Sciatica is the name given to a painful condition that originates in the lower back and triggers a “shooting” pain down the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve is the longest and largest nerve in the body¹ and attaches at five points in the lower spine. It runs down the entire leg to the foot—and believe me, it is not a nerve you want to be playing up.

There are a few extremes in sciatica, ranging from a constant annoyance that ruins your life because you can’t think about anything but how sore your back or butt is, right up to not being able to put one foot to the floor without screaming in agonizing pain. In rare cases, both legs can have symptoms, and I cannot even comprehend how painful that would be.

If you have had a fall or recent lifting incident and this is your first experience with sciatica then I’d recommend getting a medical professional’s opinion to make sure there is nothing structurally wrong, but chances are if you are reading this you’re a long term battler of indomitable sciatica—and you’re getting pretty fed up with it!

What Are the Causes of Sciatica?

A lot of terms like degenerative disc diseases, compressed nerves, protrusions, and slips can be thrown about. They sound scary, but you really need to constantly remind yourself that pain usually will go away eventually. The body heals and adapts all the time. A major realization I had when studying this subject was that if someone can be in a car accident and have their spine smashed to bits and eventually be fine, then how is “a bit of nerve pain” not able to be fixed?

Super Secret Sciatica Tip 1: Belittling pain is a good place to start. Your attitude and the way you think about your pain is your first step. Don’t let it control you.

So, instead of resigning ourselves to it’s just part of our anatomy now and that’s that, how about these more workable reasons:

• Reason 1: Your hips are subtly twisted or misaligned.
• Reason 2: You’re overly dominant to one side.

Both these reasons could result in your discs or nerves being pissed off due to extra pressure on one side. Simply having a major imbalance in strength can trigger pain on the stronger or weaker side due to your spine being inadequately protected.

Yes, you could have a structural issue or internal damage, but you can’t change that. We now have two possible causes that we can be proactive about fixing. It has been estimated that up to 50% of 40-year-olds have “bulging discs” and feel no pain.² Chances are that if you work on these imbalance issues you may get rid of your symptoms anyway, so why worry?

Super Secret Sciatica Tip 2: Getting stressed about things you can’t change just makes the pain worse.

How Do I Check For Imbalances?

First, stand up, put your feet together then close your eyes. Are you favoring one side? Do you find it easier to lean into one leg or one hip than the other?

It might be obvious, or quite subtle. Or potentially because you know you’re checking your balance you may subconsciously even yourself up, but you may find a shift to one side or the other.

Second, either in front of a mirror or record yourself on your phone, just move and down a few times to relax your body and hips… then stop and see where you stand. Does anything look off? Visually is one hip higher than the other? Or one side twisted more forward?

Both of these are “superficial” imbalances in the sense that you can easily fix them with some conscious movement. You can bring balance back into both legs or manually shift your hips so that they sit straight.

The challenge is getting your body to exist like that naturally. This is a relatively easy, albeit potentially slow, fix. The combination of good side stretches for your obliques and core activation drills like the Copenhagen plank are a fantastic way to correct posture quirks.

The next thing to check is your single leg balance—a much more significant marker of unequal strength and potentially the cause of the above imbalances.

Provided you aren’t currently in a lot of pain, stand on one leg. Then stand on the other. See how each side feels. Can you easily stand on one side for a minute, but the other you’re wobbling around and barely lasting 10 seconds?

If one side is performing significantly different from the other (note that the worse side won’t necessarily be the side of pain), then you are lacking a basic element of strength and stability which might not be the sole cause of your pain, but definitely won’t be helping.

Super Secret Sciatica Tip 3: Get excited when you find an imbalance or a “problem. This means you can actively work on fixing it!

So, What Do I Need to Do?

The very first step is to get to know your hips. We’ve already touched on this with the three tests above, but this drill will help strengthen your hips and increase your mobility. Watch the video below to see a drill we use called the 90/90 position. It gets one of your hips into internal rotation, and the other in external rotation.

You don’t need to know the names of muscles or any fancy terms to be able to do this, just sit on the floor and see if you can replicate it. While in the position sit up as tall as you can and see if you can take your hands off the ground and rotate your body side to side unsupported.

Does it feel more challenging on one side than the other? If yes, then work on it! Spend a bit more time on that side. Does your tighter side correlate with the side with poor balance? Or the side you lean towards? Maybe it’s the opposite side? Experiment and take an active interest in what’s happening in your hips.

