Dr. Rosi Sexton: Building up neck lessens risk of concussion

Dr. Rosi Sexton is a Cambridge graduate with a First-class maths degree (US equivalent: Magna Cum Laude from Harvard), holds a PhD from Cambridge University in Theoretical Computer Science (US equivalent: Smarter than that hair guy in Back to the Future), and works as an Osteopath. In short, she’s smarter than you.

Further, Sexton also fought from 2002 to 2014, amassing a 13-5 record against the likes of Gina Carano, Deb Purcell, and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Dr. Sexton includes neck strengthening as part of her practice as an osteopath, and works with fighters, among others. If you care about combat sports in general, and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in particular, listen to Dr. Sexton.

Back when I started, I don’t think [concussion] was anything that people gave much thought to, said Sexton to Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. You could be knocked out and back in training the week after. It’s not something I think people even really thought of. I would like to think that things have improved. Certainly, awareness of the issues has gotten better and I think certainly the better coaches out there — the more diligent coaches out there — have started to take this stuff on board and they’re more up to date on the protocols on what to do if an athlete is concussed and what not to do.

Although precious little is understood about CTE, a study was published in 2014 on the relationship between neck strength and concussion.

“After adjusting for gender and sport, overall neck strength remained a significant predictor of concussion,” concluded the study. “For every one pound increase in neck strength, odds of concussion decreased by 5%.”

Dr. Sexton explains why.

Experientially, that makes perfect sense as a fighter, she said. Because the more you can reduce the impact or reduce the movement of your head as a result of the impact, you have much less negative affect from that than you would when you’re not able to.

Dr. Sexton does not believe that enough neck development is taking place in MMA gyms.

By and large, I don’t think we are, she said. I think it’s one of those situations where people do a few neck movements in the warmup and they suddenly go right from that to the wrestling with nothing in the middle.

Dr. Sexton plans to begin providing courses and workshops, and as well intends to develop content online. And she is concerned.

I love mixed martial arts. I love combat sports,” said Dr. Sexton, a lifelong martial artist. “Of all the stuff that’s coming out at the moment, it’s worrying. There’s no way around that. You look at this and you can’t help but say there’s definitely a problem there. And how we square that circle, I don’t have any easy answers to that.

What I do think is we need to make sure we’re putting good information out there, so people are making informed decisions about the risks involved. So people have access to that information.

Dr. Sexton’s website is Combat Sports Clinic.