Pinched Nerve During Front Lever

I've gotten a really bad pinched nerve in my neck like three times in the past four months while practicing front levers... I'm not sure why.

It doesn't happen every time, but once in a while it does for no apparent reason, and it's really irritating. It really hurts to move my neck in any direction afterwards. I'm assuming this is a pinched nerve, but I guess it may be something else though. It goes completely away after maybe 3 or 4 days if I stay off of it.

Anyway, has anyone else had this happen, or is there any way to prevent it? Maybe I'm straining my neck too much during front levers?

mattk said:

I've gotten a really bad pinched nerve in my neck like three times in the past four months while practicing front levers... I'm not sure why.

It doesn't happen every time, but once in a while it does for no apparent reason, and it's really irritating. It really hurts to move my neck in any direction afterwards. I'm assuming this is a pinched nerve, but I guess it may be something else though. It goes completely away after maybe 3 or 4 days if I stay off of it.

Anyway, has anyone else had this happen, or is there any way to prevent it? Maybe I'm straining my neck too much during front levers?

If it's a pinched nerve you'd generally feel some numbness in some extremity that is affected. You may have just strained

a neck muscle.

Warm up, stretch the neck and shoulders. Doing a prehab routine might help. Try to break a sweat before

starting these moves. Hopefully that will help but can't promise.

What causes/fixes a pinched nerve is really subjective to each individual, and there's not any single surefire cure; you just have to experiment. If you're positive that front levers are what's doing it, then my advice would be to stop all front lever work until your body is back to normal, then slowly and gradually introduce front lever work back into your workouts, paying very close attention for any signs of the pinched nerve problem flaring up again. If nothing seems to fix it, and you still get nerve issues whenever you do front levers, then really the solution is to not do front levers. As doctors are prone to say, "If X hurts, then don't do X."

Doing back levers really screws with the nerves in my arms, and since nothing I tried could fix it I just simply stopped doing back levers. And voila, no more nerve problems now. There are so many awesome bodyweight exercises and feats that even if your body won't allow you to do one, there's still plenty of others to focus on.

It appears that FL work is beyond your current strength levels. Did you master all of the FL pre-reqs prior to beginning specific FL training?

Good prerequisite discussion

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

One pre-req for Front lever that helped me alot was Scapula pulls.

But againfind your weak link and work on that.

Agree with the above. As well, it could be the scalenes are involved either on their own or compressing the nerve.

In a jargon-free manner of speaking, they connect the neck to the rib cage and several nerves run through them.

This post discussses it further --> viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6795

Thanks for all the replies .

Just to be clear this doesn't happen every time I try a front lever... only once in a while. I try to do three WOD's per week, including warm ups (which sometimes involve front levers), and this only happens maybe once every couple of months or so.

FutureisNow said:

If it's a pinched nerve you'd generally feel some numbness in some extremity that is affected. You may have just strained

a neck muscle.

Warm up, stretch the neck and shoulders. Doing a prehab routine might help. Try to break a sweat before

starting these moves. Hopefully that will help but can't promise.

Definitely no numbness there, but I have a feeling it's not a muscle problem... maybe I'm wrong though. I'll try to warm up and stretch the area a bit more before doing FL's.

Coach Sommer said:

It appears that FL work is beyond your current strength levels. Did you master all of the FL pre-reqs prior to beginning specific FL training?

Good prerequisite discussion

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I hope that's not the case. As I said above this doesn't happen nearly every time, only once in a while. And no I didn't look through those but I'll take a look through it... thanks .

cdx said:

One pre-req for Front lever that helped me alot was Scapula pulls.

But againfind your weak link and work on that.

Will check them out thanks!

FutureisNow said:

Agree with the above. As well, it could be the scalenes are involved either on their own or compressing the nerve.

In a jargon-free manner of speaking, they connect the neck to the rib cage and several nerves run through them.

This post discussses it further --> http://gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewto ... =13&t=6795

Hmm not sure if that's what's causing my problems as well.

M K Mossop, i borrowing your thread if thats ok.

Ive been bothered my chronic tension headaches and on tuesday a tried SMR on my neck, and being dumbbass that ive am i think ive managed to pinch the c6 nerve going down into my left arm. Currently i have no pain and i only felt "pins and needles" in my thumb when i first pinched it and a few hours afterward. My biggest problem for now is that my left arm feels really weak. If my strength isnt back atleast so some degree over the weekend i will go to the doctor. My right upper trap and shoulder also feels anesthetized (for lack of a better word).

If it turns out to be a pinched nerve, is there any exercises i should avoid completly or should i just quit training altogther? If i turns out to be a pinched nerve does anyone know how long a potential recovery will be?

Thanks, Andreas.