Hello there. What's going on everyone? It's TJ here from Rugby Muscle, and today, as you can tell from the title, we are gonna discuss something that is very, very important, but criminally underrated. I said criminally is that criminally or criminally? Criminally underrated by rugby players. And that is getting some network in your training. So welcome back to Rugby Muscle. My name is tj. If you are new here, then it's not Welcome back. It's welcome. I am a strengthening conditioning coach who specializes in working with amateur rugby players and today we're gonna talk about something that is very important. For you amateur rugby players to get into, and that is training your neck. Why is it so bloody important? What can we do? We'll discuss all of that right now. Actually, before I do though, let's do it. Thumbs up on this video if you are watching the video. If you are listening on Spotify or Apple Podcast, give us a five star review. If you're listening. On any other podcast, go to Apple Podcasts and hit five stars and type up a quick review. It really does help the channel grow and help the podcast grow, help this work get to more and more people, help raise the level of rugby, strength and conditioning and everyone's performance to go along with that and everyone's enjoyment to go along with their increased improvement. So the other thing that you can do is send it to a mate. Uh, especially someone that's got small necks or has the problems that we're gonna talk about here that can be, uh, fixed with neck training. So, neck training is often overlooked because it is kind of awkward to train, right? There's no neck machine in the gym. There's no way to, uh, like MacGyver up a, a, a dumbbell to put on your neck and to, to lift it. Or a barbell like, There's nowhere way to do it. It's also known as being very unsafe to work the neck. And there is definitely, some of that, some truth to that, which we'll get into. But more than anything else, I think it's a little bit of a lack of appeal, right? People just don't care about growing their neck, which is a huge mistake to me, number one, because I think. Like if you are, if you are a guy that's looking for, like the opposite sex to be interested, like just a phy purely physique vein thing, I think there's nothing worse than having a real like little pencil neck. I think a, a big, strong neck is important, but also I. Because like it's just something that's very important for you as an athlete to have is a nice, strong neck. I think it's also an important piece of the puzzle to like improve your game as far as, as we'll get into in contact situations and different things that you can, that you need to do as a rugby player can be improved by having a bigger, stronger neck. And also of course, There's something that will allow you to improve as a rugby player because it's gonna stop you from, or potentially give you an opportunity to not be injured. we're gonna look at concussions, we're gonna look at other injuries, and therefore, if you are spending more time in the game, that's gonna give you more opportunities to improve. First and foremost I was going to put the concussion stuff first, but I, I do think that this is really important. It's just spine health, right? In rugby, you're doing a lot of this. Just smashing into people. This is probably not good for your spine. I think working your neck is the top of your spine that is going to really help you improve your overall posture. And if you are improving your posture, that's gonna help address lots of shoulder issues that rugby players has. Have from being sort of hunched forward. It also, helps shoulder issues for people that work at desks. Again, hunching forward working at a desk like this is how a lot of people spend the vast majority of their time. That's not a good, strong position for your back and it's not a good strong position for your neck. So the more that you can get your spine nice and straight by getting a nice strong neck to carry your head It's going to help you stave off those upper back injuries and potentially lower back injuries and potentially shoulder issues that a lot of rubber players have as well. It also is going to help you improve your performance by having a nice, strong spine. Across the board, right? It's gonna help you not just stay on the pitch as far as like not being injured, as I spoke about earlier, but also as far as all contact situations, there is gonna be some back involvement, and the stronger that your spine can be, the better you are going to perform. Not only that, but also for your posture as far as like, if you've got a nice strong posture, it's going to help you not. Like get tired in games of hunch over, and then when you're hunched over, you actually get more tired because you're not able to open up your lungs, you're not able to look up and observe the pitch. You're having to carry that weight through your musculature. So the stronger that your spine is, the better your performance is going to be on the rugby pitch. Obviously long-term in issues for injuries with the spine are going to come into play and not just like impact your rugby ability, but also impact your life. So again, working your neck is gonna improve that stuff. Uh, you, when we're looking at disc damage or pinched nerves, different things that go on with your spine, if you can have a nice, healthy, strong spine, it's gonna help you stay away from those things. And