New Year, New You: How to Tackle Fitness Goals Without Triggering Your Sciatica

Entering a new year is always a good time to make some positive changes in your life, and this year is no different. This year you want to make exercise and fitness a top priority and we applaud this decision.

There’s one hiccup however: you’ve had ongoing problems with painful sciatica and you’re worried that exercise might trigger the condition.

Well, you’re not alone with this concern as sciatica has a lifetime prevalence between 10% and 40% of the general population.

To help you quite literally move ahead with your goal, we turn to the team at Apex Pain Specialists, including Dr. Naveen Reddy and Dr. Maziar Massrour, who are leading experts on back pain and sciatica.

In the following, we look at a few ways in which you can exercise smarter, but equally as effectively, to meet your fitness goals while keeping sciatica at bay.

How exercise can help prevent future sciatica

We want to spend a moment affirming your fitness goals by looking at this challenge from a different angle: getting fit can go a long way toward preventing sciatica. 

There are several risk factors associated with sciatica, which is really a symptom more than a condition. Sciatica occurs when something in your lower back presses up against your sciatic nerve, which can lead to local pain, as well as symptoms that travel down into your lower leg.

This nerve compression in your lower back can occur due to trauma, but more often it’s due to degenerative changes, such as herniated discs, thickening ligaments, and bone growths.

Degenerative changes in your spine can occur due to age, of course, but people who are carrying excess pounds tend to have premature degeneration in their backs thanks to the added pressure of the weight. If you consider that nearly three-quarters of Americans are either overweight or obese, there’s a lot of potential for sciatica.

Our point in bringing this up is that, when you get fit, weight loss is part of the benefits and this loss can help possibly prevent further nerve compression issues like sciatica.

Going a step further, if you make strengthening your core muscles a goal, this can also protect your spine and reduce the chances of developing sciatica.

Getting fit without a sciatica flare

Now that we’ve extolled the virtues of exercise and fitness in preventing and managing sciatica, how do you avoid triggering the condition when you get started?

Our first rule of thumb is, when you start out, avoid high impact activities, such as jumping or pounding the pavement on a run. You should avoid activities in which you're twisting and turning, such as basketball, as well. Rest assured, our plan is to get you to where you can engage in these activities, but not at first. You need to build up.

So, instead of jumping, twisting, and turning, focus on exercise that’s more gentle, such as taking a long walk instead of a run. 

When it comes to strength training, which is key to any good fitness plan, please avoid:

• Dead lifts and squats with weights
• Situps
• Double leg lifts that strain your lower back
• Bent-over rows

Instead, we want you to start slowly and build up with back-friendly exercises, such as:

• Planks
• Bird dogs
• Glute bridges

These exercises slowly strengthen your back in a way that doesn't stress the area and trigger sciatica.

A great full-body practice is yoga because you can combine stretching and strengthening into one great fitness regimen that supports your back.

Final advice

As you get going on your fitness goals this year, our best piece of advice is to listen to your body. The moment you feel any pain, please stop whatever you’re doing and switch to something else.

There’s no glory in pushing through pain, there’s only more pain.

Our second piece of advice is to be patient. Fitness doesn't happen overnight and if you’re dealing with chronic sciatica, take it slowly and build up. The benefits at the end will more than reward your patience as you grow stronger and less vulnerable to issues like sciatica.

If you’d like a more detailed and personalized fitness plan that won't aggravate your sciatica, we’re happy to help! To get started, simply call our office in Chandler, Arizona, at 480-820-7246 today to schedule a consultation. You can also book an appointment online.