My Head and Neck Tension: 30 Minutes on the Elliptical to the Rescue

In the spring of of 2007, I developed a serious problem with head and neck tension that has been with me ever since. I have tried zillions of things: physical therapy, rolfing, deep tissue massage, mobility work with all sorts of gadgets that put simple foamrollers to shame, postural training, and more.

After 1.5 years of consistent experience with the surprisingly simple approach of 30 minutes on the elliptical, I am fully confident in reporting that, to my initial surprise, it has turned out to be both the most game-changing thing I've done for this problem and by far and away the most time-efficient and cost-efficient thing I've done.

I believe the issue started from spending incredibly long hours working on a computer. The repetitive motion of typing causes knots to develop in my upper trapezius muscles. Looking forward to the screen constantly immobilizes my head and neck in a forward stance. Instead of resting evenly on my torso, and letting the larger muscles of my chest and back do the stability work, the tiny muscles at the base of my skull, the occipitals, work in overdrive to keep my head from falling forward. That drives tension in a band around my head.

One of the first times I ever made progress on this was when a chiropractor told me to do 45 minute sessions on a rowing machine. I found this worked if I did more than a few sessions a week, but it was very hard to keep up with it.

At the time, I thought I was strengthening my back muscles, helping to balance my posture.

This false understanding misled me for years.

If strengthening my back was the issue, then pullups, barbell rows, and deadlifts would also help. Then I read a book suggesting that muscle mass was the key driver of postural balance. That led me to believe that bodybuilding exercises focusing on hypertrophy in my back muscles would help. Wrong, and wrong.

In late 2018, I decided to try 30 minutes of daily cardio. My rationale was that baseline anxiety was driving the muscle tension, and that modestly high-intensity cardio would reduce it. This was supported by consistent experience in the past finding that running on a treadmill could dramatically reduce my baseline state of anxiety.

I chose the elliptical on the basis that I enjoy it more than the treadmill, it causes less of a need for muscle recovery, and ellipticals tend to have convenient places to put a phone to watch videos while doing this rather boring activity.

The effect of this was shocking. 30 minutes on the elliptical increased the tension-free range of motion of my neck, loosened up my shoulders, and reduced the tension in my head. The more I did it, the more I found my neck and thoracic spine could easily crack. Without it, I always felt like I needed to crack them and couldn't. The more progress I made, the more frequently and easily I could crack these areas, the looser my muscles felt, and the less tension I had in my head.

If I did it five times a week, I would make consistent progress. If I did it three times a week, I would maintain my progress. If I did it less than that, I would regress. Over the last 1.5 years, I have consistently found this algorithm to work like clockwork.

Why does this work? My initial hypothesis was by reducing anxiety. However, I talked to a sports medicine doctor who had a very different explanation: he thought that the muscle tension was compensating for problems in my joints that increased when the joint fluid was stagnant. Exercise increased the movement of fluid in the joints, improved the joint health, and in response the muscles relaxed.

I now believe he is correct. The key piece of evidence is how specific 30 minutes on the elliptical has turned out to be. On the elliptical, I get constant movement of my shoulders around my thoracic spine by holding on to the moving handlebars. This is mindless. It's automatic. It's constant for 30 minutes. This has a much more consistent, regulated circulation of fluid throughout the joints of my neck and cervical spine than any other exercise I do. I absolutely find that a similar amount of time doing other exercise reduces anxiety. For example, my girlfriend and I have taken to playing "Just Dance" on the Nintendo Switch during NYC's COVID-19 lockdown, and this is both fun and fairly intense exercise, both of which reduce anxiety. But it does nothing for reducing the muscle tension. Only 30 minutes on the elliptical does.

In retrospect, this is why the rowing machine was so powerful: constant movement in the shoulders around the neck and thoracic spine.

You don't need an elliptical to get thoracic spine movement in, obviously. I can certainly do calisthenics that hit this area myself. However, it's very hard to get consistent, regulated movement in for 30 whole minutes. It takes a lot of mental energy and bandwidth, whereas the movement comes in easily, mindlessly, and automatically with the elliptical.

I don't want to suggest that physical therapy, massage, rolfing, mobility, and postural work aren't helpful. They are.

But each massage or rolfing session takes close to two hours when you factor in commuting time, and these are expensive. Mobility work can easily start adding up to more than an hour a day of exercises, and it's very hard to keep up with the amount needed to keep making progress.

30 minutes on the elliptical costs only the price of a monthly gym membership, and if you live close to a gym like I do (unfortunately I had to actually buy one for my apartment due to the extended COVID-19 gym lockdown here), the commuting time is minor, and the total time spent is only a little bit more than the 30 minutes.

I would certainly be best off if I combined all of these approaches, but there is only so much time in a day. I absolutely support these other approaches, but for me personally, if I am to rank one thing as most game-changing, cost- and time-effective, and easiest to maintain over time, it is 30 minutes on the elliptical. Your mileage may vary, but I hope this insight proves useful.

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