Hit this 90/90 position as often as you can a few times a day for 10-15 minutes until you notice an improvement. Not 5 minutes and say, “that’s quite hard.” Not a few reps and say, “I don’t notice any difference.” See if you can make yourself cramp, feel what’s different from side to side, and keep doing big deep relaxing breaths. At first, it may feel like you’re aggravating things, so be careful to not push it too far.

Working on your 90/90 and spending more time on one leg will begin to balance out your hips and build stability. If you dedicate real-time to this, you will find your sciatica symptoms reducing and even disappearing completely. Take it from someone who’s been there.

What About Seeing the Physiotherapist/Chiropractor?

A click can provide relief temporarily. If it is a recent injury and you’ve only just presented symptoms then that could be all you need to get everything back in the right place. However, if you have been suffering for a long time then your muscles are pulling your skeleton, any realignment could be undone by the time you get back to your car.

A good physiotherapist will look at your entire body and not just your back or the site of pain. They will do a good job of easing symptoms that you can get back to moving and working on your recovery.

The main issue with getting external help is you only have 30-60 minutes with this person, possibly once a week. So, what about the other 167 hours? You are living with your pain 24/7, and at the end of the day, you are the only one who can really fix it. Act. Don’t just accept sciatica as your fate.

Let us know if you struggle with sciatica and other things that have helped you along your journey, you can find me on my The Simplistic Mobility Method website!

References:

1. Yeomans, S. (2019). Sciatic Nerve Anatomy. [online] Spine Health.

2. Brinjikji, W, et al. (2015) Systematic Literature Review of Imaging Features of Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations. [online] AJNR. American Journal of Neuroradiology, U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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Someone younger is bound to look at someone older and think, they don’t have a clue. Someone older is bound to look at someone younger and think, you don’t the half of it. The fact is that we all need support, young and old, but as you get older priorities change, your family takes up your time, your body doesn’t seem to respond the way it used to and you find a lot of things harder. But, this perception of yourself, the perception that the young have of you, is not real. Your attitude matters and your health matters most of all.

If you’re the fattest, oldest, the least fit person in the gym, you’re an inspiration, and you have just as much right to be there as anyone else, more in fact, as it’s easier to get fit when you’re already fit. We’ve all seen the clips of the crazy 69-year-old grandparent types doing bodybuilding shows, pull-ups, and handstands and they only started 5 years ago.

The only difference between you and them is, they had a thought, they used their experience to be smart and made gains faster than any little twerp that was already strong. I can make any person with no previous injuries, or stress, strong easily. Taking someone that’s been through a lot and is starting from the ground up, well, that’s so much more worthwhile.

Find Your Flexibility

The first place to start is to find out how much flexibility you currently have. If you have not moved much for a number of years – or just never moved – you don’t need to start squatting and deadlifting for your first competition quite just yet. You might have to go to the back of the queue and start behind everyone else you see around you at the gym, and that’s slow, but it won’t be forever.

Take a look at these ultimate mobility sequences. You may not be able to do them at all. I couldn’t when I first tried them at the age of 24. But the more you work at it, the more magical things should start to happen.

Lunges – A Safe Starting Point for Building Strength

There is every likelihood that if you are just trying to move you may have balance or core issues so, squatting may not be for you, yet. The magic of the simple lunge is that it sorts things out for you as you go along.

You can start with the usual lunge forwards, step backward, alternating each side of your body. However, it’s nice to work up to clockwork lunges, demonstrated below, because they strengthen your hips, coming at them from all kinds of wonderful angles.

Core Stability

Working on planks and leg lifts have so many benefits for keeping you strong and coordinated. Yes, you may feel like you are horribly weak and are embarrassing yourself but, keep training because you are doing something that requires no machines or gimmicks and carries over to real strength and stability.

The Pull

As for the upper body, in general, pulling is stupidly important. Most people end up with rounded shoulders from sitting at desks and just a general decline in their posture as they age. Opening up your chest and strengthening the rhomboids, those muscles that stretch from our scapula to the base of the neck on your back, is essential to correct posture and help you avoid neck pain. Having a TRX or a set of gymnastics rings is a great idea for training, you can’t do enough of these type of exercises. Try ring rows, like I show here.

The Daily Mobility Drill

Finally, at the end of the day, no matter where you are, you can always work on your mobility. Assessing your joints day by day and challenging them ever so slightly will have SUCH a big payoff in years to come! Plus if any of the younger ones are still tuned in, I am finding keeping my joints happier is far more beneficial than any strength program for actually building strength.

