Sciatic nerve pain - please help if you can

[irongymnast]

I have a friend that has a serious issue with her leg. Everything started when she did a split and let her hands (that were pressing against the floor) go. There she felt considerable pain and for the next days she could feel the injury even when walking.

That was 4-5 months ago. She visited a doctor that first said the problem was the leg's bicep muscle but after an MRI, the muscle was showing ok. So he told her that it was the sciatic nerve. Then she visited a chiropractical who helped a little to ease up the pain. Problem is that after 4-5 months the problem persists and there has been little or no progress. It affects all her flexibility work so she can't do pike stretches, or straddle pike stretches for example. Actually she tries whenever possible to only apply the exercises to one leg (the good one). I don't know if this is a good idea as she might develop imbalances (she's been doing that for 4-5 months now because that's the only option).

She asked me if I could help but my knowledge isn't extensive enough to know how to address such a problem. I guess high volume, low intensity exercises should be used for rehabilitation of her leg.

Sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in the human body from what i read.

To describe better where exactly she feels pain: starting from inside the gluteus maximus and ending at the back of her knee. The exercise that puts the most discomfort/pain is splits and pike stretch.

Any advice/help is much appreciated!

[Cole Dano]

Nerve glides followed by tensioners are a good place to start.

Here is a decent article to start from -

http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpac ... p?id=53203

It's important when doing this kind of therapy that it IS NOT painful.

Here is a video - it seems the sound is not working but the exercises start around the 3 minute mark.

5GddMQdcgNA

Another thing you can play with is skin tensioning which is the manual version of taping. There are two ways to do this that i know. One is to place your finger tip where the pain seems to be and very lightly tug the skin in various directions looking for the one that reduces the pain symptom.

Another that i find works well enough for self treatment is to just gently grab a fold of skin and roll it and perhaps tug it. Again this shouldn't be painful to do.