
How to Build a Thicker Neck (for Skinny Guys)
Given that we specialize in helping skinny guys bulk up, we often get asked how to build a thicker neck. And I can relate to that. I always hated how skinny my neck was. When I first started bulking, my neck circumference was 14 inches—a long way from the average man’s 16-inch neck. And even after gaining a full 60 pounds, my neck had only gone up to 14.5 inches. Clearly, building muscle overall wasn’t doing anything for my skinny neck.
That’s where neck training comes in. Doing muscle-building exercises to bulk up the muscles in our necks is a fairly new thing. It’s not common in either bodybuilding or strength training. But neck training has a long history in contact sports and martial arts, given that it reduces the risk of concussions, knockouts, and brain trauma. We can look at that research and then modify it for our own goal of building thicker, stronger, and better-looking necks. And, as a bonus, our necks will grow tougher, too.
Given the paucity of research, I was skeptical about how well a neck-bulking routine would work. But within a few months of doing neck training while resting between sets, I was able to add over an inch to my neck circumference. We were then able to reproduce those results with members of our community.
Introduction
If you’re a fan of Bony to Beastly, you’ll know that we’re all about bulking transformations. Marco and I have each gained sixty pounds at under 11% body fat, and over the past eight years, we’ve helped nearly 10,000 skinny guys bulk up (transformations here). Most of our articles are built around a mix of research, personally having done it ourselves, and our experience helping others.
So before we talk about building a thicker neck, I figure I should start by showing you my own results. As you can see, I gained 55 pounds during my first two years of serious bulking, and I managed to add completely overcome my naturally skinny neck:
More seriously, over the course of gaining those 55 pounds, I gained around half an inch on my neck. My neck went from 14″ to 14.5″. To put that into perspective, I gained thirteen inches on my shoulders (39 to 52″) and five inches around my biceps (10 to 15″), whereas my neck grew by less than an inch. In fact, because my shoulders had grown so much broader, my neck looked proportionally skinnier by the end of my bulk.
The odd thing was, in photos where you could see my whole body, I looked pleasantly muscular, but then in photos of just my head, I looked as skinny as ever. Until I started training my neck:
These before and after photos were taken three months apart and show my neck circumference going from 14.5 inches up to 16 inches. I have candid photos showing the change, too. Here are some progress photos of me holding my son, taken just a few months apart:
In retrospect, the reason that my neck lagged is obvious. I never trained it. It’s like never training your chest and then wondering why your chest isn’t growing. But neither bodybuilders nor powerlifters train their necks, so I had assumed it must be dangerous or unnecessary. Little did I realize that neck training was ubiquitous in martial arts and contact sports. Had I known, I could have been doing neck training right from the beginning.
My goal was to bring up my neck circumference to match my arm circumference: fifteen inches. Within a couple of months, my neck had grown to sixteen inches, outgrowing my arms. The funny thing is, neck training has had a more positive impact on my appearance than arm training ever did.
Should We Build Muscle in Our Necks?
Are Neck Workouts Safe?
The short answer is that, yes, when neck training is done correctly, it’s quite safe. When we’re doing neck curls with a 25-pound plate, the load is supported by our muscles, our hands are there to catch the weight, and 25 pounds is a fairly light. It’s not likely to result in injury; if it does, it’s likely to be a minor muscle strain that heals on its own within a couple of weeks.
The long answer is that although neck training is safe overall, some ways of training our necks are less risky than others. Since training our necks usually involves flexing and extending our cervical spines, it can seem analogous to flexing and extending our lumbar spines when deadlifting. What we’re forgetting, though, is that neck training is much lighter than deadlifts. It’s more analogous to flexing and extending our lumbar spines when doing crunches, which most research shows is completely safe, even when doing hundreds of daily repetitions for an entire lifetime.
But just to be sure, I confirmed that neck training was safe with both Greg Nuckols, MA, who runs the top research review, Monthly Applications in Strength Sport. I also checked with my business partner, Marco Walker-NG, BHSc, PTS, who trained professional and Olympic football and rugby players.
However, there’s one extra thing to consider when flexing and extending our spines. Most of our joints, such as our knees, elbows, hips, and shoulders, are designed to move through a large range of motion. Our spine comprises many different joints, each designed to move through only a small range of motion. As a result, if we wanted to play it safe, we might stop our range of motion a bit short, especially when lowering the weight. That may not be needed, but it’s a more cautious way of training our necks.
It’s also possible to train our necks like we train our spinal erectors: with isometrics. When we squat and deadlift, we aren’t flexing and extending our spines; we just hold them steady under load. And over time, that yields quite a lot of growth in our spinal erectors and traps. The same can be done with our necks. Instead of lifting and lowering the weight, we could hold it in place, letting our muscles fight to maintain proper neck posture. That’s not the most efficient way to bulk up our neck muscles, but it will work. I suspect that’s over-cautious, though, given that athletes routinely train their necks with a large range of motion and don’t run into problems beyond the occasional pulled muscle or “zinger” (which we’ll cover below).
Plus, having a stronger neck can help us avoid injuries. Even if we don’t do martial arts or play contact sports, having stronger necks can help us avoid injury if we ever get into a fight or car accident. This is especially important for those of us with skinny necks, given that there’s less muscle there to buffer the impact.
Neck Size & Sleep Apnea
Seventeen inches. According to a study published in the European Respiratory Journal, that’s how thick you can build your neck before it starts to increase your risk of sleep apnea. A second study then confirmed this finding. But it’s not quite that simple. Most people have oversized necks because they’re overweight, not because they have muscular necks.
Dr Brandon Peters, MD, a sleep medicine specialist, wrote that sleep apnea might be caused by fat in and around the neck, not simply having a thicker neck.
First, as an individual becomes more overweight or obese, one area of the body that becomes larger in circumference is the neck. Therefore, a large neck likely corresponds to increased fat tissue elsewhere in the body, including at the base of the tongue and lining the airway. Aside from having a large stomach, there will also be tissue crowding along the airway, especially in the throat.
–Dr Brandon Peters, MD
We get the same hypothesis from the Mayo Clinic:
In most people, a neck size greater than 16 or 17 inches is a sign of excess fat in the neck area. This may contribute to crowding and narrowing of your breathing tube, making obstruction or blockage of your airway while you sleep all the more likely.
