Chin Tucks for Herniated Disc Rehabilitation

The next stretch here is very important for the cervical spine and upper thoracic spine. It’s called the chin tuck. It helps restore the cervical curve. It also is very important for cervical herniated discs or cervical whiplash injuries. Once again, it’s important to do it right in having the, the posture set the way that it should be.

So again, this is one that’s very, very effective, especially to restore the curve like Dr. Neil said. But a lot of people are doing this incorrectly. So we’re going to demonstrate the proper technique. What you’re going to do is, I actually prefer this one, to do this one standing. And against the wall, right?

Proper Positioning

If you do this against the wall you can actually put a pillow here and get a little bit more range of motion. But again, you can do it standing, sitting, whatever. So it’s actually a really simple movement. You’re actually just going to take your chin and tuck it straight back. And so go ahead. The motion is going to actually look, I’ll actually demonstrate too. Straight back like this, and then you’re going to use your fingers to give it a little over pressure.

And you can do this sitting at a computer. This is the kind of thing you can do at any time of the day.

Chin Tuck Mistakes

And one thing that a lot of people make this mistake, which Jane is actually making here. Is they’re tucking their head down. What you actually want to do is your line of drive, you want that to be straight back. Just like you’re pushing your chin into the back of your throat. And another mistake people make is they use the pushing motion.

Active Range of Motion

So what you want to do is you want to actually get your active range of motion. Which is basically what you can do first. So you’re going to tuck as far as you can first. And then you’re going to bring your arms up. And this is the passive range of motion. So you’re going to give a little bit of over-pressure and then relax. And I prefer doing the active motion with my hands at my side so that my spine is all lined up. Go ahead. Give it a shot. So she’s going straight back. Now she’s going to bring up her hands for just a little bit of over pressure. Then relax.

And one other mistake I see people make is when they go into the relaxed part. They’ll come here, do this, over pressure. And then they’ll relax, like exaggerate the relax. Yeah, you just want it to just literally just relax. The motion’s going to be a really small motion. But what it’ll do is actually for people who have a straight curve in their spine, it’s going to restore to the curve.

Chin Tuck Frequency

As I was talking about before, with frequency of doing it, it’s the kind of thing you really can do at the computer. Dr. Gene, how many times, what do you tell your patients on it?

So the chin talk is a little bit different than any other stretch that we showed. What I tell almost all my patients is you actually wanna do this about every two hours when you’re first starting. And I don’t get too caught up into how many reps or anything. Just every couple hours do 10 or so. You don’t even have to count. Just do a little bit here and there. And you’re going to actually feel in the first couple of days. You’re going to feel four tiny little muscles. It’s almost going to feel like if you haven’t worked out in a while and you just start working out, you’re going to feel four little muscles in your neck.

They are almost going to feel like they’re weak from working out. So after a couple of days, some of that weakness and soreness will sort of fizzle out.

Strengthening those Small Neck Muscles

Right and that’s how you know, now you can start backing off every couple hours. Everyone’s a little different. It might take two days. It might take a week. But just in the beginning do it every couple hours. just be really good about getting this in. And then you can start backing off. This is actually something that you can do throughout life, even once or twice a day. If you’re doing something like standing in line at the grocery store you can get a couple of chin tucks in.

Thanks for reading and watching this blog post. Hopefully these tips help! If you still have lingering neck pain and want have your spine checked out by our doctor at Genesis Chiropractic Clinic, call us at 215-343-3223. Or please Contact Us Here.