The bottom line
Danny Benbrook, a 175-pound wrestler at Middletown North High School, has had a drastic improvement in the neck pain that hit him every time he shot for a takedown. At Thrive in Monmouth County, NJ, we traced it to two irritated muscles and treated them with soft-tissue work, adjustments, tape and the Graston technique.
- Danny Benbrook
- High school wrestler
- Weight class
- 175 lb
- Neck pain
- Drastically better
- Care
- Chiropractic
Neck pain on his shot
Danny wrestles at 175 pounds for Middletown North High School. He came to us with neck pain on his right side that hit every time he went in for his shot, the move where a wrestler goes in at an opponent for a takedown. The same movement repeated many times is one of the ways sports injure the neck.
How we treated his neck
Before treating Danny's neck, we wanted to get to the bottom of what was setting it off, so our chiropractor asked how he wrestles. Danny is a righty, but he shoots left. He drags his right foot, and his head lands on his opponent's right hip as he comes through for the takedown. That pointed us to the upper trapezius and the levator scapulae, the muscles between the neck and the shoulder blade, which were very likely irritated. At Thrive, the questions come first, and the treatment follows from the answers.
We treated those two muscles with a lot of soft-tissue work and taped both of them, along with chiropractic adjustments, which get stiff joints in the neck moving again.
A drastic improvement
That hands-on work drastically improved Danny's neck pain. From there we added the Graston technique, scraping a tool along the same muscles while Danny turns his head up and to the left, then down and to the right, then brings his left ear down. We all use Graston with the muscle at rest too, but motion is a little better: it helps the cells lay down the muscle's fibers through the full range the muscle should move.
Key takeaways
- Danny Benbrook, a 175-pound wrestler at Middletown North High School, had neck pain on his right side every time he shot for a takedown.
- Danny is right-handed but shoots left, with his head on his opponent's right hip, which led us at Thrive to trace his neck pain to the upper trapezius and levator scapulae.
- Soft-tissue work and chiropractic adjustments at Thrive in Monmouth County, NJ drastically improved Danny's neck pain, and from there we added the Graston technique on the same two muscles.
- Danny's chiropractor at Thrive prefers the Graston technique with the muscle in motion, because it helps the muscle's fibers lay down through its full range of motion.
