How Tightness In The Neck Affects Walking With Age.

Of course, there’s always the neck. The neck can cause a lot of problems, and this is a very common issue for many people: neck tightness. What often happens is that the shoulders are being pulled up, or they might be pulled up and forward. As a result, the head tends to lean more forward, the upper back tends to round more, and this creates effects down the chain, into the lower back and the pelvis.

These dynamics occurring above and below and in front and back are all pulling on each other. All these torques are causing mechanical changes that impact each other and affect our walking pattern.

For instance, if we’re tight in the upper back, it reduces our ability to rotate our trunk. Consequently, our hips’ mobility gets limited, and our walking slows down. A vicious cycle ensues.

Now, let’s go back to the topic of the neck. You have a couple of muscles: the upper trapezius and the levator scapula. The upper trapezius lifts the shoulders up, while the levator scapula lifts the shoulders up and forward. These muscles often become trigger points for many people. When you go to a massage therapist, they usually work on these areas.

These are very mechanically dominant muscles. They lift up the shoulders and can create an entire cascade down the body simply because these neck muscles at the top are lifting our shoulders up and forward. There’s a whole host of other problems as well, such as issues related to breathing muscles and accessory breathing muscles.

To summarize, tightness in the neck, especially in the upper trapezius and the levator scapula, can cause problems down the chain that contribute to the issues we discussed regarding walking.

And this is not just for people over 70. This is for everybody. Many people have these problems. I have to be stretching these muscles on a regular basis to prevent these problems from happening to myself, even though I’m not yet 40. These problems will affect me if I don’t address them.