As you may have noticed, everyone who has competed in MMA and/or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu who goes on the Joe Rogan Podcast, and is over the age of 40 – has extensive spine-problems.

Big John McCarthy for example, has had multiple operations on his neck and still has problems with it. Same goes for the likes of the great Bas Rutten and Michael Bisping.

Joe talks a lot about his ‘neck hanging device’ & ‘neck decompression’ – how it can help with health of the cervical spine. Stem cells also seem to fix every injury!

If you can’t afford some stem cell therapy – not many of us can – there are some half decent treatment options available.

For example, the neck hammock (also know as – “the Joe Rogan neck decompression device” thanks to Joe mentioning it a few times), offers some relief via the process of spinal decompression.

There are a few hammocks on the market, but I think this is the one Joe has:

Link to buy the item (NOT an affiliate link)

I would personally, first consider an inversion table before purchasing one of the door frame neck hammocks, although they are a lot more expensive – for now I just hang off the back of the sofa.

Link to buy the item

You literally strap yourself in and hang upside down. Your whole spine gets decompressed, not just your neck.

Choose Your Sparring & Rolling Partners with Care to Protect your Neck

Prevention, is of course, better than cure. I would always recommend drilling lots of technique and keeping sparring and rolling to a minimum. At least full-on sparring and rolling.

If your neck is just stiff and painful, you may have issues with the muscles being tight, rather then the discs in your neck.

Magnesium glycinate and magnesium spray is fantastic for stiff muscles – I use these supplements along with an infrared lamp on my neck most nights. Foam rolling, stretching and trigger point therapy should be part of your daily routine.

Tips for protecting & rehabbing a neck:

• Supplement with magnesium and/or epsom salts
• Infrared Lamps or Sauna
• Trigger point therapy
• Spinal Decompression
• Inversion table

For more info on treating a stiff neck, please see my specific blog post

If you like this post, you may also like our post about the Joe Rogan Inversion Table