Neck Flex
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Comment: Resubmitting after citation repairs: the three strongest independent sources now carry direct URLs, corrected headlines, and the correct byline - Bloomberg Law (staff news, July 2021 and December 2, 2021), Law360 (staff news, December 2021), and IPWatchdog (Logan Murr, December 7, 2021). The IPWatchdog piece is standalone analysis of why this injunction was exceptional, not routine docket coverage. Independent coverage outside the litigation includes Washington Business Journal staff reporting (July 9, 2025, on the F1 film appearance, with sales figures and company detail) and a WBJ print feature (August 2025). I have a declared paid COI (see my user page) and will follow reviewer guidance. Lewis131310 (talk) 02:35, 22 August 2026 (UTC)
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| Brand of Gonza LLC | |
| ISIN | 🆔 |
| Industry | Fitness equipment |
| Founded 📆 | 2010; first product 2012 |
| Founders 👔 | Thomas Harrison Hunt Z. W. Elam |
| Headquarters 🏙️ | , , United States |
Area served 🗺️ | |
| Products 📟 | Neck-training head harnesses and attachments |
| Members | |
Number of employees | 10 (2025) |
| 🌐 Website | theneckflex |
| 📇 Address | |
| 📞 telephone | |
Neck Flex is an American brand of neck-training equipment made by Gonza LLC, a company based in Leesburg, Virginia. Its products are head harnesses that let a user work the muscles of the neck against resistance from bands, cables, or weight plates, in flexion, extension, side-to-side movement, and rotation. The brand was started in 2010 by Thomas Harrison Hunt and Z. W. Elam, and its first product went on sale in 2012.[1][2]
The harnesses are used for strength and conditioning by athletes, in physical therapy and chiropractic settings, and in neck-strengthening routines meant to lower the risk of sport-related concussion. Research has linked stronger necks to lower concussion odds in young athletes, though no study has tested whether any particular device prevents injury.[3][1]
Gonza LLC holds five United States utility patents for the harness design, and the patents were at the center of a federal lawsuit against a competitor between 2021 and 2024. The Neck Flex harness has also been named as the training equipment in three peer-reviewed papers from a Royal Danish Air Force study of neck exercise among helicopter crews.[4][5]
History
Hunt and Elam are longtime friends from Loudoun County, Virginia. In 2010, Hunt was working as a business broker and Elam, an Army veteran, had recently come home from a deployment in Iraq; the two trained together and noticed that gyms had little in the way of neck equipment.[2][1] They set out to fill that gap, and by their own account went through more than two years of work and nine prototypes before settling on a design they could sell.[1] The first Neck Flex product reached the market in 2012, the first-use date later recorded on the company's federal trademark registration.[6]
The founders named their company Gonza LLC as a nod to the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson.[2] Elam, a multidisciplinary designer, handled most of the product design, while Hunt ran the business side.[2] Early on the pair were featured on the YouTube channel of strength athlete Mike "The Machine" Bruce, and they later brought Bruce in as a public face of the brand and a collaborator on the design.[2] Production, at first done in the United States, eventually moved overseas.[2] The company is privately held and has not disclosed its revenue; as of 2025 it reported about ten employees.[2]
Products
Neck Flex sells several lines of harness. The HALO Series is the original design, built from nylon webbing and metal hardware for band-based training in more than one plane of motion. The Ballistic Kevlar Series is a heavier-duty version that adds Kevlar stitching, neoprene padding, and chain attachments for loading with weight plates. The MMB Pro Series, developed with Mike Bruce, works with both plates and bands. A separate accessory, the Revolver Rotation Attachment, uses a braided-steel cable so the harness can be loaded through a turning motion.[2][7] Retail prices have been reported in the range of roughly $40 to a little over $200 depending on the model and accessories.[2]
Patents
Gonza LLC holds five U.S. utility patents, each titled "Neck Exercise Device and System" and naming Hunt and Elam as inventors. The family goes back to a provisional application filed on September 4, 2013. The first patent, U.S. Patent 11,007,405, issued on May 18, 2021, and describes a head harness with several vertically arranged attachment points that allow the neck to be trained in flexion, extension, side flexion, and rotation. Four more patents in the same family issued between 2022 and 2024: U.S. Patent 11,413,491, U.S. Patent 11,638,850, U.S. Patent 11,638,851, and U.S. Patent 12,029,936.[4]
Patent litigation
On July 28, 2021, Gonza LLC sued Mission Competition Fitness Equipment LLC in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, accusing the company's Iron Neck Alpha Harness of infringing patent 11,007,405. In its complaint, Gonza said the competing harness reverse-engineered the patented design and was made from cheaper, lower-quality materials and sold at a lower price. Gonza argued that this inferior copy would erode Neck Flex's reputation and goodwill, because buyers might not tell it apart from the genuine product, and that it would also cost the company sales and market share.[8][9][10]
A patent holder seeking a preliminary injunction must satisfy a four-part test: a likelihood of success on the merits, a likelihood of irreparable harm without an injunction, a balance of the hardships in its favor, and that an injunction serves the public interest. On December 1, 2021, Judge Alan Albright found that all four factors favored Gonza and granted the preliminary injunction. He determined that Gonza was likely to prove infringement and to overcome the defendant's challenge to the patent's validity, and he accepted the irreparable-harm argument, writing that "price erosion, loss of goodwill, damage to reputation, and loss of business opportunities are all valid grounds for finding irreparable harm" and that harm to reputation "resulting from confusion between an inferior accused product and a patentee's superior product is a type of harm that is often not fully compensable" in money. The order observed that the accused harness appeared to match the Neck Flex "apparently even down to the stitching pattern," noted that it sold for less than half the price, and barred Mission Competition from selling or advertising the Iron Neck Alpha Harness while the case continued.[10][11] The intellectual-property publication IPWatchdog described the ruling as an unusual example of a preliminary injunction being granted in a patent case.[12]
