It tells us that:

1. specificity of therapeutic intervention is important
2. perfusion of muscle via exercise is important -- why else would riding a bike make your neck feel better (other than endorphin release or psychogenic modulation)?

But what else?

First of all, a 35mm change over a 10 week period in VAS is not overly impressive. To put it into perspective that would be someone having a level 7 pain drop to a 3.5 pain on the 0-10 scale. That can be done in as little as a couple weeks, a few sessions or even one session.

Also, it doesn't reflect what PT does---it may, unfortunately, reflect what this population might get if they read a synopsis of this research in "Shape" magazine, edited by a fitness trainer. But does that benefit the individual?

Of course not.

A comparison of what exercise protocols are most beneficial to a subgrouping of patients with a specific disorder is indeed a worthwhile subject of study. However, correct interpretive application  (i.e. how does this info really benefit me, my patients, my approach?) of data is what studies like this boils down to.

Riding a bike for trap/neck pain....not a great protocol.

Doing shoulder rolls/shrugs... possibly a good start....but only a portion of what real suffering patients need for full corrective care. Full corrective care would take into consideration posture, ADL modifications, flexibility, joint mobility and the like.

Comparative studies like such are good in the sense that they can validate certain interventions used, but when examined carefully, one can see the obvious limitations in their applications. On the plus side, such data (as in this study) can be used to motivate the specific population being studied; i.e. we can educate women with neck/trapezius myalgia on the beneftis of exercise and also be opinion leaders on their proper prescriptioning.  But data such as this taken at face value can be spurious in its application if done so in a cursory manner.

So, if a synopsis of this is written up in "Shape" or any other nefarious publication, let's hope that the reader gets the complete picture.