Not being in pain all the time means I can actually move more and practice better! You don’t have to get overly complicated with it, and you don’t have to go full yoga, just see how your body moves and what feels.

And if all else fails, dance. If you don’t want to learn to dance, walk up a mountain, race someone in the street. Don’t just sit there.

If you want my help, you can find me at Chum Sut Mixed Martial Arts in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, and if you can’t make the trip, try me online at The Simplistic Mobility Method.

The post Move It! You’re Old, You’re Not Dead appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I have worked with many different athletes over the years. For each one that presents with persistent back pain or injury it usually comes down to missing one element of core training. Everyone knows the exercises. I’m not here to teach you a new type of amazing fix-all core exercise; it’s the implementation of holistic core training that is the key. Ask someone when the last time was that they checked on their obliques. You’re usually met by a blank stare.

What Is Core Training?

Ask ten different people and you’ll get 10 different answers. You’ll get responses like: planks, sit-ups, the deadlift, back extensions, knee raises—and they’re not wrong, but where is the standard? What is it that you are actually trying to achieve with these movements? What’s the point in doing these core exercises? How often should you do them?

To me, everyone needs to have the ability to brace, rotate, and resist an external force and have balance within those strengths no matter what their discipline, sport, or way of life. If you are great at rotating in one direction but show a massive difference in the other, you’re going to develop issues down the road.

Real core strength comes down to balancing these three things:

• Isometric strength
• Rotational strength
• Anti-rotational strength

Creating strength and balance in all of these areas should be part of your training every week—without fail.

Isometric Strength

Just holding a position for a set duration couldn’t be difficult, could it? As a trainer, it is common to see people who can hold a “perfect” plank position with ease, but then give them a barbell and all of a sudden their spine looks like a giant question mark. Clearly, the plank isn’t giving them any actual core benefit.

Someone’s ability to relate a plank to actual weight-bearing exercises is where the benefits lie; otherwise, you’re just relying on joint stacking and making yourself uncomfortable for 2 minutes. Techniques such as the Hard-Style Plank (probably the best invention there ever was) that was made popular by RKC are what will give you the ability to learn how to create maximal tension in a static position in a safe way.

To perform a hard-style plank, have your elbows directly underneath your shoulders and your fists clenched. Your pelvis should be in a neutral position with no hyperextension of the lumbar spine, glutes engaged, legs straight, and feet pressed into the floor hard.

Take a breath in, hold good intra-abdominal pressure; imagining trying to crush the air in your belly with your abs; and contract every muscle in your entire body, even your fists, hard for 10 seconds. Then take 10 seconds rest by maintaining the plank position without the tension then repeat. One minute of that will be way more beneficial and relatable to lifting instead of just being in the position for 5-10 minutes without proper tension.

This same principle applies to the side plank. The side plank is a great tool for the obliques and by adding a simple leg lift into it you can really start to connect the hips and core together. Most people with hip pain or back pain will struggle to do this on one side more than the other.

It’s crazy how many people I have met that can deadlift very heavy and do all kinds of intense training but fail at this fundamental movement. When they get injured guess what gets the blame? Their training. People start to criticize movements they once loved just because they lack proper core strength.

In my opinion, this purely comes down to the amount of information available. People got along fine for years when jumping jacks and planks were standard warm-ups. Now we’re so damn intelligent that we’re trying to mobilize and “fix” everything, but we are forgetting to get strong. If you can’t hold a side plank for thirty seconds, you don’t need to be on a foam roller, you need to side plank.

The first few minutes of all of your sessions can contain hard-style planks, and that’s your isometric core strength taken care of.

Rotational Strength

I count any kind of movement that you do with your spine as rotational, so the sit-up falls under this category, but at the end of the day, sit-ups aren’t that important and can actually be quite aggravating to people with back issues and those who are bigger people in general. It is more important to train torso movements because they are more practical when it comes down to side to side rotation, like when throwing a punch or chopping wood, all that kind of groovy stuff.

Rotational strength is something that is missed by those who only strength train or want to get bigger. One of the best ways to add in some rotational work is to stand side-on to a wall and throw a medicine ball against it, repeating for both sides.

As we are only talking about the core itself and not the transfer of weight and adding the hips, the video example shows the core being isolated by using a kneeling position and lunge variations. This is a phenomenal way to teach the body how far it can rotate and the elasticity that it can access. Your core should feel like it’s been loaded and “let go” like a bow and arrow, rather than you just swinging and rotating.