–The Mayo Clinic
There seems to be a consensus that sleep apnea is linked to neck fat, not neck muscle. However, it might still be prudent not to push it. There isn’t much research into what happens if we build our necks much bigger than 17–18″ inches, and given how important sleep is, I’m not eager to become a guinea pig.
Regardless, for someone like me, starting off with a fourteen-inch neck and bulking it up to sixteen inches, that’s simply not a concern. I’m not even flirting with that threshold.
Neck Aesthetics
What’s the Average Neck Size?
According to a study published in the Journal of Diabetes Research, the mean neck circumference for a man is 16.5 inches. Other articles and studies have different findings, with some finding that the average male neck size is closer to 15 inches. So although we can’t say for sure, it seems like most men have necks between 15 and 16.5 inches.
When I first saw that, I thought of my own fourteen-inch neck and felt disheartened. I had gained sixty pounds, and my neck was still 1–2 inches smaller than average. However, remember that the average man’s neck is thicker because he has a higher body-fat percentage, not because his neck is stronger.
The Average Neck Size of Skinny Guys
In our bulking program, we guide skinny guys through the bulking process. We wrote an article covering their average bulking results. We also have their average neck measurements. The average skinny guy has a neck size of 14.4 inches.
That means we need to gain 1–2 inches to get up the average neck size. You can probably do that within a few months. Most guys doing our program don’t train their necks, but those who do gain around 1.5–2 inches with 5–6 months of training.
What’s the Ideal Neck Size?
Dr. Casey Butt, Ph.D., famous for studying genetic muscular potential and ideal body proportions, wrote in Your Muscular Potential that the ideal neck size is the same as the ideal biceps size. He then lists the most attractive biceps circumference as 0.36 the size of our chests.
However, I then spoke with Dr. Aaron Sell, a prominent attractiveness researcher, who told me that the link between neck size and attractiveness hasn’t been studied in isolation from overall muscularity and strength. His research shows that the stronger and more formidable we appear (especially in our upper bodies), the more attractive we look to women. Neck size is certainly a predictor of formidability—as evidenced by how essential neck strength is when fighting—so I’d expect it to be strongly linked with attractiveness. But since neck size hasn’t been studied in isolation from overall muscularity, we can’t be sure, let alone put a specific number to it.
It seems fairly logical, though, that having a muscular-but-not-apnea-inducing neck would look best, and I suspect that Casey Butt’s ratios are pretty close to hitting that mark. According to his research, we get ratios that look something like this:
- Ideal waist size: our waist size at 8–15% body fat.
- Ideal biceps size: waist × 0.50
- Ideal neck size: waist × 0.50
For example, my waist is 31 inches, giving me an ideal biceps and neck size of 15.5 inches. Fortunately, that puts my ideal neck size well below what would put me at higher risk for developing sleep apnea. It also lines up with the results of our attractiveness survey.
These are loose ratios, though. Our necks can vary in length, as can the size of our traps, as can our shoulders’ width. It might be that your neck looks best at a size that’s a little different from those recommendations. Still, it’s the best rule of thumb that we have.
The good news about the ideal neck size being so reasonable is that although it took me over two years to go from ten to fifteen-inch biceps, it only took a few months to bring my fourteen-inch neck up to sixteen inches. Building an aesthetic neck is far easier than bulking up the rest of our bodies.
How to Build A Thicker Neck
Neck Muscle Anatomy
Our necks are riddled with muscles that help us flex, extend, twist, and turn our necks. When we train our necks, we’ll gain size and strength throughout our necks, but most of our results will come from bulking up just two muscles: our upper trapezius and the sternocleidomastoid.
Our upper traps are by far the biggest muscle that affects the appearance of our necks. The good news is that because they help us shrug our shoulders, they’re trained quite thoroughly with deadlifts, loaded carries, overhead presses, and even lateral raises. We don’t need dedicated lifts for our upper traps; we just need to build muscle overall.
Our spinal erectors are a different story. Spinal erectors are notoriously short, spanning just a couple of vertebrae. These particular spinal erectors attach so high up on our necks that they’re only trained by lifts that have us driving our heads backwards, such as neck bridges and neck extensions. Growing these spinal erectors will toughen our necks and make our necks look more muscular when viewed from the side. But they won’t make our necks look “thicker.” For that, let’s turn to the front view:
If we look at our neck muscles from the front, we see that our spinal erectors aren’t visible. The muscles that influence the thickness of our necks are our upper traps (which are trained by compound lifts) and our sternocleidomastoid muscles.
Our sternocleidomastoid muscles are neck “flexors,” meaning that they’re trained by lifts that have us driving our heads forward, such as neck curls. What’s neat about those sternocleidomastoid muscles, though, is that they also help us tuck our necks, giving us better neck posture. Now, to be clear, poor neck posture doesn’t usually originate in the neck. It usually stems from poor rib and hip posture. But even so, strengthening these muscles may help improve the so-called “forward head” posture, like so:
Finally, our neck muscles can bend and twist our necks from side to side, and so doing side raises with our necks can certainly help to bulk them up. However, those same muscles are trained with just neck curls, so we don’t have to do side raises to build a thick neck.
Overall, a good neck bulking routine is going to include some heavy compound lifts to train our big meaty upper traps, some extra neck extensions to make sure that we hit even the very uppermost fibres, and then plenty of neck curling to bulk up the sternocleidomastoid.
The Three Main Neck Lifts
As we’ve covered above, the biggest “neck” muscles are our upper traps, which can be built with deadlifts, the overhead press, lateral raises loaded, carries, and, if you need even more than that, shrugs. However, our upper traps won’t make our necks thicker, per se. For that, we need dedicated neck training.
The Neck Curl
The heart of any neck bulking routine is the neck curl. It trains the beefy sternocleidomastoid muscles that give us a thicker neck when viewed from the front.
Neck curls are fairly simple to do. You can think of them as doing crunches for your neck. The idea is to stretch out the muscles along the front of your neck and then contract them. However, as we mentioned above, don’t worry too much about using a large range of motion. Just worry about feeling your neck muscles curl the weight up (as opposed to pulling the weight up with your hands).
