Neck injury l- chin up

Anyone experienced neck pain after doing l-chin up ? After doing 5 sets of 5 l-chin ups, I am not sure what, but something happened in the last set. I pretty much lost my ability to rotate the neck It hurts as .... Can someone elaborate on mechanics of this injury ?

Thx.

Not sure about your injury but were you straining or stretching your head forward to get your chin above the bar?

Stephen M said:

Not sure about your injury but were you straining or stretching your head forward to get your chin above the bar?

Stretching forward no, but in the last set, the last 3 reps were not easy. I weigh over 90 kg, so yes this mastery was quite tough for me.  It seems like something happened during unlocking elbows from full extension.

It would be very unusual to injury your neck doing L-chins.  almost certainly you pulled your trapezius muscle.  That frequently feels like it is in your neck.  Find the sore spot in your trap muscle and do some soft tissue work there.  

MT Nordic said:

It would be very unusual to injury your neck doing L-chins.  almost certainly you pulled your trapezius muscle.  That frequently feels like it is in your neck.  Find the sore spot in your trap muscle and do some soft tissue work there.  

Trapezius attaches to skull and cervical part of neck, that would make sense. Is it quite common to get injured there through chin ups ? It did happen to me a couple of times before I have to say.

Thx anyway

you probably pushed too hard a video would help themost to see what is going on but shrugging is pretty common for people to do when they get tired or are too weak to do a pull up.   ive seen loads of climbers doing lots of pull ups and ive also seen alot of them hurt their"neck"  because they cant depress their shoulder blades before pulling up to the bar so they end up shrugging and straining their upper traps.

ausswe said:

you probably pushed too hard a video would help themost to see what is going on but shrugging is pretty common for people to do when they get tired or are too weak to do a pull up.   ive seen loads of climbers doing lots of pull ups and ive also seen alot of them hurt their"neck"  because they cant depress their shoulder blades before pulling up to the bar so they end up shrugging and straining their upper traps.

Hi

Here's a quick video of what my l-chin ups look like. Let me know please if you think I'm doing something bad that can affect my neck. Thx.

https://youtu.be/avE9KMY5DRM

looks good to me.  nice form. maybe just a little more controlled at the bottom with a slight pause at the bottom instead of bouncing right back up.  nothing obvious as  far as your upper traps go, at least not to my eye.

It's interesting that you pull a face at the bottom of the rep rather than at the top. What's bothering you at that point?

LateStarter@46 said:

It's interesting that you pull a face at the bottom of the rep rather than at the top. What's bothering you at that point?

I'm better but still not recovered from last week when I injured something doing l-chin mastery. Unlocking from elbow extension  in the L position seems to be the only demanding part of this exercise for some reason.

There is nothing obvious with your neck. Sometimes the tissues are just not ready for the high load. If you master an exercise and have an injury you have not truly mastered the exercise. Spend another 4-8 weeks on this exercise untill you can perform it with no neck pain.

I had bilateral elbow pain with wide grip L-sit chin ups. The pain would last for 2-3 days. I was not doing anything wrong with my elbows, it was just that they needed time to adapt to the high loads. I kept doing repeating 4 week cycles until I could do them pain free.

This is what Coach is referring to with connective tissue adaptation. It takes a long time for the body to adapt.

it looks to me like you arent retracting your shoulder blades or depressing them at the start of the movement. hard to tell but if that is the case then i wouldnt be surprised you strained your neck.  to me it looks like you pull with yourarms and rounded shoulders then half way up you are able to retract and depress a bit witht he shoulders.... you really want to start the movement with that retraction and depression. correct me if im wrong like i said hard to see from that angle

At the top of the first rep in the video, you seem to be engaging the two muscles at each side of your neck- the sternocleidomastoid. I've seen this in some clients during pulling motions - they use tension in the SCM to increase tension in other muscles involved in the pulling motion.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with this but if the SCM is used too much it can occasionally be involved in restricting motion in the facet joints in the neck.

If the restriction lasts longer than a few days, see a physical therapist and get your neck mobilised.

Next time you train this, try dropping your chin a bit and keeping your neck muscles more relaxed.