Building Neck Muscles is a very important part of bodybuilding. In addition, if you play sports such as wrestling, soccer, or football you will need a strong neck.

Before you can start building the neck muscles, you need to know what the muscles are and what they do to support the neck. There are four main muscle groups that control the neck. They are…

• Rotators
• Flexors
• Lateral Flexors
• Extensors

Rotators help rotates the neck from the left side to the right side.

Flexors are the muscles that help moves the neck down toward the chest.

Lateral Flexors are the muscles that help move the neck side to side, as if you were trying to touch your ear to your shoulder.

Extensors are the muscles that help moves the neck backward, as if you were trying to look at the sky.

One of the best way to build all of these muscles is to use a neck muscle building machine that is specifically designed to target each of these muscle groups. A great machine that builds all these muscles is the four way neck machine. It hits the front, back, right and left of the neck. You can adjust the weight on the machine to get a good workout.

If you do not have the money to buy such a machine and your local gym does not have one, then there are other workouts that will target the muscles in the neck.

Exercising the Neck with Free Weights

Note… to avoid neck injuries, when doing the following exercises for the first few times, start with a light weight or even no weight to get your neck muscle used to the movement of these exercises. By doing this, you can work up to the right poundage that will give your neck muscles the maximum workout without injuries.

Exercising the Flexors

The first one will target the flexors muscles. You will have to lay face up on a bench of some sort with your head hanging over the edge. Next, place a towel or something soft on top of your forehead. Then place a weight on top of your forehead, that your neck can handle. You will have to slowly lower your neck downward and then slowly raise the neck up, using the weight on the forehead as resistance.

Extensors Workout

You can do the same exercise for the extensors. All you have to do is lay on your stomach on a bench and place the towel on the back of your head, with the weight on it. Hold the weight in place with your hands and slowly raise and lower your head over the edge of the bench.

Lateral Flexors Exercise

To work the lateral flexors, lay on a bench on your side. Place the towel or something soft on the side of your neck. Then place a weight you can handle on the towel and hold it in place as you lower and raise your head from the side. You can work both the right and left side of the neck.

Work Your Traps To Bring Attention To Your Neck

Another way to make your neck look huge is to target those traps. Some good exercises to work the traps are…

• Shrugs
• Deadlifts
• Upright Rowing and
• Overhead Press.

A good method of training the traps is to start with a heavy weight on any of the previous exercises and every set after, lessen the weight by 10 to 20 pounds. This is called descending sets and it really pushes the trap muscles past the point of failure. Which means you will build muscle mass really fast.

Read my article Weight Training Techniques for more information on descending sets and other techniques.

In order to build muscle effectively, you need to know the different Weight Training Techniques available. It’s okay when you’re first starting out to pick up a barbell and start doing repetitions, but later on, you’ll have to know different techniques to push your muscle past the point of failure. Some of these techniques include…

• Super Sets
• Rest / Pause
• Slow Reps
• Descending Sets
• Pyramids
• Forced Reps
• Negatives
• Burns

Super Sets

Are great for when you want to get ripped. It is combining two different exercises back to back with no rest between the two exercises. This combination is considered one set. Usually you will combine exercises with different muscle groups. For example, you would group biceps and triceps into one set. This would be curls and triceps extensions. You could also do chest and back or quads and hamstrings. Another form of super setting is grouping the exercises with the same muscle group. For example, the chest would be grouped as bench press and flyes. Doing the bench press first and immediately without a rest go into your flyes. This would be considered one set in your super set.

Rest / Pause

Is one of the most demanding techniques out there. But it will get your muscles building fast. To perform this technique, you will have to start out with a weight that you can do about 3 to 5 reps with. You should barely be able to do the fifth rep. Without removing any weights, wait about 20 seconds and do another 2 to 4 reps. Then you will strip off some weight and without any rest, do another 3 to 5 reps. Continue  this process until you have just the bar left. By time you have the bar, your muscles will be so exhausted that you will only be able to do 3 to 5 reps with the bar.  The rest / pause technique works really well on the larger muscle groups.

Slow Reps

Will make you execute perfect form. And since the rep is slow, you will fatigue your muscles faster and promote more muscle mass. You can use this slow rep technique in a lot of the techniques here in this article.

Descending Sets

Is a great way to push the muscle past the point of failure. When doing this technique, make sure you have the barbell loaded with five or ten pound weights so you can have more sets. To perform this technique, start of with a weight that you can do about 5 to 7 times. Right after you have done the seventh rep, immediately strip off 10 or 20lbs and continue with as many reps as you can do. Continue stripping the weight off until you have a few pounds left. This will fatigue your muscles and build them fast.

Pyramids

Are the opposite of the descending sets. In the descending sets, you start out with a heavy weight and you continually take off the weight. In pyramiding, you will start out with a light weight and continue putting more weights on every set. When starting out with the light weight, start out with a weight that you can do about 12 times. After that add about 10 to 20 pounds and do the next set. Every time you add weight, your reps will be less. For example…

12 reps- 10 pounds (1st set)
10 reps- 20 pounds (2nd set)
8 reps – 30 pounds (3rd set)
6 reps – 40 pounds (4th set)
4 reps – 50 pounds (5th set)
2 reps – 60 pounds (6th set)

Forced Reps

Are a good way to continue a rep when you can not do it by yourself. Have a partner help you continue your rep by lightly assisting you with the rep. Your partner should only help to the point were it will feel like the barbell is 10 or 20 pounds lighter with their assistance.

Negatives

Use gravity to help you go past the point of failure. By resisting the downward resistance of gravity, you are strengthening your muscles even further with this lowering phase. Usually, when you lower the weight, it would take you about 3 to 5 seconds. Now with this negative technique in play, it will take you 10 to 15 seconds to lower the weight. It’s great at the end of a set to push your muscle even further past failure. Another great use of negatives is if you can not perform pull up. You can strengthening your back muscles with this technique. Start out by jumping up to the bar and hold yourself there for a second or two, then slowly lower your body down. Repeat this until your back muscles are fatigued. After a while you will be doing pull ups.

Burns

Sometimes called Quarter Pumps. They are simply quarter reps after you can not do any more full reps. At the end of a set when you can not do any more full reps and you do not have a training partner, you can do a few quarter reps to push your muscle even further past the point of failure.

Using the above techniques will help you further advancing your bodybuilding goals. These are not for beginners. If you are a beginner, start out by doing simple 3 set routines on large muscle groups. After a while of getting you body adapted to the basics you can move on to these weight training techniques.