Headaches... (medical issue i thinik?)

Hi there, any docs around these forums? On of my friends has been trainign for about 6 months. He’s pretty much seen the light and does lots of compound movements. however he has some headaches after heavy workouts of chinups, bench and deadlifts (seperate workouts i mean)
The pain seems to come from the back part of the head. mmm is it a trip to the doc? or anybody know something. If u need nore information please PM me. I will be glad to provide it.

regds
Jonathan

I’ve had the same problem in the past. Machine hack squats always aggravated it the worst. It comes and goes, so I’ve never bothered to look into it. Hurts like hell, though.

Is your friend arching his neck back when he does these exercises? When I do that I get pain where the muscle inserts at the base of the skull. Sometimes it will twist my vertebrae and a trip to the chiropractor will fix it for me.

This is usually caused by the trainer holding their breath during the lift (especially lifts that force the use of the abdominals to creat more internal pressure). Often people forget to breath DURING the rep. This is why breathing is instructed as exhaling on the positive portion of the exercise, mostly to keep constant airflow.

I had the same problem. I went to the chiropracter and he knew exacly what is was. He told me it was a pinched nerve in the neck due a vertabre being out of place. He needs to go and get adjusted and he’ll be all fixed up.

I used to get this in high school after squatting. I was tensing my whole body and my neck muscles would later crap and it would feel like the back of my head was being crushed. After I realized what was causing it I focused on staying relaxed as much as possible and stretching my neck after every set. It helped.

Uh, that should be cramp, not crap.

“…would later crap and it would feel like the back of my head was being crushed.”

LMAO

I had this problem about 2 years ago when doing squats… even when I lowered the weight to practically nothing. I took a week and a half off from training, and I haven’t had the problem since. I never really knew what the hell happened.

There are some specific suboccipital muscles that are most likely strained. As long as blood pressure and any head trauma aren’t an issue, ART would help.