A common cause of headaches is sports participation. Many sports involve rapid movements. Martial arts, various football codes, squash etc. All of these spots involve moving your body quickly.
What is happening is that your body accelerates or decelerates quickly and your neck muscles have the task of keeping your head from rolling around. An extreme example is whip lash injury as occurs in a rear end auto accident.
After a good spots workout your neck muscles have been rolling for ages and the muscles which run over your skull are now tight resulting in a rear to frontal headache.
A problem for weekend warriors
This is a much bigger problem for weekend warriors than serious athletes. Regular players tend to develop stronger muscles in the neck and shoulders. Weekend warriors or mid week players do not do enough training and therefore are more susceptible to injury and headaches.
There are many ways to stress your neck and cause headaches, from the crunch of a football tackle to the jerking of a downhill mountain bike ride or the sudden frontal or lateral impact from a boxing or martial arts strike to the head.
It's crazy to not wear good headgear when sparring, but even if you do it doesn't completely solve your problem. Most headgear can wear a direct punch to the face but it's the blows to the side of the head that cause the most neck pain and headaches.
Any sport can cause headaches
You don't even have to be doing some extreme sport to get a headache. Think about your golf swing. If done correctly there is little problem but most of us are still trying to perfect or swing and are more likely to injure ourselves. Especially as many golfers get no exercise outside of a weekly game.
Even lawn bowls or ten pin bowling are not without their hazards. You pick up a weight with one hand and swing it and release it over and over during a game. You are working one side of your body only and have created a muscular imbalance, which can often lead to pain and headache.
The solution to this lack of training is more training. So maybe you play sport once a week and you lead a busy life, you will need to do neck and shoulder strengthening exercises daily. These only take a few minutes.
Prevention for headaches
Think about the actions of your sport which cause you the most pain. Now do these actions slower than usual but with some light weights in your hands. Practice the stop start aspects daily for a few minutes.
This will strengthen your neck and shoulder muscles. Other exercises are anything where you hold your arms to the side or front or above your head. Move slowly for a few minutes. Hold a water bottle or weight in each hand and move your arms in a controlled way. No jerky action.
It's the daily effort that will pay off for you. Remember also to warm up before you play and to warm down. If you injure your neck stop playing as you will only cause more damage and create a bigger headache.
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