Neck muscles

[Dada]

I looked at your pics. You have a massively wide powerful looking upperbody thanks to lats, shoulders etc and I would expect you to have a huge neck & trap area. But it makes no sense, its like its missing?

I am a small guy (ive gone from 64-68kg) my upper body & arms have always been scrawny and its been a slow process trying to get that to change. However, as soon as I started doing cleans (just hang cleans) I pretty much instantly started getting bulging traps. My BF level isnt very low yet you can clearly see two distinct large bulging muscles behind my neck. I would expect someone of your size doing big deadlifts & cleans would have a huge bulging neck/trap area. I just dont get it. Are you sure you are getting the explosive shrug part of a powerclean correct?

I'm pretty sure I'm doing them right. Also, it seems to only be an issue from the back view. From the front I don't think my neck looks thin and I can see the traps. So I'm thinking the wrestlers bridge will probably fix it. I'm going to start doing some 4 way isolations to start and then work up to the bridges after a few weeks.

[NotNowChief]

What worked for me was benching heavier, deadlifting heavier and bb rowing more. I'm not being stupid about it but remember how compound freeweight exercises force you to use all these extra little muscles you don't even notice to stabilise a muscle? Lifting heavy on these will make your neck grow.

Have you ever seen a half assed bodybuilder/curls and flyes guy with a skinny neck? I have. Ever seen a powerlifter with a skinny neck? Not me.

When I worked out at home years ago I fell into a poor bench technique and ended up emphasising one side of my body more, not only did my chest and tricep get bigger on that side but my lats and traps (neck) too! Proved to me beyond a doubt that compounds really DO hit all the antagonist and stabilising muscles more than you ever realise.

[amaeland]

like Rip states in Starting Strength, bench pressing makes the neck grow. Although I suspect deads, cleans and squats are more effective in this regard. Mehdi recommends to lift the head slightly above the bench when bench pressing, I guess this leads to less work on the neck than if you are keeping your head on the bench and maybe pushing it back into the bench? Personally I used to do the latter so hard (unconsciously) that my neck would hurt, so I followed Mehdi's recommendation and it felt better. But I'm thinking that if I can keep my head on the bench without "crushing" my head into the bench (a moderate instead of heavy pressure) it might be good for the neck?

[FilthyMcNasty]

I have a good exercise:

Get some food and shove it down your throat.

Seriously though, I've found the only way to increase the size of my neck was to eat more. Unless someone finds a way of doing neck curls.

Wrestlers bridges holding a plate or dumbbell on your mid section.

[AbleArcher]

When I was a competitive boxer we did the following 2-3 times/week to strengthen the neck muscles:

1. Lay down flat on your back, legs extended
2. Do x repetitions of "sit-ups" with your head only, i.e. lift the head using the neck
3. Immediately after (i.e. head not returning to floor) do same amount x of turning the head from left to right and back. Left-right-left is one repetition
4. Immediately after keep the head still above the floor for the same x seconds

Start with x = 10. When this becomes easy (it's not in the beginning), increase to x = 20, then 30, 40 etc. This exercise increased the girth of my neck from 37cm to 40cm in just a couple of months. Deadlifting, power cleaning and squatting has since increased it to 43cm.