3 Worst Exercises For Low Back Pain & Sciatica

If you’re to recover from low back pain and sciatica it is essential that you’re doing rehabilitative exercises. Movements and practices that fundamentally rebuild resilience into your lower back so you become objectively stronger over time as the tissues that are injured at the root cause, recover. Unfortunately all too often people get recommended exercises that do nothing of the sort. Useless repetitive motions that have no long term value and fundamentally chase short term symptom relief, at the expense of long term recovery. Today we’ll cover these extremely common exercises and help you understand what all three have in common, why they are innocently prescribed, but ultimately why they have no value and should be removed from your back pain recovery plan!

The terrible three for back pain and sciatica

The three exercises or stretches we’re talking about are the knee hug, the child’s pose and the sciatic nerve flossing. These three exercises are often prescribed to loosen the nerve, stretch the back or even more erroneously “decompress” the spine. These stretches are perceived as easy stretches and make no mistake, they often feel nice in the moment, especially for the first two at least. As you curl up into a ball, for someone with a really stiff low back, perhaps muscle spasm too, they can feel nice, a lovely stretch. But at what cost? We’ll explore this later. 

How these exercises help back pain and sciatica feel better

The thing with sciatica and back pain is that the symptoms generally are associated with congestion in the spaces around the injury, beyond the original moment of strain, And so as the little spaces where the nerves come out are irritated by bits of bulging or herniated disc as well as the inflammatory congestion, the nerve pain, stiffness, tension and overall symptoms start to become too much to bear. As a result you feel the need to execute these exercises to curl the back and open the space where the nerves come out. On top of the nice stretching feeling that you get, which is perhaps more of a distraction than anything else, you get the space enlarging and the pressure decreasing, which helps “free the nerve” and reduce the irritation. Plus it feels like you’re “doing something” the psychological implications of which cannot be ignored. 

Why knee hugs, child’s pose and flossing are recommended

Expanding on the last point, these exercises or stretches are recommended because they feel nice as discussed in the previous paragraph. However, to expand further, they are recommended by your professional, physiotherapist, chiropractor, osteopath, NHS GP, etc because they are operating on the assumption that your symptoms are the issue that needs remedy rather than the problem, the injury. 

If the “trapped nerve” is the problem, or the back stiffness is the problem, then just stretch it out and untrap it by creating more space. And hey, it works in the moment for many people so surely it is good? If there isn’t thorough thought behind “why” we are recommending these things, and “what” they are doing to contribute to healing, is not considered, then of course, short term recommendations take precedence. 

There is very infrequently the discussion that suggests that after 429 reps of the knee hug your back will have healed. Because quite honestly there is no long term game here, other than “symptom management” but that gets to be a little frustrating when you’re on rep 1,374 and still wondering why the flossing or knee hugs are not “working” anymore.

In short they’re recommended by well meaning medical professionals who’ve often not really done the work to get solid mental justifications for the rehab, its more a case of “this is what we’ve always done for back pain” or “this is what the NHS says I have to give you”… and patients feel this. 

Ineffective back pain and sciatica exercises

Ultimately these are really just movements or stretches, they have no “cumulative purpose”  there is no goal they achieve, no mechanism that we can really confidently assert. At best, they’re a waste of time, preventing you from focusing on actual exercises that will work to rebuild the health of your low back and support the healing process. At worst, all that repeated flexion and forward bending is baking in a degree of hypermobility and/or instability into the injured L4/L5 segment that was herniated. By repeatedly and maximally stretching the ligamentous tissues at the L4/L5 segment, over and over, we’re preventing the natural restoration of tension that the body is trying to re-establish post injury. 

Alternative back pain and sciatica recovery strategy

Instead of having a shopping list of exercises that are really mostly stretches or just repetitive movements with little purpose behind them. Having a structure makes the world of difference, and that structure might look something like the below. We’ve got two parts of the “recovery strategy” with a third education arm that overarches the process. Being educated on the back, how it works and how it can be managed in the medium term while recovering is a vital part that is all too often skipped or missing completely. 

Relief Component: Managing strain

Movements such as correct stretching of the hip musculature, with a neutral spine, as well as the careful and gentle decompression of the lower back via stretches like the bed decompression stretch and towel decompression stretch are great options. Followed up with contrast bathing or icing to help additionally manage the congestion that builds around the injury without the extremes of movement are short term repetitive strategies like brushing teeth that do not add up but are worth performing. They do not undermine the healing process, only support it as you make progress on the secondary component. You can check out a full routine with all the components below: 

Live back pain relief routine you can use

Rehab Component: Rebuilding health

The rehabilitation component includes exercises that promote spine health and prioritise spine stability, the thing that is so sorely lacking for so many struggling to recover from back pain and sciatica. Using exercises like the “core 5” you can build in a progressive manner that is actually measurable and improves over time. The dead bug, marching bridge, squat, hip hinge and step up offer an avenue to safely develop this stability and then increase resilience and build stability and strength through the incorporation of progressively more loading over time. We explained their selection in more detail on a podcast episode linked below:

Core 5: Exercises for back health and resilience

Long term recovery that works

Ultimately if you use a structured program for rebuilding health, paired with some element of relief work that does not undermine recovery of the injury at the root cause of the pain or symptoms you experience, you’ll get better. Too often, too much emphasis is placed on gimmicky stretches or tricks that have no real long term value. They might feel nice in the moment but you find 6 months or a year later, you’re still doing them and nothing has really changed. Instead, progress through a program of rehabilitative exercises that measurably changes over time, building your body, but also your confidence, whilst supporting your recovery with simple but effective practices to manage inflammation and stiffness. This more structured route makes more sense, is clearly goal orientated and can be used as the measuring stick in your recovery from a low back injury.  If you need any help with more structure as you move forwards check out the resources linked above and the program linked below!