The Neck Crank a MMA Fighting injury

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A patient recently came into the clinic with a new complaint of a neck injury from a cage fight contest he lost from tapping out to a mixed martial art (MMA) neck crank injury. The MMA neck crank technique involves pushing the neck to one side as much as possible till the opponent submits to the pain and taps out of the fight. This is why the patient lost his amateur contest.

The reason he came to the Chiropractic clinic because he noticed his left triceps muscle was weak with pins and needles and pain running into his left arm. This looked to me like a case of a pinched nerve in his neck. If you haven’t seen a cage fighting neck crank move before then view this video of how to do the neck crank by professional cage fighter Bas Rutten below. See why the patient may have irritated a nerve in his neck now.

How to do Mixed Martial Arts

Professional MMA fighter, Bas Rutten, explains how to perform a normal neck crank submission tactic.

In this video you can see a variation called the crucifix neck crank to get a fighter to tap out.

As you can see in the above the mixed martial art training videos this neck submission move can place a lot of stress on the cervical spine.

In the case of this patient he caused himself a cervical injury called a C7 radiculopathy with the main nerve damage symptom being loss of power to his left triceps muscle.

The neck crank is designed to create a neck lock, which causes “pulling or twisting the head beyond its normal ranges of rotation”.

Neck crank submissions are banned from most sports because of the danger except cage fighting and submission wrestling like brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ).

The exact cause of his muscle weakness is currently being investigated through an MRI scan of his neck. It is likely he either caused a stinger injury or he has hurt a disc in his neck via a neck disc herniation or annular tear.

Either way neck crank injury is some nasty way to get a compressed nerve in your neck. Watch out for the neck crank when fighting or training for mma is all I can say.