The two sides settled, and the first suit was jointly dismissed in July 2022. Gonza filed a second infringement suit against the same company in May 2023, again over patents in the family; that case was jointly dismissed with prejudice in March 2024 after another settlement. The design of the Iron Neck Alpha Harness changed over the course of the two cases.[2]
Use in research
The Neck Flex harness has appeared as study equipment in sports-medicine research. Between 2015 and 2020, researchers at the University of Southern Denmark published three peer-reviewed papers from a randomized controlled trial of neck and shoulder exercise among Royal Danish Air Force helicopter pilots and crew. The trial protocol and the main results appeared in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, and a later analysis of muscle function appeared in Frontiers in Public Health. All three name the training equipment by brand; the 2020 paper lists it as "a head harness (The Original Neck Flex Head Harness, Gonzo Companies, USA)," used with elastic bands in a portable kit.[13][14][5]
Sixty-nine pilots and crew members took part, with the training group doing three 20-minute sessions a week on their own for 20 weeks. In the 2020 analysis, the people who trained gained strength in neck extension while an untrained comparison group lost ground over the same period.[5]
In film and popular culture
In July 2025 the Washington Business Journal reported that Neck Flex equipment turns up in a training scene in F1, the 2025 Apple Studios film directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Brad Pitt, in a sequence with Damson Idris as a rookie driver. According to the paper, the appearance was not paid for; the film's physical trainer already knew the product because Formula One drivers use it, and Hunt said sales rose by about half in the weeks after the film opened. The same report said the actress Halle Bailey used the device while training for the 2023 film The Little Mermaid, and that the fitness figures Jeff Nippard and Jeff Cavaliere have promoted the brand.[15][2]
Community involvement
Gonza LLC has given Neck Flex equipment to youth sports teams and to the football and wrestling programs at Braxton County High School in Braxton County, West Virginia, where Hunt grew up. In 2026, WV News reported that Hunt presented five harnesses to the school's head wrestling coach and an assistant coach.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Given, Ed (2026-07-27). "Braxton County native Tom Hunt takes Neck Flex from Sutton farm to global sports market". WV News. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Neibauer, Michael (2025-08-01). "Small Business Spotlight: Neck Flex". Washington Business Journal. 44 (16). pp. 30–31.
- ↑ Collins, C. L.; Fletcher, E. N.; Fields, S. K.; Kluchurosky, L.; Rohrkemper, M. K.; Comstock, R. D.; Cantu, R. C. (2014). "Neck strength: a protective factor reducing risk for concussion in high school sports". The Journal of Primary Prevention. 35 (5): 309–319. doi:10.1007/s10935-014-0355-2. PMID 24930131.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "US11007405B2: Neck exercise device and system". Google Patents. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
Assignee: Gonza LLC. Related family patents: US 11,413,491; 11,638,850; 11,638,851; 12,029,936.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Murray, Mike; Lange, Britt; Søgaard, Karen; Sjøgaard, Gisela (2020). "The effect of physical exercise training on neck and shoulder muscle function among military helicopter pilots and crew: a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial". Frontiers in Public Health. 8. Bibcode:2020FrPH....846286M. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2020.546286. PMC 7661577 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 33194955 Check|pmid=value (help). Unknown parameter|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ "NECK FLEX - Trademark Details (Serial No. 88592849)". United States Patent and Trademark Office record, via Justia Trademarks. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ "Products". theneckflex.com. Neck Flex. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ "'Neck Flex' Maker Claims Rival Copied Patented Workout Gear". Bloomberg Law. July 2021. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ "Albright Bars Fitness Co. From Selling Neck Device, For Now". Law360. December 2021. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Gonza LLC v. Mission Competition Fitness Equipment LLC (W.D. Tex. 2021-12-01) ("order granting preliminary injunction, ECF No. 17"). Text
- ↑ "Fitness Co. Hit With Injunction in Neck Exercise Patent Suit". Bloomberg Law. 2021-12-02. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ Murr, Logan (2021-12-07). "Albright Grants Rare Preliminary Injunction Against Fitness Company". IPWatchdog. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
- ↑ Murray, Mike; Lange, Britt; Nørnberg, Bo Riebeling; Søgaard, Karen; Sjøgaard, Gisela (2015). "Specific exercise training for reducing neck and shoulder pain among military helicopter pilots and crew members: a randomized controlled trial protocol". BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. 16. doi:10.1186/s12891-015-0655-6. PMC 4541746. PMID 26286597. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Murray, Mike; Lange, Britt; Nørnberg, Bo Riebeling; Søgaard, Karen; Sjøgaard, Gisela (2017). "Self-administered physical exercise training as treatment of neck and shoulder pain among military helicopter pilots and crew: a randomized controlled trial". BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders. 18 (1). doi:10.1186/s12891-017-1507-3. PMC 5387250. PMID 28399842. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Diallo, Razak (2025-07-09). "Neck Flex scores a cameo in Brad Pitt's 'F1' summer blockbuster". Washington Business Journal. Retrieved 2026-08-21.
Category:Exercise equipment Category:Physical exercise Category:American companies established in 2010 Category:Companies based in Virginia Category:Manufacturing companies based in Virginia
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