Sport-Specific Benefits Of Having A Big Strong Neck

In submission wrestling (grappling), Brazilian Jiu- Jitsu and mixed martial arts (MMA), the ultimate goal is to finish your opponent. One of the most common ways to finish an MMA fight, submission wrestling grappling match or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) match is with a choke.

A strong neck will improve your choke defense and make it harder for your opponents to submit you with choke holds. Note: nobody is “choke proof.” Everybody, and I mean everybody, is susceptible to chokes. However, people with strong necks are often tougher to choke than people with tiny, weak “pencil necks.”

In boxing and MMA, a big strong neck will help you take punches. Look at the thick necks of boxers such as Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Many boxers train their necks directly with neck exercises like neck bridges, neck extensions, etc.

As a combat athlete, chances are you’ve heard the common phrase, “Where the head goes, the body goes.” It’s very true. So as a combat athlete, it’s your job to make sure your opponents don’t control where your head goes. One of the ways to do that is by having a strong, powerful neck.

If you’d like to learn more about how to develop a big strong neck for combat sports like wrestling, submission grappling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), boxing, Judo or mixed martial arts (MMA), just use your name and valid email to get exclusive access to this valuable neck training information – then click the “Get A Strong Neck!” button to enter (All information kept 100% confidential)…

Killer Mistake: Not dealing with neck pain the first time…

Killer Mistake: Not dealing with neck pain, back pain and any possible spinal injury the first time you feel it.

Many grapplers and combat athletes will experience neck pain (stingers, strains, sprains, etc.) that lasts anywhere from a few minutes to a few days (or more). But many times, because of the “tough” mindset that is required for combat sports, many will overlook the pain or simply “forget about it” when it eventually goes away (if it even does go away)… rather than making the effort to identify and address the cause of the neck or back pain right away.

Here’s an example…

The summer before my senior year of high school, I went to a wrestling camp and during a practice where we were drilling throws, I noticed I felt dizzy and nauseous. My left arm was numb and shaking, and I couldn’t walk straight. I wanted to go throw up to make myself feel better. I figured maybe I had a concussion or something.

I went to one of the clinicians to let him know I had to go throw up real quick and he noticed how I looked. He grabbed my arm and asked, “Why is your arm shaking like that?” He told me, “Jim, you don’t look so good… you should sit the rest of this practice out.” I told him I’ll be fine, I just felt a little sick. (I didn’t tell him I couldn’t feel my arm.) I downplayed the whole thing to make sure I’d be allowed back on the mats.

I went to puke, but nothing really came up, I just dry heaved. Still a little nauseous, my left arm still numb and tingly, I sat against the wall, pissed. I had to get back in there… I didn’t think too much about what could have caused the numbness in my arm. All I could think about was how pissed I was that I had to sit out of practice a few minutes. I waited until the throwing drill was over, and luckily, most of the feeling in my arm came back. So I went back in and finished the practice with some live wrestling and conditioning.

The next day (the last day of the wrestling camp) I finished out the final training session of the camp. I still felt a little dizzy, I had a headache, a little bit of numbness in my left arm, but other than that, I felt pretty good. I was in the best shape of my life, agile, mobile and hostile. I was strong as a bull and felt like my wrestling was starting to come together.

I finished the camp and earned the “Most Dedicated Wrestler” and “Most Outstanding Wrestler” awards (the only 2 awards given out at the camp).

What I didn’t know though, what I didn’t realize… was that my neck was broken.

To make matters worse, my neck was broken at the C1-C2 level. That means that at any moment I could have been paralyzed… or even dead. The ONLY thing that held my neck together was the dense, thick muscle I developed from my extensive neck training.

The doctors told me all of this after I had to be rushed to the hospital after the entire right side of my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, went numb in my mom’s car after she picked me up from my coach’s house… I had that “pins and needles” feeling and I couldn’t control hardly anything on my right side. That’s when I started to get nervous.

My speech was slurred… I was drooling out of the right side of my mouth… and when I tried to get out of the car when we got home, I fell over onto the driveway. It felt like all at once I lost all the strength I worked so hard for. My mom had to pick me up off the ground… she had no idea what was going on… I told her my right leg just fell asleep in the car, that’s all… she didn’t believe me.

She told me I should go to the hospital. No way. She told me I’m gonna have to take a break from all the hard training… that I probably won’t be able to go to the next wrestling camp the following week. No way. I didn’t wanna hear any of that. I insisted I was fine, just needed some rest, and in the morning everything will be back to normal.

