♪ 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.
- The title of this program is,
"What to do if your sciatica exercises are not working."
Now we're assuming that you may have watched the last one
in our series called, the number one sciatica exercise
for disc bulging or herniation exercise.
It's not working, it's just causing increased pain.
So, you wanna try some of these things.
This video is a part of a series of videos on sciatica,
if you wanna watch the entire series, go to bobandbrad.com.
Go to the program section, you'll find it there,
no strings attached, no cost,
and is also a printout with each video you can print out.
- So, if you're to the point where,
the first exercises are not giving you any progress,
we've got some advanced ones.
These are secrets they're kind of,
these are things we do in the clinic and they help out.
And at this point, if you don't have success with this,
that doesn't mean it's not gonna work.
You need to go see a therapist at that point,
and we recommend a McKenzie trained therapist.
- Yes.
- That's what their wheelhouse is,
they're trained specifically.
- In these exercises.
- Exactly.
- And we highly recommend if you find one,
and there's a lot of them,
they have them in 34 or 35 countries, so check it out.
- And they maybe more than that, now.
And the only other thing is you may not have sciatica
from a disc, you could have a
- Piriformis syndrome.
- Or stenosis. - Stenosis.
- Or spondylolisthesis, like I have,
cause this kinda of got me.
So, take your time with this, see how these work,
and remember those.
- Never make your pain worse, that's (mumbles)
So the first exercise,
you are trying the press-ups and they didn't work.
We're gonna try the banana exercise now.
So, let's assume that the pain is on the left leg.
So if the pain is on the left side,
what I'm gonna do here,
is I'm gonna shift my hips to the right,
but I put my shoulders to the left,
and my ankles to the left, so I'm forming a banana.
- Kinda interesting how we get these names,
we should come up with something a little more technical,
but banana is good, everyone can remember it.
- Let's say the pain is in this leg,
then I'm gonna do the opposite.
I'm gonna move my hips to the left,
ankles to the right, shoulders to the right.
All right once you get in this position,
now you wanted to see, what's your pain doing?
Is this making it any better?
You might even try getting up on the elbows.
You might try baby press-ups, the slight little press-ups,
while you're in this position.
Does this take the pain away?
Does this reduce the numbness and tingling?
Are you looking for any change?
My foot feels a little bit better in this position, great.
That's what you wanna go ahead
and try this for a while.
Then eventually, if this works, you might wanna try
a straight press-up again,
with their body completely straight,
and do some baby press-ups in that direction again.
- And again, with these things, my experience with it
when I haven't gone to the banana,
typically, I might yeah I have to give it you know
sometimes five to 10, 15 seconds,
and let things settle in before you can feel it.
Sometimes it hurts initially for the first few seconds
but then it starts to feel better.
And then they'll, say,
oh, yeah my leg does feel a little better in this position.
Then you go to the baby press-ups,
continuing to look for decrease pain in the legs.
Symptoms are pain, numbness, whatever,
and that's true with all of these,
that we're gonna go through.
- Yep, this is the same bit of advice we'll give you.
So the next one is called the road kill,
now let's assume the pain is in this leg again,
going down this leg.
I'm gonna go ahead and cross my ankle
over the back of my knee, on the opposite knee.
And in this position now I'm gonna go ahead and lay there,
and like Brad said, give it like to 10, 15 seconds.
See, does this pain decrease a little bit?
Does the numbness and tingling decrease?
And if it does, maybe I'm gonna try to get up on my elbows,
maybe I'm gonna go ahead try to do some baby press-ups,
and see if that makes the pain go away even more.
- So, I don't remember if we clarified, Bob,
you're only gonna go to this one,
if the banana was not successful.
So, you go from one, then you go to the next.
And so, Bob is gonna show you
on the other side. - Opposite side.
same thing, gonna get up onto the elbows,
or again just lay here for 15 seconds, see if that helps.
Does it decrease the pain, if this pain is this leg?
- I gotta be honest with you, Bob,
I've had a lot of people,
as soon as they start bringing their knee up,
they say, oh, that feels better
and it's relatively quick, but not always.
And if it doesn't work, then we go to the plan C.
- Then we'll try another one.
And why don't we turn the table on this one Brad.
- Yep and then we - Oh, how the tables turn.
- Yes. (Bob chuckling)
You wanna show them the side view of the.
- Oh sure.
- Of road kill, just cause it's easier
to see what's going on.
- Here's the road kill.
Say it's painful in the left leg,
I'm gonna go ahead put the leg across,
the ankle across the back of the opposite leg.
- I've had people bring it up higher.
- Oh sure.
- Go up to there, and it all depends how it responds.
- Yep, you're right Brad, absolutely right.
And you should try to keep the knee
- on the table, yeah right - On the table, right.
And then again, you can do the little baby press-ups,
so you can try to get up onto your elbows.
