Pain that makes it harder to bend forward or sit for long periods of time. Burning sensations that run from one side of your lower back to your feet. Weakness in one of your legs. These are all signs that you could have a lower back issue called sciatica.
It’s estimated that this lower back condition affects 3 million Americans every year. Sciatica occurs when one of the sciatic nerves is being pinched or irritated. Fortunately, physical therapy can be an effective treatment option for sciatica. Your physical therapist can develop a treatment plan that’s likely to include physical therapy exercises to help your sciatica symptoms.
What are the top two benefits that physical therapy exercises for sciatica offer?
Physical therapy specialists wouldn’t ask you to do exercises for sciatica unless they offered benefits for you. In fact, they’d encourage you to stop using any exercise that increases your symptoms.
For many sciatica patients, therapeutic exercises can offer two main benefits:
1. Reducing pain — Medical studies of therapeutic exercises show that they can help reduce sciatica pain. One study reveals that almost 63% of the sciatica patients who did therapeutic exercises had significant pain reductions in just three sessions.
Such results are possible because the exercises that your physical therapist shows you can stretch out tense lower back muscles. One example of such an exercise is the knees-to-chest stretch. To do this exercise:
- Lie down on your back with your feet flat on the floor.
- Use your hands to slowly pull your knees toward your chest.
- Hold this stretch for 20 to 30 seconds.
- Repeat this stretch three to four times per day.
2. Helping to prevent pain from returning — Your physical therapist can also use therapeutic exercises to help prevent the recurrence of sciatica pain. Often, this will involve pinpointing underlying issues behind your condition, such as weak back or core muscles. Therapy specialists can then make strengthening physical therapy exercises part of your sciatica treatment plan.
An example of a strengthening exercise your physical therapist could ask you to do is supine marching. To do the supine marching exercise:
- Lie down on your back with your feet flat on the floor.
- Tighten your stomach muscles so that your lower back flattens against the ground.
- Keeping your abs tight, slowly lift one foot a few inches off the ground and lower it back down.
- Then, slowly raise and lower the other foot.
- Continue to repeat these two steps until you’ve raised and lowered both feet 20 to 30 times.
Get more out of your physical therapy exercises for sciatica at Panther Physical Therapy
At Panther Physical Therapy, our specialists know lots of physical therapy exercises that can help your sciatica symptoms. This is why the personalized therapy plan we’ll create for you can include various therapeutic exercises. We can also add other therapy methods to your treatment plan, such as:
Contact us today for more information about our sciatica treatment services or to schedule an initial appointment.