Upper back & Neck pain / discomfort

Upper back and neck pain / discomfort often gets triggered by too much medial shoulder rotation. Think about your posture sitting behind a PC, driving a car, reading a book, using your hands in front of you to design, paint, build, cook something.  Sometimes it can be the simplest or most innocent of movements that can trigger off a sequence of muscular tightening events.

Things that can help speed up recovery:

1. If it’s a sudden movement that triggered it, get some ice or bag of peas onto it as soon as possible to dial down the neuro receptors to your brain. This style of ‘distraction therapy’ allows the brain to desensitise from the initial reaction and can help it calm down considerably quicker that you’d imagine.
2. Stretch your chest out (elbow against door kind of stretch). As we are nothing more than levers, the chest typically gets too short causing the mid back and neck to become S T R E T C H E D.
3. Give it time to rest and allow the brain to settle down following its sudden panic to protect you.  

Clearly understanding the reason behind your discomfort is paramount. If it's muscular related, I'd be likely to identify the source of pain, trigger point (not too intense I promise) and strip round all surrounding tissues to help promote better mobility. I have some great RockTaping (kinesiology tape) methods up into neck and across upper back to help offset muscle 'soreness' to help give you a few days of comfort to aid a quicker recovery. 

Stretch chest out as you’d be amazing how often tight pecs (chest muscles) are the catalyst to neck pain. Walking through a door frame 60 second chest stretch works well for most.  I’ve got a great Rocktape (kinesiology) trick that does wonders to make you comfortable.