I like to do these with rubber bumper plates, but you can do them with anything. You can even do them by pushing against your head with your hands. The only advantage that weights offer is that they allow us to add precise amounts of weight every week.
Note: if you’re using hard metal plates for these, you’ll want to wear a hat or bandana or put a towel between the plate and your head. Otherwise, you may get a bruise or callus on your forehead.
The Neck Extension
In addition to doing neck curls, we also want to train the spinal erectors and upper traps running along the back of our necks. To do this, we flip around and do neck extensions:
The simplest way to do neck extensions is to put a plate on the back of your head and then extend it backwards—the same technique as with neck curls, just in reverse. However, if you want to take your neck training more seriously, you can get a neck harness.
The advantage of the neck harness is that we can plant our hands on our knees for upper-back support. That allows us to focus better on giving our necks a good, heavy workout. It’s a satisfying, strenuous movement, and you may be surprised by how much weight you can lift.
To be clear, though, you don’t need a neck harness, and if all you’re trying to do is build a pleasantly muscular neck, you probably don’t need one. I bought a couple of them to test them out, and they do make heavy neck extensions quite a bit easier. I recommend getting one. But to make sure that my results were reproducible, I bulked up my neck using just weight plates.
Neck Side Raises
Finally, we have side raises. To do these, you can lie somewhat awkwardly on the bench and flex your neck sideways. Again, any resistance will work (including your hands). I used weight plates so that I could gradually use heavier loads over time, making it easier to gauge my progress.
Neck side raises aren’t strictly necessary, but they’re a nice way to increase our neck training volume without needing to grind through the same lifts over and over again. They may also help us build our neck muscles more symmetrically.
Ease In But Dig Deep
Neck training is a funny thing. If you’re like me, you might be under the impression that your neck is weak and fragile. Strenuous weighted neck training might seem daunting, even reckless. And to be fair, if your neck is still skinny, it is weak. After watching guys on YouTube curl 45-pound plates, I was ashamed to learn that I could only curl ten pounds. And if you’ve never trained your neck before, then it is fragile. I was shocked by how sore my neck got during my first week of training. But within a few weeks, you’ll realize that your neck is tough and that neck training feels quite safe.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should dive into hearty neck training in your very first workout. The first time the muscles in your throat get sore, it feels similar to having a sore throat, and you may fear that you’ve gotten sick. The harder you train in those first workouts, the more crippling that soreness will be. Better to ease into it. I recommend starting with two sets per neck exercise and stopping a good 2–3 reps shy of failure. That will keep the soreness manageable.
As your neck grows thicker, stronger, and tougher, you can gradually add sets and start training closer to failure. A few weeks from now, doing five sets of neck curls per workout isn’t out of the question. And expect to increase the load steadily. If you start with a ten-pound plate in your first week, expect to gradually work your way up to 25+ pounds in a month or two. Your neck is tough, and the muscles will grow strong. You’ll be surprised by what you’re able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.
What surprised me most was that neck training started to feel really good once I got used to it. Doing heavy neck extensions with a neck harness sends a pleasant rush of blood to my head, and the soreness that settled in afterwards feels like getting a day-long neck massage.
As I’ve gotten more experienced with neck training, my neck has started to feel noticeably sturdier and tougher. The training has become hearty and strenuous. I’ve come to enjoy it. It wasn’t what I expected.
Warm-Ups and Neck Stiffness
When we cause muscle damage, our muscles get inflamed and feel stiff. When that stiffness is in our necks, it can be annoying and maybe even a little scary. The main way to avoid that is to ease into neck training. Don’t go all-out in your very first workout. Start easy and gradually work your way up.
However, even then, you might notice that your neck feels slightly stiff at first. One way to avoid that is to do some bodyweight neck stretches—twists, circles, and so on—before and after your neck training and on rest days. You can also do bodyweight neck curls and extensions as warm-up sets before loading them up heavier.
Sets, Reps & Training Frequency
You can train your neck 2–3 times per week with 2–5 sets per workout. Most research shows that we can maximize growth by training our muscles twice per week. I recommend easing into your neck training slowly. These muscles have likely never been trained before, so even a small amount of training will provoke growth and make your neck muscles quite sore (which can feel like having a sore throat). Start with two sets per exercise per workout and gradually work your way up.
At the peak of my neck training, I did three sets of curls, extensions, and side raises thrice weekly, which took around ten minutes per workout. That’s nine sets per movement per week, but with both the neck curls and side raises working the sternocleidomastoid, that’s a training volume of eighteen sets per week on the muscles that contribute most to our neck size and aesthetics.
Aim for 15–25 reps per set and stop shy of failure. Most research shows that we build muscle the most efficiently when we do 6–20 reps per set. But since these are smaller isolation lifts that we’re doing, it’s a bit of an exception, and it can pay to do even more reps than that. I recommend doing 15–25 reps, getting a good mind-muscle connection, and aiming for a fierce muscle pump.
Short rest periods are fine. Because our neck muscles are relatively small, we often get away with doing higher-rep sets with shorter rest times without our cardiovascular fitness ever limiting us. A quick couple of runs through a circuit of neck curls, extensions, and side raises works great. However, short rest times aren’t required, either. You could just as easily do your neck training while resting between sets of compound lifts.
Avoiding Bruises & Neck Pain
Avoiding forehead bruises. Most people do neck curls by holding rough steel plates against their foreheads. They wear a toque or bandana or pad the plate with a towel to prevent the plates from bruising or callusing their faces.
Avoiding “zingers.” I haven’t run into this problem yet because I’ve been lifting pretty cautiously, but it’s common for people to strain their neck muscles by jerking the weight around. To avoid this, lift steadily and maintain control of the weight, and if you’re using a neck harness, avoid bouncing the plates on the ground.
Measuring Your Neck
As with building muscle, the most important thing is to track our results and adjust accordingly. That’s the only way to know if our methods are producing results. If what we’re doing isn’t working, then no amount of patience or persistence will yield results. Results only come from the accumulation of gradual progress.
Since our goal is to build a thicker neck, the first thing to do is measure your neck. That will give us our starting measurement.
To measure your neck circumference, wrap a measuring tape around the base of your neck, right above your traps (as shown above). This lines up with the neck measurement you’d use to measure your collar size, but more importantly, it’s a great place to measure the growth of our sternocleidomastoid and spinal erector muscles.
