okay if you've been diagnosed with a disc bulge or a herniation in your lumbar spine you're getting lower back pain and you've got some exercises to do then i'm going to show you what we give to our clients why they're doing them and how to do them correctly and we'll go through each one step by step now the first one we do this one for people who have got disc pain or pain from a disc bulging herniation on one side so if you've got on both sides you'll probably do it both ways but this is
a relieving type stretch to help us with that other two that we're going to go through so the first one we give them is lumber rotation now what i get people doing is starting off on their back because usually this is the most comfortable position for people to be and they don't like sitting they don't like bending forward in that acute face they want to rest this position here is usually the most comfortable because it's the most off-loaded position for the lumbar spine disc okay so when you're in this position there's no pressure on it
really what we've got to try and do them they'll still be in pain at this point is to go firstly to the painful side the reason we're doing that if there's a spoil just say on my left hand side more than my right if it's a posterior disc bulge it's bulging out sort of posture laterally off to left we want to go to that left hand side to try and reduce the pressure around that side so not away from it and trying to stretch out this way it's going towards it so what i get people
to do if it's left sided so is move and shuffle their feet just over to the left a little bit first okay so rather than starting from the center we go over a little bit to the left so give me the shuffle that way then what they do is they have their hands out wherever they want they slowly let their legs slowly slowly carefully go over to the left now some people might get a bit of spasm as they do this so if you're one of those people just be careful go slowly through it you
may only be able to go so far but if you can get and it's not too sore to do get all the way over to the left so your legs are basically on the ground your feet are still together you see that what i am now because i've moved my legs over i am now like at 90 degrees at the hip joint all right and my job here is to do nothing this is just to try and relax in this position and stay there now most of the time we find we do test this quite
a bit with our clients before we send them over homework is if it's left-sided paint and they go left and it switches it off we know that's going to be really helpful for them this one they may go for about one or two minutes sustained so it's not back and forth back and forth back for this is trying to close down if you like the left hand side posterior disc bulge reduce it the pressure in it to an extent to help that muscle spasm switch off and give them some of that pain relief so this
is a really nice offloading one for them to do and it's really important one it helps long term but also helps them get into the position or get them less source they can do the other ones which i'll go through so left sided left side of bolshoi that if you're one of those people that starts off here okay and you shuffle over and you simply can't get any further like this because there's too much spasm you need to put a pillow here like this and that will give them the support they can rest their legs
on that place there's a really nice little trick for you to do obviously as you get better and there's less spasm you can make that pillow less of a height so you go a little bit further so you can line that position because some people like i said this is too far from there too much load stress going on there so they have to put something under so that's a really nice one so that's if you're left-sided and obviously you know you've got to be guided by your physio whether you go back over to the
right-hand side that might be later on if the problem is very much left-sided like you'll go left it's right so did you go to the right if that doesn't work you need to contact your physio and ask why that's not working but that is usually one of the most relieving ones to do so that gets us into extension so that helps cover sort of the rotation part we need to work on with postage disposal we need to work on extension to help relieve that as well so most people when they have a post they're just
bulge they can sort of maybe handle lying on their front and maybe they can line this position as well but to get up they find this really difficult okay there's a little bit of pressure there there's some pain there maybe some muscle spasm eventually over time we want people to be able to extend like that okay to try and help that whole problem it's very relieving however when you start off that position is going to be quite difficult so what i would do is start off absolutely lying on your front wait till it settles a
little bit then you probably go and prop on your elbows the thing about this one is you can't stay for too long i'd maybe even go from 15 seconds maximum of a minute and then go back down again okay you may even need to roll on your back because we don't want to be sustained in extension for too long okay ultimately you want to be doing repetitions of what we call mckenzie extensions which is going upwards this way which looks like a cobra type pose in yoga but your hips are on the ground and that
would be a better position because we're trying to sort of milk that disc into getting more and more and more ability to extend okay so the spinal column to be able to extend without spasm if you hold it there for too long you may find that jamming effect almost makes it worse some people do like line like that especially if they need to lie on their front for a little bit otherwise you lie flat until it settles down but when you do this mckenzie extension you will go hands under shoulders trying to push backwards with
your hands don't lift with your lower back try not to clench your buttocks and and help your brain extend from using your buttocks it's not a sort of like superman type thing we're trying to completely relax the upper body so when you push away you've got to think about pushing the ground away from you and only going as far and nice and slow as your back can tolerate if there's a little bit of pain come back down and take the weight through the hands on the way down and you might just let it relax there