One of the best ways to avoid getting back tightness is to just move your spine, see how far you can bend side to side, touch your toes, lean back, see how far you can rotate and reach behind yourself. Do all of those movements feel similar on both sides?

When I was recovering from my back injury one of the biggest things I noticed was how uncomfortable lateral flexion was on one side compared to the other, and even after years of training it was something I never once thought to check, but it was actually a contributing factor to my pelvis twisting. I think a lot of people put too much importance on the work and advice of others, forgetting that they can experiment with their own movement. No one knows how you feel better than you.

Anti-Rotational Strength

This is a fun one. Anti-rotational strength is the ability to resist being pulled out of position. Similar to rotation strength, this refers to all directions of movement. Anti-rotational strength is important for everyone, but it is paramount for anyone partaking in a sport in which there’s an external load or force.

When working on anti-rotational strength, there are very few things that can compare to partner drills and martial arts training. Resistance bands go a long way, though, in supplementing anti-rotational strength and the best part is that they are cheap and you can use them easily outside of gyms. Just like you need your rotators to rotate, you also need them to stop and hold a position when you ask them to. Any kind of weakness in your game here will see you pulled out of position and squashed like a bug, especially during moves such as a heavy squat clean.

Probably the most noticeable issue with people who have weak anti-rotational strength is that their quadratus lumborum (QL) will stiffen up causing consistent lower back tightness that most people try to stretch out. Instead, working their obliques would be far more beneficial. It is a common mistake to stretch out long-term tightness when instead you should be asking: why has this area tightened up? Nine times out of 10, stability and strength are what’s actually required to take the pain away.

The Pallof press has got to be a favorite anti-rotational exercise for a lot of people. It should have a place in every gym of every discipline in the world. It is one of the simplest ways to get anti-rotational strength training done with only a small time investment: 1 minute each side for three to five sets will really keep your core fired up. You will find that if you play a side-dominant sport such as golf or hockey, or even do MMA, this will be incredibly easy on one side compared to the other.

Set yourself up with a band attached to something besides you, grab it with both hands, outstretch your arms and take sideways steps away so the band is pulling you back. Make sure that you are predominately feeling it in your core. This is not a shoulder exercise, so try to keep your arms relatively relaxed throughout.

Brace as if you were holding a plank and start to move your hands forwards and backward while maintaining a strong core position. You should move as if the band wasn’t there while resisting the pull back the entire time. If you haven’t already been doing Pallof presses then prepare to have your training changed forever.

You Must Incorporate These Methods

Having these three elements as part of your training, warm-ups, or cooldowns every week will keep your core solid and make your overall training even more effective. Try adding planks to your warm-ups, Pallof presses between your sets of squats or presses, and wall balls as a session finisher.

These movements are the basics before you start getting fancy with anything else and they should never be forgotten. Treat these exercises with respect, being mindful as you do them, and always remember you can get stronger, better mind-muscle connection, longer duration, whatever! Never assume that you have mastered them. No one has ever regretted having a stronger core.

The post The 3 Core Amigos: Brace, Rotate, Resist appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I think the main issues are when it comes to the relationship between mobility and training are:

• How much mobility do we need?
• Is too much mobility work at the start of the session actually compromising our stability?
• Have we become injury paranoid?
• Is there an end goal to all this mobility work?

The Quantity of Mobility

How much mobility do we need? Well, it depends.

I think it comes down to assessing your own personal practice and where you see yourself in 5+ years. You need to take your goals into consideration.

If you want to break deadlift world records and be the strongest you possibly can be, then doing stretches that will make you able to do the splits is counterproductive. Of course, it’s possible that people that can maintain a high level of both flexibility and strength but, for the majority of us, people who are stiffer can create more torque and tension, which is handy for big lifts.

I work predominantly with CrossFit athletes, many of who have some of the most hilarious “injury” reputations out there. Why is that? Well, the amount of mobility and strength that is required to be able to become any good at CrossFit is quite high, and people are very reluctant to put in the level of work required to make sure their bodies can cope with the demand. That is what scaling was invented for—it doesn’t just mean weight, there are certain movements that people just shouldn’t be doing at a beginner level. If you look at someone who has been doing your sport for many years and has stayed relatively injury free, see if you can move like them, find out where you come up short, and start to work on your shortcomings. If in doubt always ask your coach, or if you know a good physiotherapist, see what their recommendation would be and if they can help you at all.

