♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna go over the top three yoga exercises
to do with sciatica.
There's actually some you probably shouldn't do
but we're not gonna go over those today.
- That's not the title, Bob,
don't go there,
don't get the pot stirred up. - All right, I get that joke.
Don't get the yoga people upset, okay.
By the way, if you are new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on stay healthy, fit, pain free
and we upload every day.
Also, yes, sir and ma'am,
you do wanna join us on our social media channels
because we're always giving something away, every week,
and this week we're giving away the wall anchor.
- Here let's point 'em out, Bob.
We just happen to have about 10 of 'em
up on the wall. - Yeah, they're attached,
that's the device right there and if you go to our website,
you get 'em in packs of four and they actually
are great for doing exercises with the exercise bands
or the exercise tubing and the handles.
It really provides a secure way, so.
Boy you're lazy.
But go to bobandbrad.com and go to the giveaway section
or go to BobandBrad on Facebook, you'll see it
pinned to the top of the page.
- Did you want me to go and show a little bit?
- No, no, we could go ahead, Brad.
Let's get started, people are wondering already,
"What are these three--"
- Okay, well, we do get a number of comments from people
asking this specific question.
"What yoga exercises can I do with sciatica?"
And it's really hard just to make a reply quick,
you know you'd have to do a few paragraphs.
But, typically, sciatica, pain down the leg, numbness,
tingling, those symptoms that are radiating from the back,
buttock and go down the leg, typically past the knee,
there are some things that create this
and the two biggest things, and most predominant,
is typically a disc problem.
- Right, a herniated disc, people might say a bulging disc,
more often it's a herniated disc, so.
- Right, I still don't know, to me it's the same,
it's pushing on the nerve.
- Yeah, I don't know if a bulging disc always pushes
on the nerve. - Sure.
- You know what I mean?
If it gives out far enough.
- One way or another, a disc problem which typically
is gonna be improved by extension, not always,
but when you get asked this question,
you just have to look at the big picture
and do what the majority of the responses are gonna be.
- We're gonna show you that, what he means by extension.
- Right, yep.
- But what we're looking for here, you wanna tell them
about the number one rule? - Yep, the number one rule
when you're trying to answer
this question, "Is it gonna help or not?"
And the number one rule is, does the pain or the symptoms
or the numbness in the leg start to go away?
Particularly further down and it comes back up.
If it's happening while you're doing the exercise,
the leg starts to feel better, you're gold.
Keep doing that exercise.
As well as when you get done with the exercise,
it should continue to feel good,
or when you're done with the exercise and it starts
feeling better, after the exercise, slowly gets better
as a result of doing the exercise, you're gold.
- Yeah and I don't know
if you were completely clear on that, Brad.
Generally what we look for is that,
you know, the pain goes all the way down the leg,
it starts to get better down here first, usually.
Usually, we even look for the symptoms in the foot
maybe to get better first. - Right.
- And if you don't have symptoms of what,
maybe the lower leg,
the symptoms get better. - Sure.
- If they don't get better and they actually get worse
or the back pain goes away but this gets worse,
that's a bad sign.
You want it to go out of the leg,
we wanna get it out of there.
- Right.
- The further it's going, the worse it's getting.
- I just didn't wanna take the time to explain it.
- No, no, yeah, (Brad laughing)
I think you did fine.
- Okay, so, shall we go through the--
- Yeah.
- So, the first one, you wanna demonstrate?
- Yeah, I'll do the first one.
This is called the Cobra. - Right.
- We call it just McKenzie extension.
But what you're gonna do, you're gonna start off
with, and the key to this is keeping your pelvis down
on the mat or the floor.
And you could do this in bed, but a little bit soft
on the bed really. - Yeah, if you got
a firm bed or if you cannot
get down on the floor safely and get up off safely,
then I'll okay this for my patients but, typically,
on a carpeted floor is ideal.
- So you wanna start with your hands
generally beneath your shoulders.
And again, you're keeping your pelvis down
and you're working your way up this way
and you're extending the back.
- [Brad] This, you know, I looked up,
We're both not yoga people, but I looked up on the internet
looking up as many exercises as I could find,
and the Cobra is exactly what we do
for a great number of our
sciatic people patients. - Right.
- And, you know, with the exercise, I'm assuming
in yoga the goal is to get up as high as you can.
- Right and generally what you don't wanna see is this.
Let's say your back is so tight, you start going like this
and your pelvis comes up.
What you do wanna see is this.
- [Brad] And I have a feeling
that's what the yoga instructors--
- Emphasize.
- [Brad] Emphasize to the students as well.
- Yeah, they wanna get the arch.
And, obviously, if this starts increasing your pain
or increases the pain down the leg,
you won't do it.
There's variations we'd want you to try
and that's not what we're covering today.
So you're gonna go ahead and the thing about this is,
with these exercises, if they work,
you can do them every hour.