then finally, one other thing I put here is sleep optimization. If you are next in all awkward positions, because it is weak, that's gonna impact to some degree, or it can impact to some degree your breathing, which you know can actually have a big effect on your sleep, which then has a long-term impact on your life quality, but also your recovery and ability to play rugby better. Now, of course, we move on to something that is near and dear to me because I'm someone who actually had to retire from RPI due to concussions. Concussion prevention. Right. I actually did quite a bit of this and, I'm not gonna say it's the, the overall 100% the answer to everything, but it definitely does help. when you think about concussions, concussions come about not just from a hit to the head. Concussions come about from your brain. Inside your skull getting shaken and hitting the sides of your skull. That's the mechanism of a concussion. It's like if you've got a shaker right, and your brain is in this fluid inside this shaker, and I go like this, whatever was inside this, well, I said brain, but like say I put something else inside, it's gonna hit the sides and it's gonna be bruised and stuff. And that's, that's what a concussion essentially is. So, What the neck does for this is your neck is a, a stabilizer, it's a shock absorber. It stops that from happening. So if now I, I hit this and if I hit this with a weak neck, it's gonna shake and again, potentially give a bruise. If I hit this and I've got a strong neck, there's less movement, there's less opportunity for your brain to get bruised and therefore give you a concussion. So a strong neck can be seen to help reduce the impact of knocks to the head. So far as bruising, the brain, that stuff can also help you improve your performance in contact, right? Because you then, your, your, that shock absorbance stops your head get from getting moved side to side and therefore where the head goes, the body will follow. If your head is going up in contact, you're able to drive your opponent back. If you get your head put down. There's a good time you're gonna go off your feet and lose that contact situation. So I really do think having a strong neck is gonna help with your, not just your, ability to potentially avoid concussions, but also your ability to perform within those rocks. Because of that, because you're able to absorb the shock and you're able to like maybe a Rio or tackle, stay strong and maybe make an offload or just stay strong and not be concussed and go to the floor. Like a lot. It is the reason boxers work there next is the reason MMA guys work their next is because they, when they get in the head, they want to stay focused. They want to not get knocked the fuck out. Right? They want to keep playing. So do you, as a rugby player, you want to make sure that your neck stabilizes those hits and you're able to not get the big bruises on the brain that lead to concussion. And of course as I've already sort of touched on, it does increase your performance in contact as well. If you're looking you're posture in a tackle. If your head's shoved down, you are less, way less likely to make that tackle if your head's already gone on the floor. Let me blow up this image here so you, as you can see here, this tackler in the yellow. If you're listening on the podcast, you can always go to the YouTube channel to watch it, but we've got an attacker who is trying to fend off a tackler here in this situation, and he's shoving the head down of the tackler that Tackler is no longer gonna be able to compete that tackle cause his head is in a terrible position and his body's just gonna go to the floor. Likewise, in a mall, if your head is nice and up and strong, you're able to drive through that mall and be in a good position. If your head is facing down, like these fellas kind of are here in the scrum. You've all of a sudden lost your base and your, your, again, your, your force is going down to the ground, not into your opponent. And that's really important in, in all your contact situations that you have a nice, strong neck, that you have a nice, strong posture because your head is what leads the way. If your head is going to the ground, you are going to the ground. You are not going to be effective in your rugby contact situations. And it's not just for forwards in the scrums, in the front row of the scrums in particular. Yes, that's the most prominent example of this. But it also is for everyone in Rucks, in in malls that gets involved in any contact situation, so in tackles as well. And also there's some potential for working your neck to improve your range of motion. So therefore you can actually see more of the field. And that's, this is one I've sort of tacked on at the end here cuz it's, I, I have no anything, I don't have anything to back this up, but it's something that I found. Can be of, of a benefit. Uh, actually I found it as a benefit for me. I've improved my range of motion of my neck and I've sort of drawn a dots there to say, okay, that should be able to make me see more of the pitch without, you know, making grandiose movements. And, and maybe when you're on a run, right, if you're sprinting in a direction, you're looking for your support, you can turn your neck with a strong neck, you're able to turn it and strong and better range of motion. You're able to look for your sport even better. And of course, Having a strong neck long term is gonna