Video and Transcript: Treat Your Sciatica Nerve Pain with these Muscle Energy Techniques for the Pelvis

Video Transcript: So one of the most common complaints that we see patients coming into the clinic for is sciatica or sciatic type symptoms. Basically, this is pain that’s travelling down the side of the leg. 

This can be for a variety of reasons. The most common is some sort of irritation of the SI joint, which is one of the joints in the base of the spine or the pelvis region. 

Other reasons that this can happen is just for muscle imbalances around the hip or pelvis.

If you’ve been diagnosed with this or you’re seeing a physical therapist for this, a lot of times we’ll give this little series of exercises. And they’re called “muscle energy techniques”. 

What you’re doing is, you’re actually utilizing your own muscles to help engage the muscles around the pelvis and teach them all to work again. Sometimes what will happen is, you’ll end up with some muscles working harder than others. 

So there is a series of four exercises that I like to give to patients for correction of a pelvis rotation or shift that should help with sciatic symptoms.

So, what you’re going to do is you’re going to straighten one leg. You’re going to bring one leg up to this 90-90 position. This really should not increase pain when you’re doing this. 

If any of these exercises or any of these positions that I have you going into are painful, make sure that you check with your physical therapist first before trying something new. 

So, what you’re going to do is, you’re going to bring one foot into this 90/90 position, you’re, if you can engage your abdominal muscles just ever-so-slightly to support yourself great, but it's not necessary for this exercise. It's really meant to try and shift the muscles around the pelvis.

So in this position, what you're going to do is, I'm going to put one hand on my knee and I'm going to be pushing my knee into my hand, but I'm not going to let my knee move. So it's called an isometric contraction where I'm going to contract the muscles in the front of the hip on the right side. At the same time as I'm doing that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this left leg which is the leg that's down and I'm going to gently push the left leg into the mat. What that does is it engages the muscles behind the left leg. So the right knee is being pushed in as the left leg is being pushed down. I'm going to hold that for about 3 seconds and then I'm going to relax. 

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the exact same exercise on the other side. So I'm going to take the left knee up. Bring that to 90-90. I'm going to push that knee into my hand and at the same time I'm going to push the right leg down. So I'm going to contract and I'm going to relax.

So again I'm going to hold that for about 3 to 5 seconds and then I'm going to repeat this about three times on each side. So alternately shifting, bringing the right knee to the right hand, left leg press down, hold for 3 seconds and then I'm going to switch. I'm going to bring the left knee up, push the right knee down, push, and hold for 3 seconds. And again, I’m going to repeat this about 3 to 3 times on each side.

The next two exercises that I'm going to do is, I'm going to, if I can, I'm going to bring both knees up, if you can rather, bring both knees up to this 90-90 position. If this is too much work, you can sit up a little bit and be supported behind your back so that you can do this movement differently. So it's less less pressure on the back. But I'm going to show it to you the way I'd like to have patients do it, if they're able to do it.

I'm going to take my two hands and I'm going to bring them together. I’m actually going to push them, put them between my knees, so that my knees are going to push against each other and that's going to hold for 3 seconds. Then I'm going to relax. I'm going to bring my hands to the outside of my knees and I'm going to push my knees out against my hands 3 to 5 seconds. 

And again I'm going to to alternate pushing in for 3 to 5 seconds and pulling out for 3 to 5 seconds. So I do those first two exercises alternating alternating 3 to 5 seconds and then I bring pulling in and pushing out three to five seconds. 

And that should start to help with the pain that you're having down the legs even sometimes just back pain in general. That can really be a great exercise to help correct everything. 

I would recommend that you do that you know anywhere from 3 to 5 times during the day as you're able to and within a few days that should really help with pain. But, if it's not you should definitely be checking with us or checking with your physical therapist.