Will Harlow

Walking can really help to reduce and control the pain of sciatica, so as much of that as you can.

and just avoiding things that cause pain.

And sometimes those things are unusual.

I know for me that when I had that pain, if I slightly leant one way, it really hurt, but if I leant right the way down, no problems.

So I avoided any exercises where I was slightly leaning forward.

So anything with weight on my back that caused me to come forward slightly,

avoid, but then other exercises, even things like the leg press, which people typically think you should avoid with sciatica, that was fine for me.

So it's very individual.

Okay.

So avoid what hurts, do more of what doesn't, keep moving and rebuild that strength.

Yeah, most of the time.

If you're following a good plan and it's designed to help you reduce pain, restore mobility and rebuild strength, 90% of cases get better.

And I think people's perception of it is skewed because we all hear about the awful cases that are there all the time and didn't get better.

That's probably only about 10% of cases.

then there are people who have recurrent sciatica which is quite common but again i would argue that most people where it's recurrent they haven't fully regained mobility or rebuilt strength they often wait until the pain goes away then they just jump straight back into doing what they were doing before and there's still that underlying problem that might not be causing pain now but it's leaving them vulnerable to a re-injury later

It's a really good question.

And as I've moved through my career,

I've come to the conclusion that probably 80% of the cases that I treat in the clinic are what I would call mechanical problems.

So mechanical pain.

We used to think, as I said, everything that caused pain is an injury.