help you with recovery, particularly for like those that are in the scrums. I know people that go to the front row and their traps and their neck are hurting for days afterwards, and the stronger your neck is, the less that's going to happen to you. Right? It's like if you were going to the gym and you were forced to lift 400 kilos from a deadlift, or you're like, you know, where you are, like sort of assisted or you've gotta carry it down, that's gonna hurt you the next day unless you can already do that quite cap, you are quite capable of doing that and therefore you are not feeling doms from that All right, so how do we go about training the neck? There's five different movements that the neck does, and then we are gonna figure out how exactly how we're gonna load them. So the five main movements are flexion extension, so saying yes. Right? That's fl Flexion is head nodding your head down. extension is nodding your head up. So, alright, this camera follows me as I do it. So down like when you're bowing to someone and then. Tuning your head up as if you're meeting a friend that you don't really wanna say hi to or chat with. So you just go, all right, and you just knock your head up, right? That's your first one. Inflection of the section. That's your main movement. If you could just did that, you'd have a lot, you experience a good deal of next strength gain, but we also want to really make sure that we we're, we are building a, a property divert next. So the other way we do this is lateral flexion and extension. So we go side to side. Like we are trying to, like, we have water in our ears and we're trying to empty that water out without touching it. So you head side to side, you try to touch your ear to your shoulder, and then the final movement that we can do with our neck that we like to load up or we can load up to improve your strength of your neck is rotation. So saying no, you say no, no. And moving your neck from side to side without moving your shoulders. And we can load these up in the gym. I might even clip over this video different, uh, exercises where we're training those. But I'm gonna just discuss them right now. So your main options, uh, or the most common option actually, that you'll see is gonna be isometric training for your neck, which involves just using your hands. And so all those different positions I've stated, you can just use your hand and push. So this is me pushing against a rotation. Just trying to turn my head and I'm pushing against it in my hand pushing side side. I'm also then pushing against lateral flexion or against flexion and extension. And you can do that. And that actually can be a good start. I just don't like it because, you're gonna need to progress it at some point, right? You don't just do static pushups to develop your chest. Likewise, you don't just do isometric work to develop your neck and also, It's very difficult for people to take that sort of stuff seriously. So we like to give stuff reps. We'd like to give stuff sets. We'd like to give you a proper exercise that you can do as part of your training, and so here are your main options. You can use bands which are fairly easy to adjust. They're portable, they're light. You can take them to the gym with you. bands are a very good option for rotation work. And I'll clip over a video here of me doing neck rotation with a band, which actually works really well. The cons that are like, it's very difficult to like, get a solid range of motion, depend on how heavy the band is. it's also difficult if you're in a room without a solid anchor point, sometimes that can hold you back and you're not able to actually work the neck. I've also found that, again, it's, it's more, the difficulty for me is the different is if you've just got one band and then you progress through it. It's difficult to judge how you're progressing, cuz you might on one day stretch it a lot more than the next day and not really acknowledge that. And then you're not able to notice that you've improved because you might think, oh, okay, this day's much harder. And it's difficult. I always like to see consistent and easy to see and easy to register progressions when it comes to your training. So therefore, maybe instead we look at cables. And we look at, a much easier way to adjust that resistance. And you know, as long as you've got some sort of mechanism whereby you can attach something around your head, you can do all of the movements I've just discussed on that cable machine. And it's fairly easy to use. And then probably the other con that I'll see with cable machines is, is very easy to get caught up in the weight that you are lifting. And sometimes they have two bigger jumps with the, the weights and you get to a point where you add a weight that's too heavy and you start using your shoulders to rotate. This is something that I've seen a lot. Or they start to use your, your, you know, your upper back to move your neck. This camera's going all over the place. You get my point, right? You start using your body to do the neck isolation exercises because you can't do. Cable work, lying down. So then our other solution is clearly gonna be free weight. So you can just put a plate with a towel on your head, and you can just go ahead and do all of those different movements. It's definitely difficult to do rotation exercises this way. In fact, it's basically impossible because it's, you're just gonna. Shake that weight off