Tracking Progress
Track your weight/reps/sets, and always try to improve. Like all of our other lifts, to gain muscle size, we need to focus on getting stronger. We need to be adding weight, adding reps, reducing rest times, or adding sets. Our neck muscles have good potential for growth and can grow surprisingly strong. You might surprise yourself with how quickly you can improve.
Adding weight with limited equipment. When trying to add weight to our lifts, it’s often best to add 2.5–5 pounds whenever we reach the top of our target rep range (25 repetitions). However, depending on your equipment, that might be hard. If you’re holding a weight plate on your head, you might only be able to go up in increments of five or even ten pounds. In that case, be a bit more flexible with your rep ranges. Sets of up to 40 reps are just as good for stimulating muscle growth (they’re just longer and more painful).
Finally, make sure you gain at least a little weight on the scale each week. If your neck is untrained, you can probably gain a bit of size without gaining weight. But to build a significant amount of muscle, you must eat enough calories to gain weight.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Exercises Work Your Neck?
Which exercises train your neck muscles? If you’re asking about compound lifts, none of them. None of the big compound lifts will stimulate the muscles in your neck. That’s why until people start training their necks directly, their necks don’t grow.
The only exception is that some lifts—such as deadlifts, shrugs, overhead presses, and lateral raises—train the traps. Building bigger traps will make your upper body look more muscular, but it won’t make your neck any thicker.
The best exercises for the neck are isolation exercises:
- Neck curls
- Neck extensions
- Neck bridges
- Neck planks
- Neck side raises
Of these exercises, neck curls and extensions are the best and, when combined, make for a fairly complete, minimalist neck training routine.
Why Don’t Bodybuilders Build Bigger Necks?
If you look at natural bodybuilders, you’ll notice that many have fairly skinny necks. I was curious about this. I mean, bodybuilders care a great deal about aesthetics, and building a more muscular neck is one of the best things you can do for aesthetics.
I asked Eric Helms, PhD, why bodybuilders don’t train their necks. Helms is a muscle hypertrophy researcher as well as a competitive natural bodybuilder. If anyone knew, he would. He explained that the biggest professional bodybuilders develop thick necks simply from their PED abuse. Their entire bodies bulk up, including their faces, necks—everything. If they add neck training on top of that, they risk building such a thick neck that it restricts airflow (as we’ve discussed above).
However, this isn’t a problem with natural bodybuilders. After all, they aren’t using any gear, so their necks won’t grow unless they deliberately bulk them up. And even if they intentionally train their necks, it’s unlikely their necks would grow so thick that it causes a problem.
Dr Helms explained that neck muscularity isn’t a judging factor in bodybuilding. The rules of bodybuilding flow down from the professional bodybuilders, so if they aren’t bulking their necks, the natural guys won’t do it either. Neck training isn’t part of bodybuilding culture.
Finally, many bodybuilders are naturally muscular, with naturally thicker necks. They don’t need to build thicker necks because they were born with thicker necks. Their necks shrink during the final stages of contest preparation because of how lean they’re getting, but their necks are often proportionate in their everyday lives.
Why Don’t Powerlifters Train Their Necks?
Regarding powerlifting and strength training, people are judged based on their strength at the barbell squat, deadlift, and bench press. Strength training is also unique in that the idea of specificity is emphasized. Training is focused on becoming stronger at just those three lifts. Neck strength isn’t a factor, and so it’s ignored.
Do Deadlifts Build Thicker Necks?
No; deadlifts don’t engage our neck muscles. The neck muscles that contribute most to our neck muscularity are in front of our necks, such as the sternocleidomastoid. These muscles aren’t properly trained with any compound lift, including the deadlift.
The long answer is that deadlifts do train your traps, which are technically part of our necks. Furthermore, there are a few examples of people who bulked up their necks simply by deadlifting. Most people consider the traps an upper-back muscle. After all, at least when lifting weights, we use them mainly for deadlifting and rowing movements. However, the upper traps are also involved with neck extension, so they’re technically a neck muscle.
Your traps will absolutely get bigger simply from doing the big compound lifts:
- The classic barbell deadlift will bulk up your traps. By the time you can deadlift 405 pounds, you’ll necessarily have big traps.
- The overhead press and push press will also bulk up your traps. When you press a weight overhead, your traps assist your shoulder muscles. Both bulk up together. A good goal to work towards for a bigger shoulder girdle is to do a few reps in a row with 135 pounds.
- Even lateral shoulder raises are great for your traps. These are primarily used to build broader shoulders, but they’re also great for bulking up your traps. Like with overhead pressing, the traps and shoulders work together to raise the weight.
Yes, we could use also use shrugs to bulk up our traps. Still, because of how thoroughly several different compound lifts stimulate them, there’s little benefit to isolating them. (This differs from muscles like our biceps, which aren’t fully engaged by compound lifts. That’s why adding in biceps curls helps with biceps growth.)
To make matters more confusing, some lifters do build visibly bigger necks simply from compound lifts. A good example is Omar Isuf, who built his neck dangerously large without training it. He thinks this is due to deadlifting with quite a bit of neck strain. (Also, remember he can deadlift over 600 pounds.)
However, other lifters get as strong as Omar Isuf without increasing their neck size. A good example of this is Jeff Nippard. His neck was so small that he’s one of the only natural bodybuilders who started intentionally training it. He’s got a 500-pound deadlift, so he’s certainly a damn strong dude.
As you can tell, I was more like Jeff Nippard. And in my experience helping thousands of skinny guys bulk up, this tends to be incredibly common for us so-called “ectomorphs.” In fact, after helping nearly 10,000 skinny guys bulk up, I haven’t seen a single person build a massive neck just from deadlifting. This leads me to believe that if you have a naturally thin neck, it will probably stay thin until you start training it directly.
Will Our Necks Shrink if We Stop Training Them?
The interesting thing about building a thicker neck is that many former football players, boxers, and martial artists maintain muscular necks decades after they stop training them. A popular example is the actor Channing Tatum, who built a bigger neck while doing martial arts and playing football in college. Afterwards, he completely stopped training his neck, yet even twenty years later, people still commented on how muscular it was.
