Hi there, I’ve been having sciatic issues going back maybe six or so months, and was wondering if there was anything specific you’d recommend, whether it’s in the low back rehab template, or some article/video/podcast of your I haven’t seen yet.
For some background, I train the olympic lifts, and have been for a few years with one long break from March 2020-March 2021 due to COVID. In around September\October of last year I started getting sort of sciatic/shooting pain pain in my left hip and sometimes leg, and it seemed mostly triggered by back extension. Something like an unweighted reverse hyper extension, or a barbell hip thrust could reliably trigger it. I went and saw a PT who gave me some exercises, and I have been seeing improvement. I can now do the movements that gave me trouble previously with much lower and sometimes no pain.
Around January, I started noticing that rather than a shooting pain trigger by certain movement, I was more getting tingling down my left leg more in everyday life. This progressed to tingling in all my limbs, then after a week or so settled back down to just the left leg. I continued to do the PT exercises and Olympic lifts (peaked for and competed at the Arnold too) and saw no improvement or worsening of symptoms. Given that the symptoms stuck around, at a follow up with my PCP, they decided to order an MRI, and the results included the following:
At L4-5, broad based right central disc protrusion moderately narrows the spinal canal and severely narrows the lateral recesses with likely impingement of traversing L5 nerve roots.
My PCP told me to keep active and avoid bed rest, so I seem to have gotten lucky on that front. They also said that slipped discs often reabsorb into the body, and that it takes some time. My weightlifting coach is modifying my training a bit to put a bit less stress on the back (more front squats, less back squats, modifying hip thrusts, training at a lower RPE/farther from failure in general).
Given I’ve been training through all of this, and at pretty high intensities some of the time, is there anything I should be doing that I’m not already, or am I on the right path for the most part?
Thank you in advance!