Neck Machine Archives - www.oldtimestrongman.com

The Super Neck Developer

Posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2017 by John Wood

Here’s one you probably havent seen before: The Super Neck Developer from World Sporting Goods, circa the mid-1970’s. This device did not use a weight stack or any kind of weight at all, a friction brake provided the resistance. As such, given the angles, and the fact that gravity was no longer a limitation, this provided some interesting possibilities, as you can see. This machine was marketed to football coaches for the purpose of having their players strengthen their necks to lower the frequency and severity of concussions. Amazingly, over four decades later, neck machines are seldom found in many college weight rooms.

The Nautilus Rotary Neck Machine

Posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2016 by John Wood

The Nautilus Rotary Neck Machine contains no weight stack, no built in source of resistance of any kind … instead, the resistance is provided by the user through the use of hand levers that enable you to exactly control the resistance during both the positive and negative parts of the exercise. There aren’t many Rotary Neck Machines around but we happen to have one in our private gym and when used correctly, it is excellent. We may do a feature on it at some point.

Sargent’s Head Lifting Machine

Posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 by John Wood

The Head Lifting Machine

When Dudley Allen Sargent became the physical director of Harvard University’s famed Hemenway Gymnasium, he wanted to make sure the student body was as well-rounded as possible in their development.

Henceforth, Sargent devised several unique “machines” which could be used to fill in the gaps in areas that the conventional equipment of the day could not address (equally true today and the very same rational justification for any device which solves a problem or provides an advantage.)

One of the more interesting examples can be seen at the right, this “head lifting” machine offered a method for strengthening the neck and upper-back in a progressive and systematic manner. This was the first dedicated machine to building neck strength ever created, clearly it was under stood that this was an important area.

Neck training is, of course, down-played or ignored in many modern programs which is a real shame since it is certainly no less important today than it was back then.

The Hammer Strength 4-Way Neck Machine

Posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 by John Wood

The Hammer Strength 4-Way Neck Machine

Everyone should train their neck, but neck strength is especially important if you play football. The Hammer Strength neck machine is the best one I have ever used — and I’ve tried ’em all.

Use this machine strictly with no monkey business and you’ll go up a few collar sizes in no time. I recently got one from a local high school who said they were getting rid of it because “they didn’t need it any more” ~ oh brother.