That’s a bit confusing because if our necks respond similarly to our other muscles, we’d expect to lose at least a little muscle size when we stop training them. Not all—some of the changes in our muscles are permanent— but it’s likely that if we stop training our necks, they’d get at least a little bit smaller. Maybe never as small as they used to be, but not at peak size either.
However, this all depends on whether our necks get any stimulation from our other training. It could be that the small amount of neck stimulation we get from compound lifts is enough to maintain our neck size.
After gaining nearly two inches on my neck, I stopped training it for a few months and recorded the changes. Within the first week, I lost a tiny bit of size as my neck fully recovered from the training and the inflammation/extra glycogen in the muscles faded. I gradually lost size during the next two months, but not as much as I’d expected. Of the two inches I’d gained, I kept about 1.25–1.5″ after six months of not training my neck.
After that, I experimented with bringing a small amount of neck training back into my workouts to see what a minimalistic long-term neck training routine might look like. I can maintain my neck size with 2–3 sets of neck curls per week, which can be done during a warm-up routine or while resting between sets.
So, if you get your neck strong enough, you won’t ever need to worry about having a skinny neck again, especially if your neck is being stimulated during compound lifts (such as deadlifts). On the other hand, if you want to maintain your neck at peak muscularity, you’ll need to keep at least a bit of neck curling in your workout routine.
How Can You Train Your Neck at Home?
You don’t need weights to train your neck. There are plenty of bodyweight neck exercises. The most famous is the neck bridge, which is how many wrestlers, fighters, and football players build thicker necks.
Are Neck Workouts Bad for You?
No, there’s no reason to think that neck workouts are dangerous or bad for you. They do train the spine, and it’s always wise to be careful when training your spine. Still, neck exercises tend to be relatively light, especially compared to other exercises that load the spine, such as the deadlift. Because of the lighter loads you’re using, there’s less shear stress on your spine, so the risk of injury is quite a bit lower.
Plus, neck training has several benefits, including increased resilience to concussions and traumatic brain injuries, such as those you might get in a fight or car crash. That’s why neck training is ubiquitous in combat sports like boxing, MMA, and football.
Do Shrugs Train the Neck?
Will shrugs help us build a thicker neck? Yes and no. Shrugs train the traps (upper trapezius muscles), and our traps do connect to our necks. But when most of us think of our neck muscles, we’re thinking of our neck flexors and extensors, not our traps. To build thicker necks, we need to train our necks directly.
Summary
The big compound lifts don’t stimulate our neck muscles, so unless we train them directly, they will stay small, no matter how much muscle we build overall. Fortunately, neck training is a safe and effective way to build a thicker neck.
Three main movements help us build bigger neck muscles:
- The Neck Curl trains the sternocleidomastoid (and other neck muscles), making our neck thicker when viewed from the front.
- The Neck Extension trains our spinal erectors, making our necks thicker when viewed from the back.
- The Neck Side Raise, which also trains the sternocleidomastoid (and other neck muscles), makes our neck thicker when viewed from the side.
Although our upper traps are more of an upper-back muscle than a neck muscle, they can make our necks look more muscular. Fortunately, our traps get plenty of stimulation from compound lifts like the deadlift, which loads them heavy in a stretched position, and the overhead press, which works them through a large range of motion. Lateral raises and shrugs also help to bulk up the upper traps.
We can train our necks 2–3 times per week with 2–5 sets per movement, giving us a weekly training volume between 6–18 sets per muscle group. Sets of 15–25 reps tend to work best, but doing up to forty reps per set is effective.
It’s common for people to gain an inch or two in neck circumference within just their first few months of training. Not only will that make your neck stronger and improve your aesthetics, but it will also allow you to wear heavier hats.
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Woo! I’m excited. I have even read it yet…lol.
Wanted to be the first to comment
Ahaha I love it. I hope you like it 🙂
Hey what if my neck size is already half the waist size? What should I do
Hey amazing article it was really informative, I want to pass on little information to my Instagram followers on neck thickness and it’s benefits, I was wondering if
I can use some of your images to make it happen.
Hey Geet, thank you, and sure! Just toss a link back to our site if you can 🙂
Are all the bicep measurements for relaxed or flexed?
Hey Jake. Flexed. As a general rule, when people talk about how big their biceps are, it’s always flexed and measured at the thickest point (but without a muscle pump). Once in a while, you’ll see a research paper include relaxed biceps measurements, but even then, it’s uncommon.
Amazing article! Thankyou!
Question: Where do you measure your neck!? Just above where your traps stop? Or right low down against the shoulders to include some trap circumference too??
Thanks
Sam
Hey Sam, thank you! That’s a good question. I’ll add that to the FAQ with an illustration. The neck measurement is the same as you’d use to determine what collar size you need. So right above the traps at the base of the neck.
Oh okay awesome!
Weirdly, at 5ft 9.
My Neck is 14.5″
My biceps are 13.5″. So They probably need more attention atm haha.
My arms just don’t like to grow…
Thanks Shane
That’s not so weird. When I first started bulking, my biceps were 10″ and my neck was 14″. It took a while for my arms to grow, and it was a much slower and more difficult process. Fun, too, though 🙂
I want to get an article published about how to bulk up lanky arms. Hopefully soon!
Same with me at 5’7″ i have 14.25″ neck vs 13.25″ biceps ( i was never fan of biceps though) checkout the article of “aesthetics” u will get all required measurements for perfect physique.
Hey Shane,
Love the article, in fact, love all your articles. I’ve been bulking up for the past 3-4 weeks and I’m already seeing gains on the scale. I do have a question, not about neck size or anything, but about keeping size, especially as an ectomorph. You may have an article about this already, in which case please direct me there! If not, I was wondering if you could ease my mind. Right now I’m eating 3000 calories to gain roughly a pound or two a week (at least I think) but I hate eating this much haha. If I were to reach my goal of 20 pounds of lean muscle gain (140-160), what would I need to do to maintain that? I would say I generally eat 2000 calories or so to maintain weight. Thanks bro!
Thanks, Sam! Glad you dug it 🙂
There are a few layers to that question. If you’re gaining a pound per week, that would mean that you’re in a calorie surplus of about 500 calories per day. If that’s the case, you’d be able to trim 500 calories out of your diet to maintain your weight. So that’s 2500 calories per day.