- Press-ups don't go near as high,
when you're in this position.
- No, you don't expect to go into full press-up
in this position.
All right, the next one Brad, I think it's the towel,
isn't it?
Yep, towel - Yep.
- So we just take a towel fold it up like this,
and it's all are kinda doing similar things.
But you can put it right underneath the pelvis like this,
I'd maybe even want more of a towel than that,
or maybe go like this.
- A little thicker yeah, you could.
- Probably a thicker tab, now there we go.
Now we just drew a tab there.
- We just stack it up, and then just lay on it,
elevates one side and it can help reduce stress on that.
- Same thing, again, you would lay for while,
or lie for a while.
we're gonna say that correct this time.
And then we're gonna go ahead, get up on the elbows,
maybe even put up your fist underneath your chin.
Try some baby press-ups.
All those little things,
since we've been saying all along here,
and see if that decreases the pain down the leg.
- Bob, we're giving way all of our tricks.
- Yep, that's right, these are all the tricks
we have in our haed, so we can do it on the other side too.
Cause you've a wrap it in the head,
usually, that's why I said head, right.
Tricks in the head, wrap it in the head.
Okay. - Okay, whatever Bob.
- Next one.
This is one that I found out, Brad,
that actually worked for a couple of patients of mine.
Is they actually get in this position like this,
they're just laying flat.
They'll get up onto their elbow
and then they just wiggle their butt, back and forth.
- This kind of a little,
like they're getting ready to do a dance.
- It's almost like a self mobilization.
- Sure.
- But the first time I saw this was,
when I went to a McKenzie course
and the patient had kind of discovered this himself.
He goes, I went like this, I started feeling better.
And I had a couple comments by people that tried it,
and they said that it helped them.
- We call it the wiggle?
- We call it the wiggle.
We know we gonna come up with our own names here, road kill,
did we come up with that one?
- No, I kinda heard that one at a course once,
so we can't take credit for that.
- And idea with banana, I don't think we came up.
You came up with baby press-ups though.
So , those are all things you can try,
if none of those work, you're gonna try the nerve flossing.
- Well, did you wanna show the hook line?
- Yeah.
- Oh okay.
- If none of those work, that's right,
you can show cat-camel, you can do?
- Sure.
- Which is real simple.
You just get onto all fours like this,
and you start arching forward with arch in your back
with your head down, then arch your back the other way,
and put your head up.
So kind of make a hump on your back,
and then go to the arch.
- Same rules, you're only gonna continue it,
if it starts to feel better, makes the leg feel better.
I have not used this one a lot with sciatica, but have you?
- No I haven't, but I've used this next one.
- I think it's worth a try, cause you have nothing to lose,
as long as you follow the rules,
only progress if it's making things better.
- Do you wanna show the hook line?
- Yeah sure.
- The windshield wipers?
- This is probably the last one I'd do,
the other ones haven't worked and then this one,
and I've had a number of times I've success with it.
Doing it by yourself is a little tricky.
- Oh, you're gonna do the one, the hook line rotation.
- Oh.
- Yeah, yep, you're right, you're absolutely,
we skipped that one, hook line rotation.
- All right so we call this hook line position.
Let's say the sciatica is in my right leg,
it's down to my ankle.
First thing your need to do, is pick your hips up
that's a little bit and shift them away
onto the left, right leg pain.
- Away from the pain.
- Away from that, so I'm shifting to the left
just a few inches, and bring your knees up,
and let them slowly go down to the right.
Again right leg pain, we're going to the right
and you just gently go down and see how the leg responds.
Now I've had a lot of people going down and say,
oh, the leg feels better already.
And within five to 10 seconds,
if that's the case, then you're gonna keep working it.
And it goes, let it go down
and just you may lay there for 30 seconds or so.
Don't lay there for minutes but just lay there 30 seconds.
I've had people longer than that,
only if the leg feels better.
- Brad, if I can interject.
- Sure.
- One of the variations you can do with this,
if it didn't work there, try either going further up.
- Oh yeah right.
- Or further down, you know your magic spots
gonna be somewhere in here.
And you find it, try different spots, and I mean,
again, it goes without saying, this makes things worse,
you're gonna stop immediately.
Brad's spraying coins out onto the floor here.
- And my money (laughing).
- Don't be doing this if it increases your pain,
that's an absolute stop.
- You just stop. - Stop and stop.
- And then you carry on.
- We got all the things for you to try,
we can try the nerve flossing and stuff like that,
if this stuff isn't working.
- That's right.
- All right, anything else you wanna add, Brad?
- Well, Bob, no, I'm all embarrassed,
all that stuff fell out of my pocket (laughing).
- Why though you, why would you be embarrassed?
Okay thanks to everybody for watching.
- Thank you.
(upbeat music)