Lying Face Up Plate Neck Resistance

🎯 Neck🏋️ OtherIntermediateIsolation

How to do the lying face up plate neck resistance

  1. Lie face up with your whole body straight on a flat bench while holding a weight plate on top of your forehead. Tip: You will need to position yourself so that your shoulders are slightly above the end of a flat bench in order for the traps, neck and head to be off the bench. This will be your starting position.
  2. While keeping the plate secure on your forehead slowly lower your head back in a semi-circular motion as you breathe in.
  3. Raise your head back up to the starting position in a semi-circular motion as you breathe out. Hold the contraction for a second.
  4. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the cervical flexors and extensors, which move the head and hold it steady on top of the spine.

Every exercise for:Neck

How this movement works

One joint changes angle and the resistance travels toward you along a single arc. Nothing is positioned to help, so tension stays where you aimed it and the usable load drops sharply against a multi-joint pull for the same muscle. Protect the range of motion; buying weight by shortening the arc defeats the point.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

These train the neck too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 10 neck exercises in this database, 4 are listed at intermediate level.

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.