What do you think is the most neglected muscle group? The calves? No. The forearms? No. The back? Do not! The answer is, in fact, a group of muscles that are constantly visible throughout your daily life: the neck!

Sporting a large 18-inch neck makes you instantly look strong, powerful, and masculine and even if you’re not interested in training it for cosmetic reasons, you should train it to prevent injury!

There are several neck muscle exercises that you can use to quickly develop a strong-looking tree trunk neck. In this article I will explore the three most effective exercises.

But before we introduce you to these great mass builders, we must take a look at the safety aspects of training neck muscles in both size and strength.

Your body depends on your neck in many different ways, so when training your neck, you should take a few precautions to ensure you don’t get injured. The first of these precautions is to maintain flawless form throughout the range of motion of all exercises. If you’re struggling to finish a rep, don’t do it, a single rep is never worth hurting you.

The other precaution that you must take into account before doing any of these exercises is to keep your repetitions slow and controlled, at least 2 seconds for the concentric ones and another 2 seconds for the eccentric ones. If you follow these two tips, you should never be injured by using the following exercises:

Barbell Shrug: Although not directly a neck exercise, the barbell shrug is a great mass builder for the upper traps; the muscle between the shoulders and the neck. Building large top traps will help your neck look wider and more muscular.

Neck Extension: Neck Extension works a muscle called the splenium. Splenium is the muscle at the back of the neck. Using extensions to build this muscle quickly will make your neck look very impressive from behind.

Neck Bridge: The neck bridge will develop almost all of your neck muscles very quickly. Basically, it involves balancing a large proportion of your body weight on your neck muscles, as well as on the balls of your feet. Although it sounds dangerous, the use of the two safety precautions given above should avoid any possibility of developing an injury when performing bridges.

Use all three neck muscle exercises to your advantage and people will soon start to notice how muscular you are quickly getting.