles protecting the c-spine here. I don't know, I must have done something wrong and I hope it returns to normal soon, but I don't want to make it worse by repeating any mistakes I did, later on.

Keilani Gutierrez

be careful. the first three PE's help develop a bit of strength in inversion by making a support and progressively loading it. so you'll be distributing your weight equally between the crown of your head + both hands.

i can't really say or see what you've done to your neck but i've been in your boat before, i recommend getting a massage, if that option is available to you. nothing worse than repeats due to tight muscles but this is your neck we're talking about, its very important!

recover well my friend

Duff

I think you're better off doing it the way it feels natural. I couldn't do it the way the athlete does it in the video, so I did it on the middle part of my head. If you really really want to do it with more extension, first master PE1-3, then do it that way(maybe for warmup once you are past headstands?). Take it slowly. Understand that you will be putting your neck in a compromised position, which can be dangerous if you aren't sufficently prepared. As far as I know, the head position won't be a problem for cert purposes.

 

And follow the advice of Wu Tang.  ;)

Keilani Gutierrez
Duff said:

I think you're better off doing it the way it feels natural. I couldn't do it the way the athlete does it in the video, so I did it on the middle part of my head. If you really really want to do it with more extension, first master PE1-3, then do it that way(maybe for warmup once you are past headstands?). Take it slowly. Understand that you will be putting your neck in a compromised position, which can be dangerous if you aren't sufficently prepared. As far as I know, the head position won't be a problem for cert purposes.

 

And follow the advice of Wu Tang.  ;)

Wu Tang Clang ain't nothin to $@%^ with! 

Richard Hamilton

How far along with HS/PE1>iM are you and how wide is your grip? I've run into about 3 or 4 minor pulls in my neck and shoulder since working this and I had exactly what you describe about 6 weeks ago which led to a 1 week lay off from H1. A lacrosse ball will help ease the discomfort a bit and light flexion/extension stretches may help so long as you don't go into pain.

 

I've found that as my grip has narrowed I've been able to get into the mobility a bit more but I think with this came a tendency to protract my neck which is what I think did it for me. I still find my neck wants to protract so maybe you can check it before getting into the ROM and then start counting to ten. It may be a small detail like this in combination with your adjusted head position for the tripod that has caused it. As Duff said, go with what feels like a natural head and scapula position, the imbalances will likely sort themselves out with time. That's my experience anyway.

 

For what it's worth... I'm finding 7 sets of the mobility better for me. The first two I take pretty easy as I think this is where problems have occurred as my shoulders aren't primed for the movement... by the time I've done 4 sets I feel ready to increase ROM and my shoulders are finding the right pattern. Just have to watch out for over enthusiasm then!

 

I hope you have a speedy recovery Kage :)

Kage

Thanks. I'll go back and ease my way up again to week 10, once the pain and discomfort has passed.
I don't see any point to building strength at the extreme of extension, so I'll just use a comfortable position (midway between the top of the skull and the forehead) - the normal positioning works the traps and deep neck muscles quite well. Also exemplified by my muscle tear just now.

I have no problem with balance or gross instability - use the same hand positioning as for handstand and try to distribute the weight evenly. The im is not perfect, but will probably be good enough to be able to progress, doing it with shrugged shoulders and grip as for a handstand, pretending it's a bridge. It's a little bit past vertical, but I could use some more forward lean and probably, like you say, crane my neck a bit less. The left shoulder has been a bit injured before and is a little bit less flexible than the right, so I think it's something that will even out slowly over the next few years of working GST. It's alright though.

Probably the reason why I injured myself is because I was depressing the scapula, working on a less stable surface than normal at the next highest level of volume in the progression and with a head position that was just slightly differing from my normal one. That probably put a lot of tension on the deep spinal musculature and together with a new head position that was ever so slightly moving about because of instability, caused a tear when taken to the full 60 second holds.

Kage

Just wanted to post back on this and say that my neck pain was gone after about 6 weeks or so and that I today mastered PE1 and the im with no pain or problems. Felt really good!

Guess the lesson learned is: Never adjust several things at once (in this case - time, hand positioning and surface).

And I added in 10 second increments once the pain disappeared to work my way back up to mastery. But it still took more than 3 months, so could just as well have restarted from week 1 and followed coach's progressions. In the end, success!

Keilani Gutierrez

epic! 

 

that's great news to hear :) 

Josh Hillis

Something I've been doing - I do my tripods (HS/PE1) as my H1 program.  Right now the limiting factor is just my neck liking/not liking it.  

 

So then afterwards, I do some headstands (HS/PE3) for fun, as they don't put any pressure on my neck.  And then, after that, I do some tripod-headstands (HS/PE2) like the video with the chairs, except I do them with parallettes - again, no neck pressure.

 

I'm just really having a lot of fun being upside down, and don't want to stop when my PE1 is tapped out!