However, that doesn’t take into account that your metabolism adapts to the amount of food you’re eating. When you’re in a surplus, your metabolism tends to speed up. More movement, more body heat—that kind of thing. This is your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). That means that when you stop eating in a surplus, we’d expect your metabolism to rev down a bit. Maybe your maintenance intake would be more like 2300 calories per day. Hard to say. And it might adapt to an even lower intake, too.
Or we could look at it in terms of the energy demands of muscle. Each pound of muscle burns around six calories per day at rest. So if you gain twenty pounds of muscle, that’s an extra 120 calories burned per day. If your old intake was 2000 calories per day, that’d bring it to 2120. But you’d also need to lug that extra weight around, too, so probably a bit higher than that.
The good news is that your body will eventually reach a new set point. As you get used to weighing more, your appetite will rev up and your metabolism will settle down. You’ll find that you intuitively eat enough weight to maintain your new muscle mass. It’s not perfect. As naturally skinny guys, we often need to watch out about losing weight when stressed, busy, or sick. When that happens, you might need to regain a few pounds. Nonetheless, you’ll still naturally hover around your new, higher bodyweight 🙂
So to answer the heart of your question, you won’t need to overeat once you stop bulking. You’ll probably need to eat a bit more, but you’ll WANT to eat a bit more. It balances out. It will be (almost) as easy to maintain your new weight as it was to maintain your old weight.
Thanks Shane! This makes a ton of sense. While I was waiting for a reply I also checked out your article “Bulking Set Point and ‘Muscle Memory'”. SUPER helpful. It also explains why I would bulk in the past for a couple weeks, then lose most of the weight after returning to a maintenance caloric intake. I thought I was cursed, but I was just losing ‘digestive contents’- it all makes sense now!
One more question, if I may. Due to the current global pandemic, I like many others have been resorting to bodyweight exercises to keep building muscle. My question is, how effective are bodyweight exercises for hypertrophy? Are they 50% as effective? 80%? I know this largely depends on the type of exercise and your own personal strength level, and the topic could probably be a book in itself. I just worry that I’m wasting my time doing bodyweight exercises (weighted pushups, handstand pushups, etc.) and worry that my caloric surplus is mainly becoming fat. Any advice is welcome!
Thanks!
Sam
My pleasure, man!
We’ve got an article about how effective bodyweight exercises are for building muscle. Given the situation with the pandemic, I’m also going to write a new article about how to bulk with bodyweight exercises. Long story short, though, bodyweight exercises can be effective for building muscle, it’s just a bit harder, especially with some muscle groups (such as our quads, hamstrings, glutes, and spinal erectors). And because bodyweight training is often done in higher rep ranges with shorter rest periods, it’s also quite a bit more painful. But it’s not a bad way to train. It works.
In fact, for some muscle groups, bodyweight exercises are great—arguably better than free weights. For example, you could use this as a chance to bulk up your chest, shoulders, and abs. Push-ups are fantastic for that. My favourite variation for bulking up the chest is the deficit push-up, as it gives a really nice stretch on the pecs, but there are a ton of good options. And if you have a chin-up bar, chin-ups are better for the back than barbell rows and lat pulldowns are.
As for gaining more fat while doing bodyweight training, that’s possible. If you aren’t training, say, your quads and glutes very well—the two biggest muscles in your body—then you won’t be able to bulk at the same pace. In that case, you might want to cut your calorie surplus in half (or more). But it sounds like you’re giving your chest and shoulders some good stimulation. They’ll grow. It’s definitely not a waste of time. If the workouts aren’t strenuous enough, just go closer to failure, shorten the rest times, and fight to get more total reps per exercise each workout. Progressive overload will come in the form of extra reps, extra sets, and shorter rest.
Not many people know this but the most sexually dimorphic muscle group in size are the neck muscles. It makes sense why strong necks are attractive.
Hey Shane! Any thoughts on how to target traps whilst deadlifting lighter and with dumbbells (doing the 1 legged variations I’ve seen on the b2b insta page) if we have no access to a gym/barbell? I feel like I’m getting a TON of hamstring stimulation, which is awesome as I’ve always felt like I neglected them…but because it’s lighter weight and 1 leg isolation, there’s much less upper back activation.
Yes! Two ways.
First, if you have light weights, no worries, just do lateral raises. Those work both the shoulders and the traps, and sets of anywhere between 4–40 reps should allow you to build muscle just fine (although sets of 6–20 reps are often the easiest).
Second, handstand push-ups are a great way to work your shoulders and traps fairly heavy, just like an overhead press would. You can lean your feet against the wall so that it doesn’t become a balance exercise. And if you can raise your hands up somehow (so that your head doesn’t hit the ground so early) for some extra range of motion, all the better. If those are too hard or finicky, pike push-ups would probably work, too.
Thank yooooou!!! You’re the best. Seriously. Gonna implement ASAP.
Thanks b2b team , another great article in detail.
Great work in gaining 1.5inches in this much short duration.
I was always skeptical about neck training, wheather my gains will hold , or might take years to gain significantamount due to which i rarely trained it. Surely i will try now with bands in this lockdown period.
I wonder the quick gain & retention of size around neck might be linked with presence high no. Nerves around neck & traps area helping in better stimulation.
It could be, yeah. Many men tend to build muscle quite easily around their shoulder girdles. However, I think the answer might be even simpler. Muscles that have never been trained before grow the most quickly. This is why beginners can gain so much muscle so quickly. I think we might be making newbie gains in our necks.
(The opposite would be true for our calves. We have fewer androgen receptors there, which could certainly be a factor, but they’re also “trained” by almost every daily activity, and so they’re quite difficult to grow.)
[…] We often have thinner necks. The average man already has a 15–16.5″ neck (study). My neck started out at 14″ and refused to grow until I started training it. […]
Hi! I’m a woman and I’m so excited about these neck exercises as I have a very skinny neck. I’m 42 years old already and my neck is very skinny, making me more old even though I have a young looking face. My neck is very skinny and bony and it makes me feel so undesirable. Even when I was young my neck was very skinny. It’s like I have a turtle neck! Please help and give advice. Is it okay for women to do these neck workouts? I want to look good! Thank you.
Hey Roma, that’s great!
