McKenzie Physical Therapy Exercise for Sciatica
- By Sue Traeder
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- 17 Jan, 2019
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Absolute Best Exercise for Sciatica & Herniated Disc- McKenzie Approach.
Famous Physical Therapists Bob Schrupp and Brad Heineck present the best exercise for treating sciatica and a herniated disc. They demonstrate the McKenzie technique or approach. Used in 38 countries, the McKenzie technique is the best option in their opinion.
Video Highlights:
By doing certain exercise you can actually centralize pain. This is for people that have back pain with associated numbness and tingling down their leg. When you have Sciatica quite often you're gonna have pain in the back and then it travels all the way down the leg. What McKenzie discovered is by doing certain exercises you can actually make that pain go out of the leg and back into the back and eventually it's going to go away.
So what you want to see first is that maybe it goes out of the calf, all the symptoms go out of the calf, then we do some more exercises and now it goes out of the thigh.
We do some more exercises and it goes out of the butt and it may be even a little worse in the back, but eventually this goes away too. This all goes away and it's important to mention that's the order you want it to come in here.
The worst sign with somebody when you have Sciatica is that when this goes away and it gets worse or stays around that's not what we want to see and the prognosis is if you can do the exercise that we're going to demonstrate and the leg pain improves quickly it's a very good sign that you're going to have good long-term success.
We're going to show the exercise now, the basic mechanics right at the end of this video we're going to show you what happens with the disc when we're doing these exercises.
What you are going to first start by doing when you have this is with when you have a Mackenzie therapist they're gonna tell you to start by laying prone.
For some people even this they can't do. This will even make their pain worse, so they actually have to start with a pillow underneath them. Then you can lay more comfortably. Sometimes two pillows or I've even had to put three pillows. A lot of times I'll put the pillows this way instead, but you do whatever works.
Then you want to lay that way for five minutes or thirty seconds or whatever and then you see if you can pull the pillow away and get like this.
And then eventually you can try for thirty seconds or so there's no magic to the time of this but then eventually you might get up onto your elbows which is a prone prop. This is assuming, you only do this, is if the leg pain and symptoms improve particularly below the knee or furthest away. If they don't improve at least they don't get worse.
We're hoping that you might get a little improvement. When you start feeling less tingling or less pain down there then you're going to go progress to the actual exercise where you're going to put your hands underneath your shoulders and you're going to do a half press up first.
If you do five or ten of them by the fifth or tenth one it's getting easier, the pain and the symptoms in the leg, could be numbness or tingling, improves and you can get a little bit higher.You're looking to get an arch in the back. I tell my patients, imagine there's a belt going around your waistline holding your waistline to the table or the floor. Then eventually you're going to see if you can do full press ups. Most of you won't be able to do that because your pelvis is gonna start to come off the bed or floor.
You're going to eventually work up to that and you know as an exercise you can do this three to five times a day, ten times. I've even had people do it as much as every hour, if they can do it.
What you should know though is that quite often it doesn't go that well. Quite often there has to be little adjustments they make. And, that's where you're going to need to find a Mackenzie trained therapist to help.
There are Mackenzie trained therapists throughout the world. We counted 38 countries throughout the world and you can find if they live near you. These therapists are good and they're experienced.
We've got the lower vertebrae shown here. If we have an injured disc causing the symptoms on the leg this red disc is a model of a bulging disc. We need to get that bulge back in because that bulge is pinching the nerve causing the symptoms down the leg.
So generally what you have again, this would be the two lower vertebrae of the back and in between it you have the disc which actually provides shock absorption.
It's not a rigid structure it's actually pliable, similar to this model, and what happens is whenever you bend forward. This is one of the McKenzie questions, they'll ask you to see if it's appropriate for you when you bend forward does that often give you trouble. Does that bring on your symptoms or does shifting or sitting.
Bending forward is fine on a healthy disc but on a disc that's starting to weaken can actually bulge or herniate towards the back and there's nerves back there right and it's hitting those nerves and it's sending pain down.
So conversely, the idea is have you been back this way you're pushing that bulge back in. That takes the pressure off the nerve so that's a very simplified version of what's going on. Again, you know you can try these things but you really may need a therapist in in the end to help you out.
To schedule a consultation with a McKenzie trained physical therapist contact the Grappin Clinic today at 941-426-9551. We have locations to better serve you in Bradenton, North Port and Port Charlotte, FL.
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