Exercise · Neck

Chin tuck

You draw the chin straight back — not down — as if making a double chin, and hold. It is the smallest exercise in this library and one of the most specific: it switches on the deep neck flexors, the small muscles lying against the front of the cervical spine that hold the head stacked over the shoulders. Momentum's system names their endurance failure as the movement failure behind tension headaches, and lists the deep neck flexors as inhibited on its upper-body chart. When they stop working the superficial neck muscles take over, which is the overuse pattern the system blames for the headache in the first place.