And of course you can train your neck. All of the advice here applies equally to both men and women 🙂
I always had a long skinny neck. Was 15” now it’s 17.5” My work shirts don’t fit as they are like a tent on me. I had to move the button to allow me to button up top button. I have started to train upper traps a lot as it was a lagging body part. I have invested in a neck harness and am about to start doing neck exercises. I have 16.5” biceps 55” chest and am 5’10”. I have narrow shoulders so my dimensions for shirts are now way off. I’ll start off really light training my neck, looking forward to it.
15 to 17.5 inches! Wow! Nice work, man.
I had the opposite problem. After building some muscle, my shoulders fit large shirts, but my 14.5″ neck didn’t fill the collar.
55″ chest with 16.5″ biceps? A bigger chest than Arnold in his prime? Dude, please edit that measurement.
Hey Shane,
Great article! I came across your website a couple of months ago and wish I had found it earlier – it’s an amazing resource, really spot on for ectomorph types like me.
My question is about neck training on a calorie deficit. After reading this article I included neck training in my current bulking cycle and it has worked very nicely. I’m now about to start cutting and was wondering whether to include neck curls and extensions, as they aren’t hit by other lifts?
Similarly, should I include in my cutting workout some reps for muscles that aren’t properly hit by the bigger compound exercises, eg the long head of the triceps?
Thanks!
Fabrizio
Hey Fabrizio, thank you!
Sunny told me that this is your second time asking this question here. I’m not sure what happened to the other comment. I can’t find it. We have a spam filter, but comments don’t need manual approval. All comments should show up immediately underneath the post unless they contain suspicious links. I’m sorry yours didn’t make it. I don’t know why. I’m glad this one came through okay 🙂
The neck is somewhat unique in that the main lifts don’t train the neck AT ALL. Therefore, to maintain your neck size while cutting, yeah, I’d continue doing a small amount of neck training. Maybe 2 sets of curls and 2 sets of extensions per week. If you notice your neck strength or size dropping, add a third set.
With your other muscles, they should be okay without isolation lifts. The long head of the triceps aren’t fully engaged with pressing movements because of the movement at the shoulder, and they aren’t trained fully by pulling movements because of the movement at the shoulder. But they’re still stimulated by both. So if you’re doing the bench press, push-ups, or overhead pressing, and you’re mixing that with some chin-ups or rows, you’re fine. Not ideal for growth, but more than enough for maintenance.
With that said, I like to include some isolation lifts while cutting, especially for areas that I care about. Since having bigger arms looks sweet, I’d include a couple of sets of curls and extensions during my cuts. Not much, just a couple sets per week. The other advantage is that some of these “isolation” lifts tend to work a few muscles. Curls and extensions work the forearm flexors, for instance, which will help to maintain the size of your forearms.
Thanks man! I’ll include the neck curls and extensions, as well as something for the arms, just to make sure – they’re definitely a priority hehe.
PS I think I found the reason for my disappearing post – I had used the Samsung mobile browser. Today I tried using Chrome and it went through.
My pleasure, man!
Oh, hrm, I wonder why the spam filter would mind a post made from your mobile browser. I hope that isn’t happening to other people, too :S
I respectfully disagree. All you need are bands. Watch this link.
Hey Justin, I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with. Certainly possible to build a thicker neck with resistance bands, or by using pressure from your hands, or by doing neck bridges, or by a number of other means. The same is true with our other muscles. We can build muscle in a variety of ways.
The fastest and most reliable way to build muscle, though, is to progressively overload our muscles with weights and to lift through a large range of motion. That doesn’t mean that it’s the only way, just that it makes for a great default choice if you want to get results faster and more efficiently.
Hey Shane,
How fast you should add inches/cm to your neck circumference? I started training neck seriously about 3,5 months ago I started with 10kg (22 lbs) neck curls and now I am at 30 kg (66 lbs) curls – 3 sets of 30 reps, I also do 3 sets of lateral raises for about 25-30 reps now. I didn’t do extensions.
And my neck grew maybe 0,5 cm (or even less). Is this normal?
Congrats on those strength gains, man! That’s awesome.
Are you gaining at least a little bit of weight and eating enough protein? When building muscle, wherever that muscle is, it always helps to gear into at least a bit of a bulk.
It’s also possible that a big chunk of the girth comes from the muscles at the back of the neck. They also happen to be much stronger. It could be that’s why.
The good news is that even though the growth is somewhat slow, it’s measurable. Even more encouraging is the increase in strength. It sounds like things are going well, just slowly.
To be honest I have experienced the same. I’ve gotten a lot stronger on my neck exercises (curls, extensions and side raises) and I have a good mind-muscle connections, but my neck hasn’t grown that much. I’ve been training it for like 3+ years now (actually, I trained it back in 2013-2015 with worse mind-muscle connection and being on a massive bulk, but stopped due to a lack of significant results, but resumed the training in 2018) but this year I took it more seriously and finally gained a bit of weight (dropped a lot of weight between 2014-2017 after getting fat with bulking and this year I gained like 10-12 lbs after being stagnant with my weight for like 3-4 years). It went from like 36 cm to 37.5-38 cm (just under 15 inches) this year. It seems like my neck just doesn’t respond that well to training. My arms, on the other hand are the opposite. They’re over 41 cm/16.2 in (last time I measured, and I was a few lbs lighter), so maybe they’re even bigger now as they respond pretty well in my case.
I think different people will have different responses to training. Some might start with a skinny neck but can somehow grow a lot with training. Others start small and grow just a bit. Other guys might start big and become freaks, and yet others might start big and not grow that much more. Basically, what I’m saying is that genetics for muscle building are determined both by your starting point, but more so by how you respond to training and eating enough to grow. Someone might be skinny because they don’t eat much, which can easily change with eating more quality food. Others might be skinny despite eating a fair bit and might respond well to eating a lot of good food. Yet others could be eating decently well, train and increase their food and not grow that much.
