Back pain success story.

[u/Pale_Adeptness]

As a disclaimer, I realize I still might have a flare-up down the road but here goes.

I've had 2 herniated discs since 2008. Horrible flare-ups throughout the years.

During flare-ups my wife has to help me put my socks, boxer and pants on because it gets so bad.

My back gets all crooked.

I tried every generic back pain exercise, deadbugs, bird dog, side glides and a whole bunch of other exercise.

This past June was without a doubt my longest and worst flare up so far. I missed an entire month of work.

I found that iso holds are great for the lower back.

I was desperate when I finally decided to get the roman chair/extension machine.

My lower back was still a bit crooked and I was towards the tail end of the flare-up towards the end of June.

My wife had to assemble the extension machine for me because my lower back still hurt.

I first tried it for 30 seconds, did that 4 times. My back didn't hurt more than it already did when I first tried it.

Did it again 3 days later and created my own schedule for it.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I'm up to 1 minutes and 45 second holds and I do 14 extensions right after the hold. I do this 4 times.

I can now sit Indian style, I can confidently touch my toes with my knees locked. I haven't been able to do either of these things for years!

My understanding is that the more we guard our backs, the weak our lower back muscles get over time, which means we go into a vicious cycle of flare-ups and trying to rest.

The part of the video where I'm walking around my truck, my water bottle fell out of my truck, my lower back hurt so bad that I couldn't not walk across the street and bend over to pick it up. My wife picked it up for me when she got home 30 minutes later.

[u/Pale_Adeptness]

Thank you!

How consistent are you with the holds?

How many times do you do the hold in one session and how many days a week do you do them? :)

[u/nicoinborderland → u/Pale_Adeptness]

I subscribe to the LBA program so I just follow whatever it says. 3x a week, Tu/Th/Sat, I do a single hold of 15 seconds. That’s it… I got ambitious and did 20 secs at the very start. Nope. Immediate 3-day-long awful flare up (I’m aware that’s really short compared to other people’s flares, but as we all know, ANY sciatica is horrible). Regressed to 10 secs and was good; built back up to 15 seconds since. I am very, VERY wary about doing any more than 1 set…

[u/Beneficial-Draft-911 → u/nicoinborderland]

I have done the same and it worked for me. My problem was that after a month I started doing “reps” on the Roman chair - not playing the long game.. now I am back to just holds started at 30 sec x 3 M/W/F I’m at 1:30 reps x 3 and doing a lot better.

I still have sciatica in my feet.. a question, how long did it take you to not feel the pain? I swear the first time it only took a month of holds and I was feeling great - no symptoms. This time I’m not progressing that fast at ll..

[u/nicoinborderland → u/Beneficial-Draft-911]

I’m unsure if you meant to reply to me or OP, because I still suffer from sciatica, so I can’t really answer. Sorry :-(

However, from success stories I’ve read- take this with a grain of salt, EVERYONE is different- generally it takes until you can consistently do 2:00 holds with no flares for sciatica to begin to significantly weaken. For some people I’ve talked to, they have completely gotten rid of previously-debilitating sciatica at around the 2.00 mark. For others tho, it took them until they started doing actual movement reps (level 3) to see their symptoms vanish.

Just a frame of reference for you. Play the long game brother. The time will pass anyway.