I wanted to be left alone and I didn’t want to hear any “nonsense” about going to the doctor to get checked out. It wasn’t until she put my wrestling coach on the phone I started to be more cooperative. He insisted I go to the hospital to get checked out. Under protest, I agreed (I’m not gonna argue with my coach). I was beyond pissed off… I didn’t wanna go to the hospital because I knew that if the docs diagnosed me with a concussion or something like that, I’d have to take a couple weeks off of wrestling. (A couple weeks??!!! No way!)

I couldn’t even hold on to the phone for more than a couple seconds before dropping it… couldn’t poor a glass of milk without spilling it all over the counter… I couldn’t walk in a straight line or walk at all without some kind of extra support… and there I was yelling at my mom for even suggesting I go to the hospital to get checked out.

When I got to the hospital, after all the tests, X-rays and CAT scans, I got the bad news. Horrible news… REALLY horrible news.

As I was strapped to the bed (they had to strap me down because I kept having muscle spasms and the docs didn’t want me moving and damaging my spinal cord any more), I remember what the doctor said to me almost word-for-word. He stood over me, held up the X-ray of my neck, pointed to the break (at the top of my neck, C1-C2 level) and said, “See that space, that separation? That’s where your neck is broken… You’re lucky to be alive… You can forget about wrestling, kid….”

(Warning: If you’re bothered by strong language, do not continue reading.)

I yelled, “NO! Fuck you!” I just kept saying, “No,” over and over again. If I wasn’t strapped down to the stretcher, I would’ve attacked him. Who the hell was he to tell me I was done wrestling, especially with that condescending shit-eating look on his face? Just to say “You’re done,” just like that? That’s just something I couldn’t accept. But what was I gonna do about it then? Strapped to a gurney, wearing a neck brace, the right side of my body numb… I just had to take it. I did NOT take the news well.

The doctors told me and my mother that if it wasn’t for the thick, dense muscle in my neck, I would have, at best, been in a wheelchair with a machine to help me breathe. The doctors said most people die from this kind of injury, that hardly anybody survives because breathing is affected. The docs said how almost no one lives through it. They couldn’t believe I kept wrestling after experiencing symptoms the first time. They told me that my neck muscles acted almost like a natural neck brace, literally holding everything in place, even though it was broken.

The doctors told me that if I would have waited any longer to go to the hospital, it could’ve been bad – really bad. They gave me anti-inflammatory medication to reduce the swelling (which helped to minimize any extra nerve damage) and put me in a helicopter that flew me to Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, PA to get emergency C1-C2 fusion surgery.

If I would have waited longer and kept ignoring the glaringly obvious symptoms of spinal cord and nerve damage, I might not have been able to walk again, let alone train.

If I would have been smart and got checked out immediately after experiencing pain, dizziness and numbness (pain and dizziness happens, but when added with the NUMBNESS and loss of balance, etc., it’s most likely spinal cord damage which must be dealt with IMMEDIATELY), I could have prevented further nerve damage. I’m sure the extra live wrestling I did with a broken neck, along with the extra drilling of front headlocks and more live wrestling the next day, contributed to extra nerve damage; in fact, I’m sure of it, considering I felt the majority of symptoms in the car on the way home from the camp.

So why am I telling you all this?

The whole reason I started telling you some of my personal story is to point out the drastic mistake I made by thinking I was “invincible” and not realizing there was something wrong enough to get checked out immediately after experiencing some pretty obvious symptoms of spinal cord injury.

I downplayed how bad the numbness was to my coaches and I didn’t want anyone to think it was a big deal because I didn’t want to be “that guy” sitting on the sidelines. I have a problem with “those guys” who fake injuries or play up how bad they’re hurting so they can take a break; the last thing I wanted was my coaches thinking I might be one of “those guys.” So I went back out there and kept battling.

I mean, I knew something was wrong… but I still kept wrestling after my left arm went numb. My injury was bad… but it could’ve been a whole lot worse. If my neck wasn’t so big and strong, it would’ve been a whole lot worse… worse than anything I’d want to imagine.

I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes… so my hope is that you’ll learn from my mistakes so that you won’t have to “learn the hard way” like I did.

So please, make sure you take this advice and use it to your advantage. It could save your life.

If you ever feel any pain, address it immediately. Find the problem, and then FIX the problem.

Sure there are times when you just have to “suck it up” and keep going, times in which there will be a lot of desperation and you just have to keep going and press through pain, even injury, but we’re talking about spinal cord injuries here, so I think you would agree that it’s a good idea to be “as smart as you can” with those “possible” spinal cord injuries.