Don’t Exhaust Yourself Doing Mobility Drills

Is too much mobility work at the start of the session actually compromising our stability? Again, it depends.

Coming back to the foam roller, if you’re going for a one rep max deadlift, do you really want to be chilling out on a roller and “loosening up” your muscles? Surely that time is better spent practicing bracing and doing some lighter deadlifts. On top of this, exhausting yourself doing end range mobility drills might inhibit your ability to call on that stability later on throughout the session.

You have to consider what the focus of your session is. Are you really going to make drastic improvements to your mobility as a ten minute warm up?

The 90/90 drill and squatting is a great example:

This drill is a phenomenal way to work on your internal and external hip rotation and stability. Integrated with squats it can be absolute magic. However, if my session was planned to be very heavy I would put in around 5-10 minutes the evening before, then only do a few reps as a warm up when it came to my training session.

You can quite clearly see that the intensity of the drill will have a direct effect on how the session goes. If you overdo it and completely exhaust your hips at the start of your session you won’t be shifting a lot of weight. If you use it as a short warm up and cool down then you’ll have a nice combo of strength and mobility and hopefully feel more “switched on.”

The most common things I am asked when I give someone a drill are what rep schemes they should use and when to do things. As you may have guessed, my answer is that it depends.

Some things to ask yourself are:

• Do you feel like you’ve made a difference?
• Do you feel stronger for it?
• Did your warm up affect your main session?
• How tired are you in general? Should you focus on only mobility today?

Injury Paranoia: The Endless Warm Up

Have we become injury paranoid? Yes, actually, I believe we have.

What’s the first thing you do when you get hurt? Research. Oh dear, what a bad idea that can be. When you start to look into how much you can get hurt and see the crazy injuries out there in every sport, you start to notice just how easy it is to pick up an injury. People then tend to forget to look up how crazy strong you can get post injury.

When your warm ups start looking like they wouldn’t be out of place in a bondage evening, you need to re-evaluate your thought process. You can’t mobilize everything, there are no perfect warm ups, and the biggest factor here, I’ll give you the technical term, is shit happens.

When people were riding into battle centuries ago, I’m sure the thought process wasn’t “Ooooh, I hope we win and that I don’t hurt my knees.” Why should training be any different? Your body language is a direct mirror of your thought process. If you think strong you’ll be strong, if you’re mobilizing your quadratus lumborum for twenty minutes before Olympic weightlifting so you don’t hurt your back, you’re in the wrong frame of mind (and you’re in the wrong training session).

If you honestly say to yourself that you’ve done your homework and you know your body has the capabilities to complete whatever a session will throw at you, you’ve done enough and should just enjoy the training. Don’t skip whatever drills or exercises work for you, but do try to avoid the defensive route. In my experience, the people that are the most paranoid are the ones that get hurt the most because their fear causes them to make silly mistakes when they wouldn’t have otherwise.

When an injury does happen, as long as you rehab it correctly and take care of any compensation that may have happened, there is no reason you wouldn’t be stronger than before and have more awareness and appreciation. Living in fear of a second injury is no different than imagining your favorite celebrity busting through your bedroom door and having their wicked way with you. It would be nice, but you can’t obsess and live in hope that it might happen one day. You have to get on with your life regardless.

Mobility Goals

Is there an end goal? Honestly, it depends.

It’s scary that I see some people become so wrapped up in doing mobility and making their joints work better that it’s all they do, no other practice, that’s it. You have to ask what the motivation factor is there, and how sustainable it is. I think I am quite lucky/unlucky to realize we won’t be doing what we’re doing now forever. Your training will change as you get older, and eventually, you will become one of those people who say “I used to do that.”

If you have decided you want your body to have a freedom of physicality then that is absolutely awesome, but I can imagine you will regret not doing other things alongside that. I try to sneak mobility work into people sideways, bribing them with advanced skills if they work on it, which is a better way to motivate yourself. Stretching your wrists so you can do muscle ups is far more appealing than stretching your wrists just in case your elbows hurt, possibly, one day, five years in the future.

You need to ask yourself: what do you want your body to do for you? How best can you support it in your endeavors? Without an end goal, you can end up just drifting. Are you really making any progress? Or just wasting time?

The post Mobility Isn’t Training: Find Balance in Your Workouts appeared first on Breaking Muscle.