Headaches are serious business. In fact, headaches are one of the most common complaints of desk workers, second only to lower back pain!

Now, sometimes those headaches can be due to stress, your coworker getting on your nerves, or your boss giving you a hard time – but other times it’s things like your postures and positions throughout the day.

We actually wrote a whole article on how to sit in 2020 that goes a bit deeper into this story!

So, I want to give you the tools to fix your headaches once and fore-all and combat this debilitating pain, so you can back to doing the things that you love!

This video goes over the common causes for headaches at the desk, but more importantly, how to fix headaches and feel good, all from the comfort of your desk!

I hope it helps :)!

 

 

Welcome to the movement center and welcome to the office series innovative idea. We’ve compiled a series of videos showing you how to self manage and self treat, common office injuries that we see all the comfort of your own office. Oh, and move like you mean it. All right guys, welcome to episode three of the office series. We are tackling it from the top of the body down. So common issues that we see and number one complaint of our office folk headaches. And so Bernie, unfortunately here sitting here with a headache right now, one thing, if be getting headaches at the office, you want to look back and make sure how you’re sitting.

Look, your mechanics, how are you doing that all day long? One day I think people forget about is lighting and eyes, right? Our eyes, you’re not seeing things while on your computer.

You’re going to be really sneaky in forwards and really jamming out some of the joints in the back of your neck, back and create a lot of issues. So just something to keep in mind. We’re not just talking about, you know, physio today or kind of self-help.

We’re always gonna look at the whole, the whole person a little bit. Now for our focus today is how to manage yourself in the office for headaches. We need more local treatment. But keep in mind that you always want to make sure you’re looking at your lower back, your upper back mobility.

Because if you’re stiff through here, you’re going to be driven forward. And this kind of painful position of your neck, which we’ll cover it in some other episodes. But for today we’re talking about relief techniques and self management techniques. So they’ll further ado. Let’s get into that.

So if we took Brittany and bring her over here and she shows us kind of laptop position, so you can see she’s up a bad laptop position. I have her too well-trained. So she’s here, she’s forward, she’s looking up and she’s looking at the screen and he’s really jamming up these joints have your suboccipital muscles and they tend to get really jammed up and sort of irritated kind of in, in this position, right? So we want to do is open up that whole area.

So the step number one is we’re going to use double lacrosse balls and I’ve just got to show you guys how you can duct tape these guys together using athletic tape or duct tape, whatever that might be through. I’m going to sock, this can be two tennis balls. You can also buy a device like this as well. Um, from the store or make it yourself.

You have the two. So Bernie’s at her office, she’s working out or hanging, working hard. What we’re going to do is take this digging into the back of the [inaudible] kind of base of the neck or should I base of the head where it meets the neck on here and dig it in. Hold it up with your arms. So I’m pulling forwards and from here I’m going to tuck my head down and let this dig into it. So we’re going to [inaudible] grab onto this. Did you get to sneak it in?

She’s putting it in right at the base or behind base of her head. Perfect. She’s going to dig that in nice and wonderfully, and she’s going to tuck and go full tuck down and up and down and up, not just bending. She really wants to kind of talk and open up that back piece of the, of the neck a little bit.

That’s what we’re going to go for. Perfect. You go to these wraps, fill it open up and feel that good stretch start to come into this. You can also do this against a wall at the office as well to really get a good bit more pressure or on the ground. Uh, but most of us don’t want to lay on the ground at the office. So this is a good place to start is from a seated position. Once you’ve loosened that up, we don’t want to lengthen these muscles through. So we’re, we’re going to do with something called the armpit stretch.

Make sure you’re wearing deodorant for this and just grab on with your hands, the back top of your head. Look this perfect. And she’s going to pull towards that same side as her arm is and dig into wash her armpit. So you’re pulling yourself down to get a good sniff of your RPA.

She’s coming here, you want to be a little bit more angled that way. And she’s pulling down, usually a few that stretch pick up along the front on an open side of your neck down to where the shoulder blade muscle we’re trying target goes. Well the suboccipitals up here as well as the base of shoulder blades. So if we take Bernie from the back, woo is come here and go back down, bring it down and she should feel as comfortable stretch with this neck stretches. Do you want to hold for about 15 to 20 seconds? Cumulated about two minutes a day doing that. But they’ll hold it for too much longer than that and definitely don’t get lightheaded or walkie. Alright, it should be comfortable. Now last but not least, it’s going to be something we call chin tucks or turtles. And that is is just trying to get yourself back into a better position, especially if you’re somebody that spends a lot of your day like this.

So what we’re going to do here is just focus on pretending that you have awesome, perfect posture and getting yourself back at a top position and just oscillating in that position. You’re going to feel silly and exaggerated. And if you do, you’re doing it right. So if we bring Brittany here, perfect, and we have her come back and bring her chin back and she holds that and comes back out and back. What I don’t want to see guys is this. I don’t want you guys bending your necks like this or doing this China open. Imagine as a pivot going through your ears and you’re pulling back and opening. You should feel a bit of a stretch at the base of that neck. So those are our three number one balls into the back of the neck. Number two is hold that aren’t bitch stretch like this, that number two and number three, number two and number three is getting into this sort of chin tuck, opening position to activate all that fun stuff. Cool, cool.

And last below. And these, don’t forget about that other stuff down below. It’s all pretty important here because I have any questions we have below. If isn’t this stuff’s not working, you’re not feeling helpful. Make sure you check in with the health care person. You trusted it and get the stuff looked at right? But this is a way to, some place to start. Subscribe if you haven’t already and move like you made it. Thanks a lot guys.