When you have a specific spinal injury or some kind of accident, it’s often easy to figure out why your neck hurts. But in many cases, your neck pain could be caused by any number of things (your neck is affected by your entire shoulder complex as well as your spine, back and hips – they all work together collectively). That’s why it’s important to know what conditions are developing in your body and more importantly what caused those conditions to develop in the first place. Sometimes acute neck pain or back pain might be caused from something obvious, like a trauma of some kind (like if you got your neck popped from an unexpected neck crank) but many times neck pain, back pain or nerve damage like tingling and numbness can develop slowly over time from a variety of different reasons.

So if you have any kind of neck or back pain, address it immediately instead of waiting around and hoping it just goes away… because even if the neck pain does go away over time, it doesn’t mean the problem that caused the initial pain is fixed. We need to do what we can to find the causes of neck or back problems and solve them as soon as possible.

If you’re experiencing back or neck pain of some kind, or have in the past and don’t want to deal with that kind of pain again, click HERE, I think it’ll help you…

And if you’ve haven’t subscribed to my all-new “Neck Strengthening Secrets For Grapplers & Combat Athletes” free ezine, just enter your name and valid email below and I’ll start sending you exclusive neck training tips, articles and videos that will help you get your neck bigger and stronger right now…

Like I always say…

“Protect Your Neck!”

Coach James Kelly
Founder of GrapplersProtectYourNeck.com

P.S.  Keep your eyes peeled for more neck strengthening tips, article and videos that will show you how to develop a big, strong neck for wrestling, grappling, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, MMA or any combat sport. I’ll also open up even more and reveal to you some crucial mistakes I made during my rehab, recovery and training so that you won’t have to “learn the hard way” like I did.

P.P.S.  If you’re a subscriber to my “Neck Strengthening For Grapplers” ezine, you can shoot me an email anytime to ask me a question or share your story with me. (For questions, just write “Question” in the subject line.)

Wrestling Takedown Technique Video: Low Single

Here’s a takedown shown by Iowa Hawkeye Josh Dziewa (pronounced “Jeva”). (Video below.)

Josh is my wrestling coach’s son. I’ve known him since he was a little kid (since he was 3) and he would hit me with this back then and still does today, hahaha! Now I consider him MY wrestling coach! I love it!

Josh got recruited to wrestle for the University Of Iowa after winning a Junior National Freestyle Wrestling Championship in Fargo, ND. During the recruitment process he was ranked the #1 high school wrestler in the nation at 135 pounds and won a Pennsylvania State Wrestling Championship. He was also honored by being named to the “2010 Asics All American High School Wrestling Team” at 135 lbs.

This summer, before Josh headed out to Iowa to start the school year, he came down to Maryland to do some training for a few days. We stopped by my boy Danny Ives’ school “Ivey League MMA” in Annapolis, MD to teach some wrestling.

In this video, Josh shows the “low single–low single” or a “1-2 low single.”

This technique works well at ALL levels of wrestling. American wrestlers and Olympic Champions John Smith and Cael Sanderson were known for their low singles, but even still they were almost impossible to stop. Why? Hard work and diligent, focused practice and drilling.

And if you watched UFC 118, you saw Randy Couture hit James Toney with a low single, using the same finish as in this video (different setup but same finish).

Watch the video and decide if it’s a good fit for your wrestling arsenal. If it is and you want to get good at it, remember, you gotta drill the heck out of it!

‘Til next time…

Coach James Kelly

Founder of GrapplersProtectYourNeck.com

Video: Shoulder Exercise – Warmup Circuit

(Video Below)

Don’t forget about your shoulders!

As you probably know by now, I’m BIG on WARMING UP before you train. It prevents injury and makes your workout more productive.

Besides warming up my neck directly, I make sure to also warm up my SHOULDERS. After all, your neck, shoulders and back all work together.

One of my previous emails I wrote about SHRUGS, which work your traps, but make sure to get that blood flowing in your shoulders too.

Here’s one of the shoulder warm-ups I do EVERY single time I lift weights or do a conditioning circuit:

I’ll use either a 2.5 – 10 pound plates or dumbbells for my first warm up set. If weights are not available, I’ll use whatever I can get my hands on, like gallon jugs filled with water, something like that (gotta be creative here; all you need is a little weight for some resistance).

I do at least one big compound set (maybe 2 or 3 depending on how I’m feeling) with the following exercises:

I’ll start by doing standing side lateral raises, with my arms STRAIGHT out (I don’t bend my elbows at all), and do 10-20 reps.

Then I’ll bend over, keeping my back straight at about a 30 degree angle to the floor and do rear lateral raises. 10-20 reps.

Then I’ll stand back up and do front raises. 10-20 reps.

Follow up with 10-20 reps of shoulder presses.

Then 10-20 reps of shrugs.

