Two minutes of daily stretching reduces neck and shoulder pain

Published by

Tim Herbst

November 4, 2019

Two minutes of daily exercise with rubber bands. That's all it takes to reduce neck and shoulder pain. A problem that many people can recognize from their work. This is according to a study conducted by researchers from the National Research Center for the Working Environment (NFA). The results have been published in the journal Pain.

The importance of short-term daily strength training studied

Senior researcher Lars L. Andersen from NFA says about the purpose of the study:
"We know that neck and shoulder pain increases the risk of office workers taking long-term sick leave. We also know that regular exercise - and especially strength training - is an effective remedy for neck and shoulder pain. But how effective are simple forms of exercise, such as stretching, in reducing neck and shoulder pain, which is a problem for many people with more sedentary jobs? And how little exercise is enough? That's what we wanted to find out".

Almost 200 people participated in the survey

174 women and 24 men with at least 30 hours of work per week and recurrent neck and shoulder pain participated in the study. They all underwent a clinical shoulder/neck examination and answered a number of questions, including how much pain they had in the neck and shoulders and how often. Most of them were asked to do strength training for 2 or 12 minutes a day, five days a week with an exercise band, while a third of the participants were given general health information.

Elastic training reduced neck and shoulder pain

The results show that daily stretching is effective in reducing neck and shoulder pain. Lars L. Andersen elaborates:
"The participants experienced less pain in the neck and shoulders by exercising daily with elastic bands. Two and twelve minutes of daily exercise gave about the same effect. On a scale of 0-10, they rated their neck and shoulder pain on average as having decreased by 1.9 points with 12 minutes of daily exercise and 1.4 points with two minutes of daily exercise. So even two minutes of daily exercise makes a difference".

Neck and shoulder pain is common in the population

Between 30 and 50 percent of all adult Danes have had pain in the neck and shoulder muscles in the past year. Among people who work a lot with computers, more than half have had neck and shoulder pain in the past year. For some, this leads to chronic neck pain. It is well documented that previous pain reduces the prognosis for spontaneous recovery from pain. Therefore, it is necessary to treat the symptoms before they develop into chronic pain.

Read the abstract of the article: 'Effectiveness of small daily amounts of progressive resistance training for frequent neck/shoulder pain: Randomized controlled trial'.