When to start exercise with sciatica
3 Safe Exercises For Sciatica Pain Relief
do you have sciatica pain well today dr.
David Oliver is gonna give you three
exercises to relieve your sciatica
symptoms hi my name is lien from back
intelligence calm where we help people
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dr. David Oliver sciatica can be an
extremely debilitating and painful
condition generally sciatica the
definition of sciatica is pain that
radiates down the back your leg usually
below your knee so there are a variety
of exercise you can do but it's
important to get a good diagnosis of
sciatica before we attempt these as
you're doing exercises any type of
exercise especially an exercise for
sciatica it's really important that the
exercise does not increase your pain
especially your leg pain the leg pain is
the more concerning pain and that's the
pain we don't want to increase so if you
ever see or feel increased leg pain as
we're going through these exercises you
should stop and it's not a good exercise
for you the first exercise that we know
of and it's probably the easiest one to
do is just standing extension most
sciatic or disc issues occur through
flexion so with an encounter act that
through extension a lot of times that
can ameliorate or get rid of so many
symptoms so it's a basic exercise you're
gonna stand and you're gonna take your
hands you're gonna place them right on
the small of your back and you're gonna
go through extension the key to this
exercise is actually not leaning back
with your back muscles it's actually
pushing forward with your hands so
you're gonna take your hands here and
you're gonna glide your pelvis forward
as far as you feel comfortable and come
off of it you're gonna do that
repeatedly and again the idea is to
reduce your pain initially it may feel a
little tender in your low back that's
completely normal but it should never
feel like it's increasing the pain and
again the emphasis is on the leg pain
and as you're doing this you start to
feel the leg pain increase you should
stop it's not a good exercise view and
it can actually make your symptoms worse
so again we're going through that
extension hands are on the Beltline or
right above your butt there and you're
just gonna push yourself forward as far
as you feel comfortable and come off
initially you might not be able push too
far because it might be a little bit
sore but again we're not looking for any
increase in pain as you get more
comfortable you're gonna push through
extension generally we do have people do
sets of ten of these the next exercise
we're going to do is generally one of
the safest exercise is a cat cow it's
really good at mobilizing the spine
without putting too much pressure but
again you're gonna limit it based on
your pain and based on what you're
feeling
so Leon's gonna get down here he's gonna
get his hands on your shoulders knees
under the hips then we're gonna do is
we're just gonna start by moving up and
down and motion really comes from your
pelvis here so you can posterior tilt
your pelvis slowly and then you can
anterior tilt it as well so the motion
is coming generally from here so as the
pelvis goes down the head generally
rocks backwards and vice-versa so what
we're looking to do is explore this
range of motion extremely slowly and if
we see any pain so if Leon comes up here
and he starts to feel discomfort or pain
we stop and we go to the other direction
we don't push into pain ever we look for
that pain free zone and we stay there
you may notice over days of doing this
that that zone starts to expand as you
feel better so we're just going up and
down nice and slowly again we're getting
that nice cat stretch there and as he
drops down we drop into that cow or that
camel stretch and again we're just
trying to decompress that spine we're
trying to take some load off and we're
just trying to make everything better
you don't want to feel increasing pain
again and definitely no leg pain so if
you get in this position and it starts
activating or irritating your radicular
pain or the sciatica type pain that's
going down your leg you need to get out
of it it's not a good stretch or
exercise for you so nice and slow we
generally do 10 to 15 of these and this
is one just generally again a very safe
exercise so we generally can do this
several times a day and again we look
for an increasing range of motion as we
do it and decreasing pain the next
exercise we're gonna do is that prone
press up it's kind of like that standing
when we did but now on the ground so
Leon's gonna lay flat on his stomach
he's gonna first go on to his forearms
and he's gonna just kind of prop himself
up gently the key here is to relax your
low back you want to keep this as
relaxed as punc comfortable and just
keep those hands underneath your
underneath your chest there you don't
want to feel like you're using your back
muscles to lift you up so it's not like
the Cobra and yoga which you use your
back to lift up this one we're just
propping up there and letting this relax
so again this may feel a tiny bit sore
and disgusted discomfort here in the low
back that's normal for most people
initially but that should not increase
and you definitely should not be feeling
pain going down your leg if you get into
this position and you start to
immediately feel pain going down the leg
or it starts to increase pain down your
leg you stop and you get out of this
exercise because it's not good for you
if you can hang out there for twenty or
thirty seconds you can advance it which
is gonna go into more of a push-up type
position so Lena's gonna put his hands a
little closer down by his armpits here
and then as he goes up he's gonna again
he's gonna push up as high as he feels
comfortable letting pain be his guide
and then he's gonna back off and go down
if you can't go up all the way that's
normal for a lot of people you just go
to what you feel comfortable with again
you don't want to feel increasing pain
and all on your back and definitely no
leg pain if you feel any leg pain at all
you stop and you don't do this exercise
so with this prone press up exercise is
basically two versions of it you can do
you can either just kind of prop
yourself up on your elbows and just kind
of hang out there for a good 20 30
seconds again making sure you're not
feeling any increasing pain in your back
and no leg pain at all and you can just
hang out there ideally you'll ease into
it and you'll settle down your back will
actually relax or you going to the
actual press up version where you slide
the hands down kind of down by your
armpits and then you go through nice
slow press ups again letting pain be
your guide and the increasing pain you
stopped so nice and slow and as you get
comfortable you push up higher if you
feel like you want to push into that
full extended position without pain
that's totally fine just like that and
again about 10 reps is usually what we
do with these perfect all right we hope
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