Returning to the topic of neck size, I find that on average men have a decent neck size (15-16 inches) without even training it. A similar thing happens with calves, although I think it is a bit less common to have decent-sized calves than decent-sized necks. My observation is that calves and necks are the most genetic-dependent muscles. You see untrained people with decent or good necks and calves, but the rest of their bodies might be small and weak, or maybe fat but without much muscle underneath. This is rarely the case with arms, upper legs, chest, or back. The sad part is that some guys like me might have a bad starting point with calves and neck and, despite training and eating more (just before you start to gain too much fat), there isn’t much growth. The guy who wrote this blog post was just lucky that he had a great response to training his neck despite having a below-average starting point.
What a great article! This is excactly what I have been looking for. Great structure and flow. I have been training for around 4 months and have gone from 14.5 inches to 15.35 inches.
One question: You say that at your peak you trained your neck 3 times per week. How many days of recovery did you usually have between workouts? 1 or 2 days? A mix?
Personally, I have been doing 2 days of recovery, ending up with 2 or 3 workouts per week, not always 3. I would like to train more often, but I am not sure if that is a good idea. Can I have only 1 day of recovery or do you recommend 2?
That’s awesome, Jørgen! Congrats on your neck gains!
When I was actively bulking up my neck, I would train it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Training your neck twice per week should be similarly good. No worries about that at all 🙂
Less than an inch gained in FOUR MONTHS ?!?! Man up your calories or workload , that’s a disgrace
Gaining almost an inch in four months is totally sweet.
Thanks!
Now I have around 15.8 inches , and 16.5 after a workout.
The reason it has taken some time is because i have lost some weight during that time, 1 -2 kg only. Easier to gain when you are eating more calories ofc.
I think the perfect size is around 16 to 16.5 max. I am 188, am well trained.
What are the best tricep exercises for bulking up the arms?
Hey Glen, check out this article about how to build bigger arms. We’ve got a full section on bulking up the triceps 🙂
Hi Shane, hope you are good.
Loving your input on this. You clearly articulate yourself very well.
As I’m recovering from cancer, this is an area I need your help with. I was wondering, how did you complete your sets of neck curls, neck extensions, and neck raises?
For example, did you do a set of neck curls, a set of neck extensions, and then a set of neck raises in a circuit format, or did you do a few sets of one exercise before moving on to another?
Kind regards.
Hey Nicholas, I hope you’re doing well, too! Thank you.
I do most of my training in circuits most of the time. With my neck exercises, I would do a set of neck curls, wait a minute, then do a set of neck extensions, wait another minute, and then back to neck curls.
I didn’t do many of the neck side raises, but when I did, I did them after the neck curls and extensions. I’d do one side, then the other, then back to the first side, and so on.
I hope that helps, and good luck with your recovery from cancer. I wish you the best.
Hey Shane,
I was doing “The Minotaur” x2 per week and added 2cm to my neck, while bulking on b2B, cool!
Actually, I switched to Inferno.
Could you please enlighten me, how I could maintain those 2cm while cutting ?
I’m about to continue those 2 times per week, but I dont know for how much sets, 2-3 ? same for weights and reps, do I need to change it for something like 10-15 reps instead of 20 and increase the weights a little ?
In the meantime, thank you so much for your attention and participation.
Dude, that’s awesome! Nice job!
Okay, so, the bad news about cutting is that we store some fat in our necks. You might lose some neck size. The good news is that you won’t lose MUSCLE size in your neck, you’ll just lose some fat there. Just keep training your neck and you’ll be set. You can train it like before. No change needed. And keep fighting for progressive overload, too. You might keep making good progress 🙂
Oh! didn’t see the response. Ah, I did not confirm the subscription received by email. My bad.
Do you mean that I can still gain size even while cutting or is it just for maintaining?
Actually, I switched to 2 sets but increased the weights so I can save some time. But if you say that it’s best to overload, I’ll do so.
It’s sometimes possible to gain some muscle while cutting. Not always, but sometimes. I’d at least try for it.
Thing is, you’ll lose fat while cutting, too, right? And you’ve got fat in your neck. As you lose that fat, your neck will get smaller. So even if you gain or maintain neck size, your neck measurement might still go down. Maybe. Again, I’d still try for gains.
Progressive overload is a crucial part of stimulating muscle growth. If you aren’t adding weight or reps over time, you probably aren’t going to build muscle, at least not in the longer term. You need to keep trying for gradual improvements. Otherwise, it’s just a maintenance routine. But that’s fine while eating in a calorie deficit or at maintenance. Sometimes that’s the best we can do 🙂
It’s sometimes possible to gain some muscle while cutting. Not always, but sometimes. I’d at least try for it.
Thing is, you’ll lose fat while cutting, too, right? And you’ve got fat in your neck. As you lose that fat, your neck will get smaller. So even if you gain or maintain neck size, your neck measurement might still go down. Maybe. Again, I’d still try for gains.
Progressive overload is a crucial part of stimulating muscle growth. If you aren’t adding weight or reps over time, you probably aren’t going to build muscle, at least not in the longer term. You need to keep trying for gradual improvements. Otherwise, it’s just a maintenance routine. But that’s fine while eating in a calorie deficit or at maitenance. Sometimes that’s the best we can do 🙂
Hey Shane,
just wanted to let you know regarding the following statement in your article:
“Neck size […] I’d expect it to be strongly linked with attractiveness. But since neck size hasn’t been studied in isolation from overall muscularity, we can’t really be sure, let alone put a specific number to it.”
There has now actually been a study published last year which examined the isolated effect of neck and upper trapezius muscularity on perceived strength, masculinity, and short- and long-term attractiveness (using a set of photorealistic male images).
Here is the link.
Caton and Lewis (2021): Intersexual and intrasexual selection for neck musculature in men: Attractiveness, dominance, and actual fighting success.
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yez3t
So it’d be good to update that sentence in your article briefly.
Cheers,
Alden
Awesome! Thank you.
Let me give it a read.
Awesome article. I’m using it as a kickoff to my own neck training. I didn’t realize until I read this that my neck is currently my biggest aesthetic imbalance.
Regarding the at-home neck exercises, I’ve heard that neck bridges introduce an unnecessary injury risk due to spinal compression in a way that the plate exercises don’t. What do you think of this isometric variation on the neck bridge? Do you think it’s worth mentioning in the article? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gHu6By2GMA
Should we do all the major three exercises in a day or only one of them
I’d do them all in one day. That way you can warm up your neck beforehand, do the exercises together, and maybe even superset them. It won’t take long and it’s not very tiring.