sciatica nhs exercises that help
The best sciatica nhs exercises that I suggest as a specialist MSK physiotherapist in the NHS and private physiotherapy practise owner, are those that that gradually target the movements you find most difficult or are most scared to do.
This is because lower back pain exercises that help to reduce peoples fear of movement and pain catastrophising have been shown to reduce pain by up to 50% (Schütze et al., 2025).
If you don’t like bending forward because it makes your sciatica pain worse, then the best sciatica nhs exercises will be the ones that focus on gradually exposing your body to increased amounts of bending forwards in your back.
You start in the position shown in the top left picture and move between that position and the position shown in the middle picture. Once that gets easy, then you progress to the depth shown in picture three.
But this must be done in a way that is nearly pain-free and doesn’t make your symptoms worse for longer than 15-minute after you stop the exercise.
You can apply this same logic to any type of movement you cannot do or are worried about doing. You just must find the type of movement that is comfortable to do without increasing your pain for more than 15-minutes after you have stopped the exercise.
