- Hey there team my name's James and it's
my job to help you run strong, run injury free.
Today I want to take you through a really
quick little routine which'll help no end
if you suffer, as I have in the past, with sciatica.
Either pain very local to the lower back or indeed sciatica
symptoms, that head all the way down the back of leg.
If you're struggling with this right now,
work through this little routine and it'll help you
ease those symptoms and get rid of that sciatica pain.
We're gonna work through as a follow along workout.
I'm just gonna take it step by step and you can follow me.
We're gonna start out gently getting down
and trust me, if you are suffering with back pain,
it is a gently getting down to the floor
into a all fours position here.
Okay in this position, I want hands to create the base
of a triangle and you're gonna be looking
at the top of a triangle here.
Okay that's the start position, from there
I want you to tuck your chin to your chest,
you're just going to tuck your tail bone underneath you
come up to just, not a forced hump
but then come down into nice hollow.
Come up.
Draw the belly button in towards your lumbar spine
feel yourself lift your back up towards the ceiling
and hollow out, arching your back,
sticking your butt out, looking up.
Chin to chest as we come into the next rep.
Then from here again looking up.
We're just going through ten of these.
Again this shouldn't cause any pain
if it does cause any discomfort of course
stop.
Perhaps move on to the next exercise.
This is just a nice exercise to get your back moving
only work within the realms of
not necessarily pain free movement if you're generally
feeling quite aggravated through your sciatica
but movement that doesn't feel like
it really peaks your pain or really makes it worse.
Okay just gonna go for two more.
And call it 10.
Not particularly skilled at counting and talking.
Okay and there we go, that's a
nice little warm up exercise done.
From there, going to just gently drop ourselves down onto
the front again in this position,
all I want you to do is just your one hand out,
other hand out, just come up onto your elbows.
We're just gonna hang out in
this position for a short while.
Gonna keep the hips down on the ground.
Try and bring your feet together.
So we're not splaying the legs out.
Your feet together,
shoulders down and relaxed,
you should feel that even just propping yourself up on
your arms here, propping yourself up on your elbows,
should create a nice arch in your back.
Starting to extend the lumbar spine.
Again if your sciatica is caused by any kind of disc bulge
prolapse then this in itself may well help
in terms of the disc itself.
And generally speaking, those kinds of disc bulges
that kind of posterior disc bulges
and they don't particularly like flexion
which is the opposite direction to this, but if we're
working into extension which is this direction,
it can start to ease those symptoms,
ease the mechanical causes of that sciatic pain.
Ease the pinching on the nerve roots.
Okay from here, once we've been
in this position for a minute or two,
you can hold there longer if you like,
I want you to bring your hands underneath your shoulders
and we're going to just gently start
working up into little Mckenzie push ups.
We're not going full push up,
just as far as you comfortably can.
There and down.
We're not allowing our hips to come off the ground
just feeling them pushing
your starting to arch your lower back.
We'll work through 10 of these.
Four
again experiment with hand position
go out a little bit wider, push a little bit higher.
Over time,
you'll find that you can get to a point
where you're keeping your hands underneath your shoulders,
you're able to go straight arm into a full push up.
It's doing 10.
Seven, gentle tempo like this.
Again shouldn't make your symptoms worse.
Eight
but should just feel, over time, that you're able
to move through this motion that little bit easier.
If anything your symptoms should start to subside
particularly that radiating pain down into the leg.
Nine
so you can see I've moved my hands down closer to
initial under the shoulders position now.
Again shoulders down, hips down.
Ten.
Okay I wouldn't recommend going nuts with that.
I wouldn't recommend doing multiple sets of 10 in one go.
I'd recommend doing them all regularly throughout the day.
So you can work with that even up to doing 10 every hour.
If you like.
That's probably as frequent as I'd go
but if you like you can certainly spread them out
during the day and just come back
into that position on a regular basis.
The last exercise is more about neural flossing.
We're actually starting to improve
the mobility of the nerve tissue itself.
Go easy with this, again it shouldn't
make your symptoms worse.
If you notice that it's uncomfortable or it
stirs it up after the first time of doing this,
then don't persist.
But this really starts to challenge the nerve itself.
Okay so from here, what I want to do
is pull your toes up towards your shins
we're gonna work one leg at a time so we'll work the
right leg, so it's the right toes up towards the right shin.
Gonna go chin to chest here.
Okay and as we go out, let's straighten the knee,
I want to look up towards the ceiling.
Then your gonna come down
chin to chest.
Up looking towards the ceiling
down chin to chest.
Depending on the nature
of your sciatic pain
you may feel this either in the back of the knee
or in the calf,
in the buttock region
or even local to the lower back.
This in itself is what we're trying to do
is actually try to create a bit of
movement through the sciatic nerve
and improve it's dynamic mobility
amongst all the other tissues it passes
so if there's any scar tissue, if there's
any adherence, if there's any pinching
of the nerve, starting to loosen things up.
Work through 10 of these.
And we'll do the same on the other side.
So again toes up,
dropping down to this little slump position,
that's chin to chest and as we extend the knee,
we'll look up and down we'll come again.
Bit tighter on this side, certainly feel that
I've had my fair share of back pain in the past.
Certainly know that this is one exercise
that's helped me a great deal.
Slow deliberate tempo with this.
We're not forcing it, if you feel a stretch,
it's not like a muscular stretch, it's quite an intense burn
but I don't want you to push into it.
I want you to simply take it to that point
and then move away from it.
There are various slightly more
progressed versions of the slump exercise.
For example, hands behind your back,
shoulders down to the point your crick
is almost C shaped posture, really bad posture,
everything we don't want to see.
We come up and down with the ankle dorsiflexed.
Toes pointed up towards the shin,
chin on chest.
But for now, what I want you to do is start out
with that first exercise and use that just
to start improving a little bit of mobility
before we work through anything at all more intense.
So humps and hollows, cat cow whatever
you want to call that first exercise.
Just doing a simple set of 10.
Then we're going through 10 of our Mckenzie press ups
after just sitting in that
or holding ourselves, lying in that prone
supported position to start with just to get
our bodies used to that extension position.
And then 10 on each leg of our little
neuro mobility kind of slump variation exercise.
Work through that multiple times through the day
if you need to and you should start to feel
that those sciatic symptoms start to clear up.
You'll find that over time it'll move from being in your
calf to just simply only extending as far down as the knee
to then becoming more localized to the buttocks
and then only in the lower back
and then, over time, subsiding.
Of course, do make sure that if you're at all concerned,
you go and visit a medical professional
to take a look at your sciatic pain and give
you a proper diagnosis, proper treatment plan.
But if you found this video useful,
do not forget hit that like button,
click subscribe, hit the notification bell
and I'll see you in the next video.
Best of luck.