Anyone who has had a family member suffer with Dementia, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer's disease will know all about the pain and stress that these diseases create. While we give so much attention to using exercise to improve how we look, improving the strength of our muscles and bone density, or even improving our overall cardiovascular health, we forget how important exercise is to our brain and cognitive function. I am certain many people do not realize just how important exercise is to maintaining a healthy brain and preventing the onset of debilitating diseases like dementia. Like most chronic diseases we tend to blame it on old age or genetics, and while these do play a part, it is our sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices that are mostly to blame for the rapid rise of these diseases. This means YOU have some control over this and can make a significant difference to the quality of your life as you age. In this article, I will show you how.

In part one of my articles about neck pain I discussed the various causes of neck pain and why it is so important that you DO NOT rely solely on stretching and massage to relieve your pain. In many cases these very strategies are making your problem worse, especially if you have a depressed shoulder accompanied with weakness and poor movement. This is not to say that all stretching and massage is useless, you just need to know what stretches to use, and how to combine your mobility work with strengthening exercises. If you missed part one you can go back and read it again by clicking here. While it is important to strengthen various muscles it is foolish to rush into this process for you will almost certainly make matters worse. You need a plan of trying to reduce inflammation and trigger points to weaken over-working tonic muscles stealing work from weakened phasic stabilizer muscles. This is a delicate process to do this with this area of the body as there is so many nerves and things to contend with. Even your thoughts and emotions can play a role in creating tension in muscles around the neck so this is something you need to consider. To help you out I have put together a plan that outlines the various exercises to use as assessment tools to find out where to start.

I believe most people are aware of the amazing benefits to their body by using more functional training exercises over machines and various isolation exercises for improving movement in daily life and sports. I have posted numerous articles and videos explaining this concept in great detail for many years and the knowledge and education of this is training method much better than what it was 10-15 years ago. However, there still is a misconception that these exercises might make you move better and prevent injuries but they will not make you improve muscular strength and in particular hypertrophy (muscle size). There are several reasons why people fail to put on muscle size when using a functional training approach but what you will find it is not the exercises that are to blame. In this article I will show you exactly what you need to know to improve your movement efficiency and muscle size if that is something you are wanting to do.