Three million people every year have to work through a rotator cuff injury. This year, strength & conditioning coach Joe DeFranco is one of them.

The already thin line between training for performance and training for injury prevention vanishes when training for combat sports like Brazilian jiu-jitsu or MMA.

It starts simply enough—a twinge of neck pain or bit of numbness in your hands or feet, or perhaps in your back. Then you begin to feel weakness in your arms or legs. Suddenly you wake up one morning to find that you have difficulty walking or balancing. Extreme pain sets in, and pretty soon what began as mere discomfort feels like a nightmare. This is what it’s like to live with untreated sciatica or cervical stenosis.

Our brains are powerful yet delicate, and there are few things that can change your life for the worse like brain damage. While our skulls are strong, they can only do so much when it comes to protecting the sensitive organ within. These days there is growing awareness of the danger posed by concussions, especially for athletes who tend to experience numerous concussions, which can be devastating to the brain.

Your brain is a complex, delicate organ that is highly susceptible to injury, and few things can radically diminish your quality of life like brain damage. But to combat this threat, it’s important to understand the various types of head and brain trauma that can occur, and to appreciate the different mechanisms that can inflict these varying forms of harm. One major factor is the direction of the injurious force, and research has shown that our brains are most susceptible to damaged caused by rotational rather than linear movement. So, what can you do to prevent brain injury due to rotational forces?

We received an email from a customer dealing with “severe Clinical Instability of the Cervical Spine” or CICS, who wanted to know how to use The Iron Neck in her recovery process. This customer is not alone in her quest to find a resolution to a serious spinal cord condition for which there are too few assessment and rehabilitative options. This can lead to many debilitating injuries and a lifetime of pain.  

Frank Wintrich relied on bodyweight training and general physical preparation to deliver a new stimulus to UCLA’s football players during the COVID-19 lock-out. Upon returning to the weight room, Wintrich went straight to the one thing the players missed the most while at home: building neck strength with the Iron Neck.

Over the last decade, researchers and athletic programs have been scrutinizing over how to prevent concussions since recent findings have highlighted concussions’ long-term health consequences. But, as more attention has gone into the consequences, even more attention has also gone into researching potential ways to prevent a concussion. As the research increases, so does the suggestion that neck strength and concussion prevention are interlinked. 

The days of asking patients to comply with rudimentary neck exercises with uncomfortable Thera Bands are over. Iron Neck allows patients with mild to severe neck pain to safely rehab injury by reducing stiffness and increasing range of motion. Iron Neck integrates into any clinic or patients’ home. 

As Master Kettlebell trainer for Kettlebell Kings, Marcus has developed extensive kettlebell programming and, as you can see from our workout, loves to play around and discover new ways to test the body. Building off our Six Foundational Movements, we looked at our time as a way to add another dimension to kettlebell and medicine ball training and bounce ideas off of one another. The result is some of the most innovative exercises we have ever seen using the Iron Neck.