Bone spur on the neck - My experience and advice

First of all, i´m just a bodybuilding lover, so i apologize if i don´t speak the correct medical terms. I´m just here to tell you about my painful experience of having a bone spur on my neck, and with the hope i can give some advice and also some hope in the end of the tunnel.

I had a motorcycle accident more than ten years ago, and it was really violent, so i guess it helped a lot to get this problem. I started my love to lifting weights also more than ten years ago. One day (7 years after the accident), i was training shoulders, doing shoulder press and suddenly i feel my neck got stuck, couldnt move it and it was quite painful. Went to a chiropractor, and since the bone came out of its place, or was too close from the one below (c4 and c5), he putted it in place again. At that time the doctor said it was nothing special. After a few days, feeling better already, went again to the gym, was doing shoulders again, lateral raises… again, the bone came out and had to go to the hospital for the second time. Same procedure, but here i made an x-ray, finding i had a bone spur. Again, no good advice, just to not do sports for a month. Went to a specialist, explained very well the problem, but then again, no good advice. Not a big problem, he said i can do what i want. Finally, went to a sports doctor, who said i must do sports (in a controlled way) in order to make the area stronger. So he sent me to a gym where he had a personal trainer who works with this kind of problems, and we started to find what i could or couldnt do.

According to my PT, the most important is, DON´T give tension to the trapezius, always have your shoulders down and relaxed while working out, or even outside the gym. Very important to not put stress on the trapezius. Before i found this doctor, i didnt know, so one day i played darts for 2/3hours, and the next day, i couldnt move my neck again.
When i´m doing my exercises i have to lean my head down, with my chin coming towards the throat, that way it wont hurt and can help from creating more problems. A lot of exercises i cant do, especially overhead ones, like shoulder press, but i still can workout the whole body. There are other exercises i can do but in a different way, like shoulder raises. Instead of elevate too much the elbows, my hands are in a higher position that the elbows, that way it dont give the neck that much stress. My PT also told me it is very important to strenghten the whole back.

I didnt had hope before, but after i found the right doctor and personal trainer and realized it can be done. Sometimes doctors only tell you to rest, and in some cases its not the best advice. If i dont workout or go to the swimming pool for weeks, i start to get worse because the area is getting weaker. Also, my PT advice was to find a good pilates teacher because to work the posture and strenghten the core. This is really important if you want to continue to workout with this problem. It taught me to use my abs and glutes while working out, to help take away the tension of the trapezius. Since every person has a different situation, find first a good doctor. Im just sharing my own experience. I now go the pool 2x/week and 2x/week i lift weights. For example, tuesday lift weights and friday weights again, let the area relax.

Sorry if the post is too confusing. I just really wanted to share my experience and tell you to find a good doctor. Hopefully you wont need to stop lifting weights, just have to adapt to the problem. If you have some questions feel free to ask. Thanks!

Edit: Since i´m new here, i don´t know if this is the right place to put my post. If it isn´t, i apologize and ask the help of the admin to transfer my post to the correct area. Thank you