your neck if you're lying down. but the flexion and extension, and if you just did that consistently, you would see growth in your next strength. And you'll be able to see the improvements that we've discussed here in this, podcast. So I'd give that a go. And again, make sure you put a a towel there just to keep it hygienic. You would also do put a towel on any cable attachment you are doing. You could also put an attachment to the band, or you could even put a band to a cable is something that I've done before as well. And so in summary, I just think necks are basically the new calves, right? It's definitely something that you need to, you know, you should be training at this point, but most people just neglect them. it's also something that doesn't take that much, it doesn't take a lot of work. It takes two sets. You could get a, a significant increase in your next strength and, and get the vast majority of the benefits from. Two sets in each direction a week. That's it. Now, if you went up to three to four, maybe you're gonna get a little bit of an extra benefit. Slowly but surely increase the amount of sets. Cause you don't want to have your neck be screwed the next day. But it's definitely something that I would include. You can add this stuff to the end of your gym session. Again, like calf stuff, but you could also add it to your walk just to make sure that you get it done. And really, the idea here is, the main thing I wanna say is that you want to train this like other muscle groups. You want to just develop the musculature around your neck enough so that it gives you these benefits. Again, that's why I don't like the isometric stuff like they're putting on your hands. Like you wouldn't do that. Like I'm not gonna benefit, try and go, okay, I'm gonna do some chest work. I'm just gonna push my hand against my, that's not gonna work. Right. You want to get into it. You actually wanna train it like you do other muscle groups. And in fact, something that I haven't addressed yet in this video that I should address right now is that neck bridges are not a good way to, unless they're just isometrics when you're doing neck bridges, that's something that I would not bother doing because for me the, you can do that movement or you can do, you can build a strong neck without doing that and there's just a little bit of potential for that to go wrong and there's risk and there's rep like actual data out there showing that there is definite a risk and it's definitely something I wouldn't advise. Rugby players doing to try and improve their game. It's just, I don't think it's worth it and I don't think you should be doing it. I think instead, you should be looking at doing the, the movements that we've discussed in this video. You can train your neck away from the gym, so you could take some stuff like, you know, you could go to like before your rugby training session or before your speed session. Just do some network. But I think for the most part, if you've learnt something from this video, next are the new calves. Make sure you train them. Don't be a bitch and just say that you are naturally got a small neck. No, you can train your neck. You can make it strong and effective. Now, before I finish this video, I do want to give you one option for training your neck and a really efficient, very well developed system, which is the Neck X system. I've been sent one of these units, for full transparency. They're not paying me at all. They're not, I don't even get a cut of any of these discount links that your, this discount code if you, if you choose to buy one. I just thought it was a good system. What I like about it is it has three different resistance bands so that you can really adjust and get into the different ranges of motion that we have discussed in this video, and they have markers on the band so that when you're holding the bands. You know how much extra resistance or less resistance you're giving yourself each time, therefore allowing you to progress. If you're interested, I will do a full video reviewing neck X system. let me know in the comments below if that's something that you would like to see, or if you would like to purchase one of these, you can enter the code Rugby $10 for $10 off one of these neck A system units. I'll put the link in the description below. Once again, they are not paying me for any of this. I just think it's a really useful system. It's very light. This is one way that you can train it outside of the gym. You can just do it, you know, even once every night if you wanted to build up that much of a tolerance, but, You could do it conveniently at home and really develop a neck using this neck X system. I like what they're doing with this, so if that's something that interests you, link in the description below. I also will give a plug for team rugby muscle because we do neck training as part of our regular training within the rugby muscle method. So if you want to check that out, if you wanna not think about what you need to do for your rub strength conditioning for your neck training. Just execute on a weekly basis and see your rugby performance skyrocket. Check out team rugby muscle in the links below. Subscribe if you are new. Hit thumbs up. let me know any opinions that you have on neck training in the comments below, or just leave any random comment for the algorithm. It really does help out. Share this with a friend and I'll see you guys in the next one.