How the gym and stress broke my neck for over a year.

This post is a reminder to myself and everyone who’s dealing with a lot of stress that the gym isn’t always a place to cover for our feeling of stress. It might actually be the breaking point.

Here’s what this article will be about:
1. My story, how stress caused me to break my neck.
2. What is Cervical Radiculpoathy & what’s it got to do with stress
3. What you can do to prevent

→ Stress doesn’t only kill your gains, it puts your body at a higher risk for injuries.

I “broke” my neck while doing a leg exercise.

It was a stressful time of my life and had been for the past 3 years; I had a lot of stress built up from a divorce that happened in 2020 while I was living in Australia. The move back was stressful, coming home to live with my parents again and dealing with the divorce with little to no emotional support. The divorce went on for 2 years (!!) and I found no peace during that time. I was drinking and partying to escape a lot of it.

I started working as receptionist in a gym early 2022. I was working hourly at first, they said around 10-15 hours per week and promise at 50% and permanent employment after a couple of months. I ended up working almost 40 hours per week, a lot of 12 hours shifts. Training every day because I had the gym so close at hand and thinking it’s my time to relax.

But boy was I wrong, this is why you need to take rest days. I was on a leg day, training with a friend, finishing up the session with high step ups. As I stepped up, something snapped in my neck. I didn’t think of it because it didn’t hurt more than that. I was studying to personal trainer certificate at the same time (yes, told you it was a lot) and the course doesn’t mention anything about stress and injuries related to stress. So I kept going, doing more step ups, thinking it was no big deal.

The pain started radiating down through half of my arm and I feared that I had herniated a disc (after some googling), so I went to see a physiotherapist, he told me it’s just a tight muscle and gave me muscle relaxants plus anti inflammatory. I asked if I could train as usual, he said yes be a bit careful and do the rehab exercises.

I did the rehab for some time, and when my neck started getting better I go bored from doing light weight and machines only I tried doing pull ups I think, and it snapped again. This time it inly got worse..

The pain was now radiating down through all of my right arm, my hand and fingers was going numb and I couldn’t even lift a glass of water. My neurons wouldn’t activate enough to make the muscles in my arm and hand contract like they normally would.

I couldn’t do most upper body exercises because most of my arm muscles were affected, lats and many back muscles were affected. Rear delt, so not even squats with low bar becuase it was pressing on the rear delt.

I went back to physio, I tried chiropractor 100% believing it was a herniated disc because the muscle relaxants wouldn’t work and the symptomas was accurate. No one told me about pinched nerve and what damage it can cause.

I had excruciating pain in my neck, shoulder and arm. Could’t sleep without waking up crying. Low-key wanting to quit on everything because it was too much inside and outside pain, could not forget about it in the gym. Little to no support from family or friends. Depression and anxiety just made it worse, because it was cake on cake.

So what is Cervical Radiculopathy?

It’s a fancy medical word for “pinched nerve in the neck” and occurs when a nerve in the neck is compressed or irritated where it branches away from the spinal chord. Compression of a nerve can send false signals of pain. Damage from a pinched nerve may be minor or severe. It may cause temporary or long-lasting problems. The earlier you get a diagnosis and treatment for nerve compression, the more quickly you'll find relief. In some cases, you can't reverse the damage from a pinched nerve. Treatment usually relieves pain and other symptoms.

Cervical radiculopathy can be caused by:
→ Arthritis
→ Herniated disc
→ Nerve compression, often occurs when the nerve is pressed between tissues such as: Muscle, ligament, tendon or bone.
→ Nerve inflammation

Inflammation and pressure on a nerve root exiting the spine in the cervical area, 7 first vertebras of your spine, causes neck pain that can radiate from the neck into the shoulder and arm. Each vertebra have their assigned nerve canal;

C3 & C4 provides sensory information to the shoulders and clavicula, the collar area.
C5 Controls deltoid and biceps, upper arm to elbow pretty much.
C6 Controls extensors of your wrist and also involved in bicep function.

The neck muscle levator scapulae is innervated by the C3, C4 & C5 nerve. The C5 nerve also share a common branch with the C6 nerve.

Levator scapulae is one of the major neck muscles, that moves scapula and clavicula (collar bones), can you imagine a scenario when you’re constantly elevating your shoulders? Yes, that’s right! Stress and anxiety.

Stress releases the hormone cortisol, which can cause inflammation over time. Inflammation leads to muscle spasm and irritated nervous system, irritation leads to pressure on the nerves. Boom, you’ve got a pinched nerve and a vicious cycle of stress and pain one causing the other.

You can prevent this easily if you do what I should have done; take a break.

The first snap was a warning signal that I ignored.

It’s been over a year now. My biceps cramps sometimes when I do makeup, I can do wide grip pull-ups again and train as normal, but if my stress levels go to maximum my neck will tell me to stop, breathe and take a step back. I had a relapse a couple of weeks ago, I was sick for a week, money was stressing me out and when I came back to the gym I went straight for heavy weights in a machine I didn’t do for a long time. Flared up a similar pain that I have in my lower back from earlier. Ignored that and went in to train shoulders, SNAP! My neck said, oh no you won’t do that!

This time I stopped, felt like I was losing muscle because I had not trained a lot lately, but if I get injured as much again who knows how long it will be this time. Take 2 steps back so you can keep moving forward instead of taking that step that will make you unable to move for months. Prevention is better than rehab, remember this.

If I would have listened to my body the first time it snapped, none of this would have happened. Probably. The personal trainer course, the physio therapist and the chiropractor didin’t tell me this, but I’m here to tell you.