Recommedation for Trapezius and Neck Issue

History

Over the past year I transitioned from and endurance training program for a virtual Marathon in October to including more resistance training. After the attempt, I took a period of lower volume endurance training and additionally focused on biking and rowing instead of running since I was dealing with some running related injuries.

I still had limited access to a gym so I did what I could with a cable system, some dumbbells, and calisthenics. My resistance training volume increased a little from lower volume—during the marathon prep—to a small volume increase—which looked something like this in hard sets. This is an average and just including my upper back work.

~Marathon Prep~

Horizontal Pull 3

Vertical Pull 3

~Transition Out~

Horizontal Pull 4

Vertical Pull 4

Almost all days of the week I have a dull throbbing pain in my left upper trap that occasionally radiates to my lower trap. Also, I notice some neck pain the day after pull-ups. I have tried troubleshooting the problem with altered rep ranges, proximities to failure, and different variations. One thing I noticed while trying single arm Pulldowns was my right side being significantly weaker than my left(which is the painful side). This pain isn’t compromising my life but it is just really annoying at times.

My question after all that is where do I go from here? Is there something I’m missing in trying to train around this? Is it time for a consult/doctors visit?

Hi there,

Have you read this article? It lays out our recommended approach to this situation:

Thank you Dr. Baraki, I have read that article. It is and was very helpful, though my difficulty is that I haven’t had a session significantly aggravate nor alleviate the trapezius pain. It’s just there, nagging. Am I just not patient enough in the process? I don’t want to just stop horizontal/ vertical pulling altogether. It appears that wouldn’t be the most productive way to help this problem.

I can understand that it isn’t black and white and there isn’t going to be a specific program but a set of behaviors. I believe I have all the other factors covered down. My work and life stress is fine, nutrition is good, and have been consistent with training. I’ll go back and re-read the article to pull more info and try and plan this out for the next meso.

Thank you for the resources