Thread: Head tosses: sore shoulders any help?

So after being thoroughly warmed up and stretched, I was watching Sonia's drum solo instructional dvd and there's a couple parts with side to side head tosses. I've done the dvd before with no prob. but this morning I woke up with such stiff muscles. (They are the ones used when you turn your head to merge in traffic or look over your shoulder).

I was careful not to whip my head or anything. How do you all warm up or cool down in order to do these? Thought maybe I may have been scrunching my shoulders up?

Please advise

I use hair tosses often when I dance. Gently warming up your neck and shoulder muscles before doing any tossing is very important. Afterwards I will repeat the same movements I used to warm up and then stretch all the muscle groups of the upper body.

Keeping your shoulder blades firmly on your back and down will make a big difference too--that will help prevent your head from going further than your muscles are capable of supporting.

Finally, start small. Don't expect to be able to do big dramatic tosses right away--that's the path to injury.

I use them a lot too. And I try to keep everything loose from the chest up when I do them as opposed to doing them really fast. Sometimes I hear a tiny crack in my neck which alerts me to the fact that I haven't quite warmed up my neck muscles enough. But yes, work up to them.

I always do really slow side-to-side (cresent) head rolls before and after hair tosses. Head slides are helpful too.

For the shoulders I usually stretch my arms out to the front as far as they'll go, then slowly cross them and move them up as far as is comfortable above my head. This stretches some of the muscles that can get sore from tosses.

Throughout the day, I also try to touch my chin to my chest (or toward the chest--more like into the "v" of the clavicle). I find this helps me keep the muscles in the back and sides of my neck and between my shoulder loose, since I tend to carry tension there even when I'm not doing hair tosses or other Khaleegi moves.

Start very slowly! Do just a few each day (after some warm-up movement) and build gradually. It sounds like you just overworked some muscles but didn't pull or injure anything. It is very easy to get carried away and not realize how much you are fatiguing tiny muscles you don't use much.

Also be aware that often in "head tosses" the upper torso is doing quite a bit of the movement and the neck muscles just a little.

I used to get - I'm not sure this is the correct word - whiplash-esque pains from turning my head too quickly or from sleeping wrong, etc.

A friend who was a weight-lifter suggested doing small neck exercises to strengthen my neck. These were exercises just involving movements, not using weights. He thought that lots of people have fairly weak neck muscles.

Now I do them every day- turning head side x side, head tilt both sides, up-down, -basically just the warming up movements. So small, so simple, yet huge help for preventing pain. Even just one or two minutes works for me.