And we suggest, in fact, that you do them quite often
during the day, probably five times to six times a day.
And you can go ahead, set off repetitions of,
you can go with 10 reps, maybe more.
There's really no, if it's feeling better,
you can do more of it.
- Right, and if it does improve that well,
you're not gonna be doing these 10 times a day for 10 weeks.
Probably within a week, the leg pain will be gone
if it's responding that well.
I mean, for us just to say, pick out three exercises
and these are the ones, it would be irresponsible
to say we have to educate you about sciatica,
so that we're being responsible
and giving you good information.
- We're just kinda touching on the subject really here.
We're not going into great detail
why we're doing this
and how, you know, but and so. - Right.
But we are doing a pretty good job
of narrowing it down, I think.
Should we go to the next,
number two? - Sure, let's go to--
- I'm gonna do this one on the mat like you would
if you're doing yoga.
Okay, so if you have the sciatica in your left,
well, let's say your right leg.
I've got it down my right leg.
This is a technique that, if that exercise
doesn't start working for me when I have a patient,
this may be one of the second go-to exercises I'll do.
It's not exactly like this yoga
that's called a Supine Twist.
At least that's the name of it
that I found on the list, but it looks like this,
and you simply twist.
Look at my shoulders.
They stay flat.
And then we rotate the pelvis and the knee.
And typically if my left leg is the one
that's got the symptoms, I'm gonna take the right leg
and go over the top and twist this way.
- [Bob] Good, thanks, Brad, for clarifying.
I think you--
- I did say it wrong. - You had it wrong, yes.
He's absolutely right.
- Sorry.
- [Bob] If your pain is on the left side,
you wanna take the right leg and twist to the left.
If your pain is on the left side,
I mean right side,
(Brad laughing)
you wanna go opposite.
So this would be pain if it's on your right side.
- Right.
Now the thing is the exact same rule
as what the Cobra is you are gonna continue to do this
if the symptoms in the leg improve.
They start going away in the foot or the calf,
they're gone there and they kinda go up.
I always explain to my patients as, it's like a thermometer,
you know, when the red line is all the way to the foot,
we want it to come up this way as things are cooling down.
- [Bob] You could actually show it with the stripes
on your pants there, Brad, you could bring them up, see?
- This? - Yeah, see?
If the stripes represented pain, right now the pain
has gone out of the calf.
- Right, and we call that centralizing the pain.
So really while you're doing your yoga,
anything that centralizes or brings the pain out of the leg,
that's the right exercise.
- [Bob] That's a very good point, Brad.
You can probably narrow it down just in that fashion.
You can know which ones are good by which ones
the pain is responding positively to.
- Yep, and I like that, that's a good idea, Bob,
a good visual for people to get that pain to come up.
Now they've gotta look at this disgusting leg.
I gotta cover it up.
So, let's go to the next and the last one.
- [Bob] This is the last one.
- Now, sometimes people will get pain down the leg
from something called stenosis which, I have stenosis,
and this is the exercise I do on a regular basis.
- [Bob] Yeah, this is one that might actually make
a disc problem worse.
- Right.
- [Bob] So you wanna be very careful with this one.
Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing there
it's called Wind Relieving.
I don't--
- That's what it said, Wind Relieving, so whatever!
(Brad laughing) - All right,
we call it double knees to chest
and a hold and you can do it one of two ways.
One, you can bring up both legs, like, at once,
like Brad did, or you can bring up one at a time.
- Well, it may not be a, I don't know, in yoga,
if they do one at a time or not.
- [Bob] Oh, I don't know either
but I'm just saying how we taught.
And then bring up one and now bring up the other.
- Yep.
- [Bob] I mean, no, like this Brad.
(laughing)
- Oh, yeah. - Bring up one.
- Bob, we're doing yoga
not our exercises. - And now bring up another.
Yeah, there you go.
Just to put a little less stress on the back.
- But, anyways, that's the double knees to chest
or the Wind Relieving.
I just had a patient with sciatica down her leg.
I did the Cobra.
Oh my goodness did that flare her leg up
and we started doing this, so she's--
- [Bob] More of a spinal stenosis.
- Stenosis, exactly, and she is 70 years old so that
kind of all makes sense. - That really fits.
- Unlikely that, with a disc problem, again,
that that last one's gonna help.
It's possible but it's unlikely.
- Right, exactly.
It's like the old Williams flexion
from years ago. - Right, right.
- But we don't wanna continue to bore
these people with therapy talk.
So, anyways, that's the whole scoop
with yoga exercises and should you do 'em or not.
- Remember, Brad and I can fix just about everything,
- Except for--
- A broken heart.
- There you go.
- We are working on it.
Hopefully the yoga people could help us.
- I wonder how they do.
Maybe nobody has a broken heart
in a yoga class because--
- They're all happy.
- Well yeah.
We should really do some yoga.
(laughing)
- Yeah, get to know it, thanks.
(upbeat music)