Do you experience any neck pain when riding your bike?

Unfortunately, it’s all-too-common among the cyclists we see here at Laguna Orthopedic Rehabilitation. And it’s not unexpected when you consider the potential for spending large amounts of time in poor positions on the bike.

So with this in mind, it’s easy to feel neck pain is normal. But it isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be. So let’s cover the basics of why your neck may hurt when cycling and what you can do about it.

Neck Pain When Riding

Cycling is unique in that it offers wonderful physiological benefits but also forces us to adopt relatively unnatural positions - like sitting and leaning forward, for long periods of time. And this can be tricky for the neck as it extends to allow us to look straight ahead. The degree of extension decreases on a mountain bike and increases on a road bike based on the amount of leaning forward involved.

This extended neck position can create pressure on the joints and soft tissues at the back of the neck, opening us up to stiffness and irritation over time.

Common Neck-Related Symptoms

Pain and stiffness aren’t the only neck-related symptoms you may experience during those long hours on the bike. The following are other common symptoms associated with neck dysfunction:

• Headaches

• Pins, needles & tingling into hands

• Cold or burning sensation into hands

• Grip weakness

• Achy arm or hand

• Tennis Elbow/Golfer’s Elbow

• Feeling dizzy or light-headed

Neck Pain is Not Normal

Before we discuss why your neck might be sore and what you can do about it. let’s set some standards.

Despite what many think and feel, neck pain is not normal. Common, yes, but certainly not normal. It’s not something you deserve to have with age or activity. Now, it can certainly feel like it’s unavoidable sometimes, but this often hides a deeper cause. So much so that any neck pain from cycling is highly likely to be a consequence of something else entirely. You just need to know what to look for and where to find it.

The Root Cause of Neck Pain When Riding

This may sound strange, but your day-to-day neck postures and shapes have the biggest say in how your neck will feel on the bike. Not very sexy is it?

To get a sense of what we mean by this, ask yourself two questions:

a) How many hours a week do you ride?

b) How many hours do you spend sitting and/or looking down throughout the week?

If we consider the average ride to be an hour, it’s easy to accumulate four, five and even six hours a week on the bike. And that sounds like a lot of time spent in an awkward neck position. That is until you measure it up against the time you may spend sitting and looking down outside of this.

The average American spends approximately three hours a day using a smartphone alone. That’s about 21 hours a week. It doesn’t include time spent looking down at work, reading or reclining watching TV - things that likely dwarf smartphone use. In short, these moments count if for no other reason than we spend so much time doing them each day. Even if you don’t spend hours a day in one particular shape, things quickly compound if these moments stack up.

Constantly looking down is tricky for a few reasons:

1. It creates a distinct hinge in our neck which it’s forced to cope with over time.

2. It’s hard for us to be aware of these poor shapes as our attention is elsewhere.

3. We accumulate so much time in these shapes.

This mix of features leads to stiffer, tighter and more overloaded neck tissue. If this continues unabated, we creep closer to our tissue’s threshold for pain and dysfunction. And this is where cycling becomes relevant. Cycling is unlikely to create this dysfunction on its own (unless it’s your dominant neck shape), but its unique positional demands may expose something you’ve taken into cycling.

What You Should Do

With the above in mind, what can you do to try and improve your neck pain when cycling? Well, thankfully things aren’t too complicated. We need to focus on improving the health of your neck tissue and work on putting it in a better shape throughout the day.

Try these four tips and let us know how you go.

1. Free up your neck. Take a tennis ball or lacrosse ball and gently let it press into your neck. Go looking for tightness and stiffness just as much as any pain or tenderness. Look side-side, up and down before and after to gauge progress.

2. Mobilize your upper back. We sometimes forget the neck literally connects to the upper back and it can often be just as stiff, if not more, than the neck. Extending your neck to look forward on the bike requires a mobile upper back. Stiffness here can increase the load on your neck, setting you up for pain. Take the same tennis or lacrosse ball and let it gently press into your upper back as well. Again, test and re-test your movements to see progress.

3. Make better daily neck positions a priority. Be mindful of holding your phone up higher and not letting it rest on your lap. Lift up your computer screen or reconfigure your comfortable spot on the couch to keep you from looking down as much. This will help increase your awareness of the shapes your neck is in and decrease unnecessary poor loading, having you better prepared to tolerate time on the bike.

4. Consider a professional bike fit. This won’t be news to many, but double-check you’re optimizing what you have to work with while on the bike. If the balance between your seat and handlebars (height/distance) is a little off, it may result in unnecessary extra load going through your neck.

So if you can combine a number of these tips you’ll hopefully appreciate why neck pain when cycling is not only abnormal but often completely preventable. It just takes a little shift in perspective.

If you’d like help with neck pain when cycling, consider giving us a call here at Laguna Orthopedic Rehabilitation on (949) 443-5442. Alternatively, come in for a professional bike fitting to optimize your experience.

Good luck!