Three Great Exercises For Sciatica

Exercises for sciatica doesn't sound like such a great idea at first sight. You're dealing with a lot of pain when suffering from an inflamed sciatic nerve and exercises for sciatica are normally what's farthest from your mind. Well, you might actually want to rethink that position. Muscles and muscle strength play a key role in healing sciatica and preventing future flare ups.

Three different exercises for sciatica can go great lengths to relieve your sciatica. Some of us can't even remember the last pain free day and what it meant to just move freely without having to think those moves through first. Sciatica is a royal pain in the behind, but help is on the way with these three exercises for sciatica.

Exercises For Sciatica: Relaxation Of The Hip Flexors

Start with the relaxation of your hip flexor muscles. When your hip flexors are too tight, they pull your lower back into an increased curve. Once that happens, pressure on your sciatic nerve grows and sooner or later the over-tightened hip flexors contribute to your sciatica.

To help your hip flexors to loosen up a bit you can do the following exercises for sciatica: Get down on one knee, the knee placed a bit further back than your buttocks. The other knee should be up in front of you and the foot flat on the ground. Place your hands on your hips for straight posture. Now gently bend the knee in front of you forward, until you can feel the pull in your hip of the leg with the knee on the ground. Repeat the movement slowly a couple of times, then switch legs and repeat. This type of exercises for sciatica helps loosen the hip flexors and thus relieves pressure on the sciatic nerve. It also increases blood flow in the muscles, which is always needed to reduce inflammation.

Exercises For Sciatica: Stretching Of The Piriformis Muscle

The Piriformis muscle is located on the very inside of your buttocks and has the sciatic nerve running right through it. Now if this muscle over-tightens you can imagine the pressure being put on the sciatic nerve; and we also know how well this nerve takes to being under pressure.

Simple stretching exercises for sciatica instantly relieve the pressure. Lie down flat on your back and pull up your legs in a 45 degree angle. Now place the right leg over the left as if crossing them. Fold your hands around both legs and gently pull them towards your chest until you feel the pull in your buttocks. Hold your position for a moment and release. Now switch the legs around and repeat the procedure. You will feel instant pain relief.

This isn't a permanent sciatica cure, but will greatly relieve sciatica pain and tension in the Piriformis muscle right away. Once the Piriformis muscle loosens up it will stop aggravating the inflammation of your sciatic nerve. This is a great kind of exercises for sciatica when you feel that pain increasing and your muscles tensing up.

Exercises For Sciatica: Strengthening Your Abdominal and Core Muscles

Lower back and pelvis stability is provided largely by the abdominal muscles, along with other core muscles. When your abdominal and core muscles are weak, they fail to hold up your spine properly, thus pressure increases on the vertebrae and the disks, which in turn can put pressure on the sciatic nerve at its exit points from the lower spine.

So using exercises for sciatica to increase strength and flexibility in your core and abdominal muscles is an absolute must if you want to see long-term relief from your sciatica problems. Today's life-styles are, for the most part, not very conductive to strong core and abdominal muscles. It is important to pay these muscles some attention and put them to work, so they can keep you spine healthy and protected.

So if you do these three exercises for sciatica, your condition should be easier to control and pain become manageable, so you can lay off the medication.

Due to lower back pain and related symptoms one million workdays are being missed every year in the US alone. Back problems will become an issue at some point in their lives for 70 - 90 % of the population. When you are tired of limping through life (the way I did for way too long) and don't want to be part of the above statistics anymore, find a real sciatica treatment , click here to find a fast, safe and effective sciatica treatmen.