Then I’ll put my arm at my side, elbow glued to my side and bent at 90 degrees, and go in and out just to get some motion going in my rotator cuff. Because I’m going in and out to the side, there is hardly any resistance; I’m doing this more for the range of motion and just to get my rotator cuff moving a little bit. (There are a lot of variations of rotator cuff exercises so I’ll post more of them soon.)

Then 10-20 push-ups.

All back to back, no rest until you go through the WHOLE thing.

All those exercises put together in one large compound set (I call this a “compound set” instead of a “super set” just because all the exercises are working some part of the shoulder).

Then I’ll rest a little bit for about a minute, stretch a little during that time and then do the whole “warm-up circuit” again, sometimes 3 or even 4 times in a row to make sure my shoulders are good and warmed up before I hit the training hard.

I’ll do at least one of these compound sets before I do any kind of conditioning circuit, any time I do a bodyweight workout, any lift – including legs, squats, etc. (gotta make sure my shoulders and neck are warmed up before I put those big weights on the back of my neck) or even BJJ class.

That little warm-up for my shoulders and neck might seem like a regular workout to a lot of folks, but keep in mind, I’m using VERY light weights for this.

I have to make sure to get the blood pumping in my delts and neck before I train! A lot of tweaks, kinks, strains, sprains, stingers and pinched nerves happen because of a failure to thoroughly warm up the shoulders and neck properly before training.

So don’t neglect your shoulders! Do this IN ADDITION to your neck warm up.

Here’s the video:

Give this a try and let me know what you think!

Protect Your Neck!

James Kelly
Founder of GrapplersProtectYourNeck.com

P.S. You can use the above “warm up circuit” for the shoulders and neck as a workout too, of course. Just make sure to do the warm-up first, then gradually up the weights to make it more intense. Always work with what you’re comfortable with.

P.P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to my NEW free “Neck Training For Grapplers & Combat Athletes” ezine, just enter your name and valid email in the box below and I’ll immediately send you exclusive content that will help get your neck bigger and stronger.

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http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Kelly/513207583

*** These emails are in no way intended as medical advice. Always consult a physician before beginning any new fitness program or trying a new exercise. Safety should always be your first concern, and if you feel any pain or discomfort, stop immediately. ***

Video: Neck Exercise – Manual Isometric Neck Exercise Routine

(Video Below)

Question:  How important is “isometric” neck strength for grappling and wrestling?

Answer: Isometric neck strength is VERY important. Isometric neck exercises should be a regular part of your grappling exercise routine. It’s important for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), submission grappling, wrestling and mixed martial arts (MMA).

Here’s why.

In BJJ, when you’re inside the guard working to pass, your opponent is most likely working hard to break your posture, either by directly pulling your head down or by pulling your gi lapels.

BJJ rule for maintaining posture in the guard: Keep your head up!

So, your neck better be strong enough to handle that pressure. At the BJJ black belt level, matches are 10 minutes; that means potentially that someone could be pulling your head down for close to 10 full minutes! Are you able to hold posture and keep your head up for that long? Is your neck strong enough to do that?

In wrestling, when you’re in on a shot, good position is hips in, elbows in, back straight, HEAD UP. You better believe a tough wrestler will be working like crazy to stuff your head down and get you out of position.

Wrestling rule for maintaining good position while in on the leg: Keep your head up!

Is your neck strong enough to hold good position while your opponent is trying to push your head down?

In submission wrestling, BJJ or MMA, if you get into a bad spot and your opponent is working to choke you unconscious, whether it’s a guillotine choke, mata leon choke (rear naked choke), or whatever, sometimes you’re gonna have to hold your neck in a static position for a long time to fight that choke off.

If you have to keep your chin down to fight off a choke but you don’t have the isometric neck strength to hold your chin down while your opponent relentlessly tries to pull your chin up, well, it’s gonna be bad news. Choke in, game over, man! But if you have the isometric neck strength to keep your chin down, it’ll give you a little more time to work an escape.

Those are just 3 positional examples. I could go on and on.

Sure, explosive neck strength is important, but you also need isometric neck strength.

Watch the video below to see an example of how to get a good isometric neck strength workout:

You can also do something like this.

Sit with your back straight, head upright, and just push on your forehead with both hands while you keep your head in the same position, and hold for a count of 10-20 seconds. For the back of your neck, just put both your hands on the back of your head and push, keeping your head in the same upright position. For your right side, push against your neck with your right hand; left side, left hand. Your muscles will contract, but it’s an isometric contraction, meaning your head and neck should not be moving at all. It’s like you’re trying to move your head, but you’re making it so that your hands are like a wall, keeping your head from moving.

Believe me, you do this long enough and you’ll feel your neck muscles working.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

‘Til next time…

Protect Your Neck!

Coach James Kelly

Founder of GrapplersProtectYourNeck.com