for two seconds and then you go again push away every time thinking about pushing away trying to go that little bit higher if your back allows so i like to sort of tell people okay two seconds down and then as you go up and then spend two seconds up there and then slowly down again and never rushing this over time we want to get the person all the way there it may take quite a while depending on how bad their problem is how much spasm they've got when you do this one you're only doing 10
at a time so the maximum i'd give people is three sets of 10 and you're doing that as many times a day as your body requires or how much you need to try and relieve it and this you may find the more you do this the less posterior disc pressure you get the more tolerance you can tolerance you have for sitting and standing and walking around it's not designed so you can sit more it just gives you more tolerance so your day is better and you can get better faster that mckenzie extension is absolute gold
and it is so important for those people with disc bulges some people though who've got that lateral disc bulge we'll find out a little bit hard that's why the rotation and the side glide what we're going to do is going to be really helpful to help with that but if you've been given mckenzie extensions that's the way you need to do it stick with the plan on there and trying to let your whole back relax when you do it your whole buttocks relax with it sometimes that's hard but also don't forget keep your legs on
the ground don't let yourself you watch me don't let yourself come up into here and then try and hang okay it is keep your pelvis on the ground and extend through your lower back use your abs you get a bit of arm fatigue hey but it's better than back pain so the last one of the three that we give us side glides now i started off on the wall with this there are other variations to do you can do it lying down you can also do a standing but the wall one's super effective and again
this is another mckenzie special for discs or posterior just bolders that off to one side they're really effective if someone has shifted off to one side so if they're walking in and their pelvis off to one side and their body is after here is super effective to help straighten them up but also reduce their pain now that can be because you might have a posterior disc bulge that is sort of because the pain the bulge is on one side say my right hand side that i'm sort of lurching away from that because i don't if
i go on top of it it feels painful so i'm sort of not mechanically necessarily pushed away but my body is staying away from that pain so the most common one is where the pain is say my right side it might be from my lower back through my buttock or my leg maybe i've got sciatica because i've got some nerve referral there and i lean away for i shift away from it now what we've got to do mechanically is try and straighten that person up because otherwise they stay in spasm they can't get any stronger
they can't what's hard to get it better but mechanically you're going to help improve what is happening through the spine so what we get people doing is leaning against the wall now if you're getting the cyclope you've got to remember well the first thing you've got to be doing is thinking if my pain is on one side and i'm away from that side then i need to put the opposite shoulder gets small it sounds a bit confusing but think of it this way if i've got pay my right i lean to the left put my
left shoulder on the wall so don't put your right shoulder on the wall just start with anyway if this doesn't work you need to console your physio and maybe you've got to turn around the other way but starting off we always get people opposite shoulder against the wall from the pain okay so from that point there donate mistake of having your arm there i want your arm clear so the arm goes forward shoulder on the wall feet a little bit further away okay so maybe it's about a foot foot and a half away from the
wall so what that means is i've got a gap here where my hip is where i'm going to able to go in with the hip so from that point there i'm straight i want to slowly let my left hip or pelvis go into the wall i've got my hand on here like a teapot i'm not going to push it in but i'm sort of guiding in where am i going to go how far can i go what does that do to my pain on the right hand side so with this one what we're able to
do again like the mckenzie extension we're going to try and do 10 or so at a time and you're only going to the point where where's that pain does it increase or does it make it feel better if it feels better you go further in just be careful that sometimes when you come out you feel a little bit of spasm pain that's just your body reacting to the movement but if you can go in and you don't get any pain you go all the way in if you are sort of not so bad here but
you go in and you get to the point where there is a bit of pain stop there don't go into the paint don't try and drive into it thinking the pain is better you just need to go to the pain and then back away very slow just like mckenzie extension mckenzie side glide is very much sort of take a bit of time pause there maybe for two seconds slowly come back out pause again and keep going it's very sort of methodical it's a little bit boring but hey if it helps your pain this is the
right thing to do you if you spend the time on it you'll feel better so this one here again do 10 step back step away and then you know you'll walk around and see how you feel the other thing we do with people in the clinic is we test them okay do 10 do 20 to 30 what's your shift like are they correcting up a lot of time they actually correct that shift because you're creating some changes mechanically in the spine and sometimes when that pain drops down the spasm drops down and you also the
brain allows you to sort of be on top of that disc a little bit better and you find this less sort of shifting then you can work on some strengthening work and help them stabilize to try and improve that you know day on day and day so if you've been given those three exercises that's the correct way of doing it and what we do with clients is test them what do you like now bending backwards bending forwards doesn't improve those sort of cinnamons which helps you find that if they're moving forward better moving back better
following those exercises the right thing to do and they keep on that path until it stops improving i hope that helps you with your stretches for your disc problems see you next time [Music] you
