What can I do to prevent against neck injuries throughout my journey?

I'm still fairly new to jiu jitsu & 10P, and have zero wrestling/grappling experience, so my apologies if this is common knowledge to those more experienced :D

I injured my neck on Tuesday while rolling with a fellow student - long story short, he stacked me hard, and while my chin compressed into my chest, I heard my neck pop & crack about 6-7 times in a second. I can only liken it to a thorough chiropractic adjustment, that I wasn't expecting at all. We instantly stopped rolling (my partner heard it right away), but after 30 seconds or so, I could tell it wasn't too bad. I had most of my mobility, with some slight stiffness. I ended up rolling another two times that night without much issue.

I went home, and iced to avoid what I expected to be a stiff morning. Today, I've still got some stiffness, but about 85% of my normal neck mobility, so I'm assuming it's not nearly as bad as I feared. No static pain of any kind. Maybe I'm overreacting & this is just par for the course, but I'm just trying to educate myself so as to avoid this kind of injury - or worse - in the future.

Just Googling "neck injury BJJ" produces some pretty scary results, and obviously I'd like to avoid that at all costs. I want my journey to be a long one.

So that's my question - What can I do to best avoid these neck injuries in the future? Are there neck strengthening exercises that help? Mobility/stretching?

I'm sure my instructor (Josh Passini) can offer some great advice, but being cautious with my neck & taking tonight off, I won't see him again until Monday. So I turn to you, Nibiru forum - Thank you in advance for any help/advice!

Good question. No gi is a lot tougher on your neck. Look at wrestlers, they generally have very strong necks. I do Yoga for Neck and Shoulder Health just type it in on youtube. It works well for me.

http://www.flowrestling.org/video/12...-Neck-Bridging

Neck bridges are good. Also stack yourself often. Try to hug your ears with your knees. Make this a part of your warm-up and do it justice. Try to put yourself in every position before someone else puts you there. Also being able to freeze in the middle of a granby and stretch then reverse it gives you good dexterity and and helps you relax while getting stacked.

I'll definitely start bridging on my neck & practicing my stacking during my routine stretching/warm up. Thanks!

Tons of real good neck training ideas out the, a friend of mine is strenght and conditioning coach who's specialty is neck training, so it is out there. OR Get real good at staying in top positions!!! And get real good posture!!! Watch Marcello Garcia, I don't see his neck getting abused very often.

Tis all part of the sport. Def get some strength and flexibility in that neck

Part of the sport for sure. Look up wrestling neck exercises on youtube and you will find tons of videos. You should be working on stretching too. Your neck will get sore and stronger just from grappling anyways as people will always be pushing,pulling and grabing your neck. A simple but effective exercise from my HS days: 1. get on your hands and knees and face you partner who is standing in front of you. Have them bend over and clasp their hands together, put your forhead on their hands and press down for 10 seconds. 2. while in the same position have you partner push down on the back of your head, push back for 10 sec. 3. put the right side of your head on the side of their knee push for 10 sec switch to left and push for 10 sec. Obvisouly as you get stronger push longer and do sets. Josh has a neck harness at the gym you can hang a wieght off it and do the same workout solo.

The worst for me right now is guillotines. When people dont get it right they tend to turn it into a crank. My brother does this all the time when he is gased and it sucks.

When my neck gets stiff normally I just strecth it for a day and its good to go. If its real bad I have a TENS unit and usually about 10 minutes losens me up enough to just keep stretching for a day or two and Im good. If its really hurt bad or I wasnt 100% in two days I would just hit the chiro, have have never needed more than one adjustment for my neck.

Start a death metal band.

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Bridging from your knees with your hands down for support is enough to start off for the first few weeks. Also neck sit ups work a charm, simply lying flat on your back and raising your chin to your chest and same motion from your chest. 30-50 repetitions is usually enough for a beginner.

There's good ways mentioned here to strengthen your neck. Also important is the ability to defend, escape, and tapout.
There are defenses and escapes to what you've mentioned, but even these can't hide the fact that many times you must tap in order to move forward.

"know when to hold em, know when to fold em"

Wow I was just reading this and thinking about my back injury(humorously caused by a neck crank via the poster Nosaj a few posts above), and when I saw you mention the instructor name my eyes darted to the thread started to see it was you Mike!! I hope your better and its nothing serious... Who were you rollin with when it happened?

This last week in an mma event someone was paralyzed from the fighters falling down while in a standing guillotine position and its been circulating the martial arts scene pretty heavily spurring alot of talk about properly defending/avoiding this kind of thing, and working to prevent this kind of thing through awareness and skill and body development.

Neck development is a big part of preventative measures regarding this, in the days of early prize fighting and wrestling neck breaks and injures were semi common, leading to pioneering competitors such as Martin "Farmer" Burns to develop in depth training programs to strengthen and develop the neck to help prevent this danger. Burns at only 165lbs, had a 20 inch neck and would demonstrate the strength of this training by being dropped from a hangmans nuice, hung, and survive fine from the endeavors, something similar to the injury delt to the paralyzed fighter.

Mike as you know I've got one of those very long skinny turkey necks that just extends out offering free chokes, cranks, etc and has plenty of room to twist around in whatever way you want, and have had a back injury recently from a neck crank, but besides that my neck is ALWAYS sore from chokes and cranks etc, combined with all the injuries I read and hear about it, i've been starting to research heavily into these kinds of neck strengthening programs to develop a routine and process for developing my own significantly. I'll go over them with josh and everyone and whoever is interested can start integrating them into their conditioning....

There a thousand ways to make your neck stronger. We can go over a bunch at the gym on Monday. Could have been way worse if we hadn't warmed up with the stacking stretchs that day.