ascendeay
Iron
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When looking at these two pictures, one is obviously more attractive than the other. What’s the only difference between the two? The one on the right’s neck is way thicker. So how do we build a bigger neck?
(This whole thread is from my head so if I make a mistake, please correct me)
Dismissing Cope
Anyone telling you to do chin tucks, or neck curls with no weight, is unfortunately lying to you. We first have to understand how muscle growth happens to know how to build muscle in the neck.
Hypertrophy
Muscle growth, specifically myofibril hypertrophy happens through a process called Mechanical Tension. Mechanical tension occurs when we have a slowing of contraction velocity, can be voluntary (you purposely slow down your repetition speed) or involuntary (it slows down despite full effort). So if mechanical tension causes muscle growth, and we know voluntarily slowing your reps causes high degrees mechanical tension, would that mean slow and controlled chin tucks would build more muscle? No of course not, which is why we have to understand something else, called motor unit recruitment.
Motor Unit Recruitment (or MUR for short) is going to be the recruitment of motor units. Motor units are groups of muscle fibers. There are high threshold motor units (controlling more muscle fibers) and lower motor units (controlling less muscle fibers). If you for example, curl a pencil which is very lightweight, you will have relatively low effort. So your central motor command only recruits low threshold motor units to perform that task. Which is why, curling a pencil will not grow significant muscle at all. What we need is high effort. Now let’s I curl a bag of rice that’s pretty heavy. My motor command has to send higher threshold motor units to perform that given task. So more muscle fibers will be trained. Does that mean we should be doing 1 rep maxes that are high effort? No.
The Stimulating Reps Model (shoutout to the big Beardsley)
The Stimulating Reps Model show us that the last 5 reps in a set is what stimulates the most hypertrophy (I’m making this easy for everyone to understand so if YoTalks sees this, please don’t flame me).
So if someone does a set of 100 reps close to failure, and another person does a set of 6 reps close to failure, both are approaching failure, so would they not experience the same amount of hypertrophy? No. Because fatigue mechanisms exist and metabolites start accumulating which prevent you from being able to recover in time to train at a higher frequency (explanation coming). So a set of 5-10 reps, 1-2 reps shy of failure will definitely be the best for stimulating hypertrophy (preferably in the 5-8 rep range). So that is why doing 1 rep maxes, despite being super high effort, would not cause the most muscle growth because that’s only one stimulating rep, instead of around 4-6.
Pair Everything You’ve Learned Together Now
So if we know we need an involuntary slowing of contraction velocity, so we need to approach close to failure, 1-2 reps shy of failure. And if we know we need high MUR to achieve this involuntary slowing, and we need to be in a rep range of 5-10, wouldn’t weighted neck curls be best for stimulating hypertrophy?
Sorta.
The Struggle Everyone Has With Neck Training
This would be good, but progression and having to put a weight on your forehead is just not ideal, and you get bad looks at the gym. So what do I recommend you do?
Since we know mechanical tension in the slowing of contraction velocity, if the contraction velocity is literally zero, and we have max effort, then wouldn’t that cause the most hypertrophy. Well actually, maybe. This is called an isometric.
Isometric Maxx
We see time and time again, isometrics in studies either being better than actual isotonic training, or equal. Isometrics, when done at max effort, will stimulate hypertrophy to a pretty significant degree. We can utilize this to maximize our neck gains. How?
How to Train Neck
These are the functions of the neck. Let’s leave out the rotation because we don’t really need it. We are going to focus on Extension, Flexion, Right Lateral Flexion, and Left Lateral Flexion. This is exactly how to train all of these joint actions simply, even at home.
Pillow maxxing
First step, grab a pillow. Wrap the pillow around the back your neck and hold it tight (YoTalks has a video demonstration on TikTok if you search it up). Perform a head extension isometric. I do 4 seconds max effort, 4 seconds rest, 4 seconds max effort, 4 seconds rest, and 4 seconds max effort. This will stimulate hypertrophy to a significant degree for the motor units responsible for head extension. Now put the pillow in front of your neck, and do the same for flexion. Max effort push into the pillow. Then put the pillow on the left of your neck, and do lateral flexion, and then on your right. Rest between doing each set. One set for each joint action. Do this every other day.
Enjoy the gains!!!! (FBEOD maxx IMMEDIATELY)
