Thats good. Physio is key. They dont have to be crazy exercises. The key is repitition. When you sustain an injury and pinch a nerve its like losing current to your stabilizer muscles. As a result theose muscles stop firing intuitively. When you go to lift something they should automatically fire and stabilize you before you use a major muscle group to do the actual lifting. I'd recommend doing those physio exercises as many reps as humanly possible. Theyll give you different ones and that will mix it up so you dont get bored but it works on firing the same stabilizer muscles. By doing as much repition of those physio muscles as you can it will become intuitive. You wont have to consciously think to stabilize before you lift or pull or move. So its not about heavy lifting exercise its about repitition. In the course of you training your brain- stabilizer muscle conductivity your spine should line up and stay lined up better and the pain should become graduslly more controllable. I'd definitely take advantage of the physio therapist's exercises . If you do them endlessly they'll be the tools that you'll need and use for the rest of your life. The injury is there so now its just to what level you want to maintain it for what activities you want to do. Its definitely a large part of why i got on an emtb , or was open to the possibility. After getting on one who wouldnt , injury or not. Good luck with your injury. I have empathy for anyone dealing with it . It'll get better and you'll develop a good feel of what and when you can open up the throttle.Cheers, yeah it's all about hamstring and posterior chain stuff at the moment. Physio has me doing a few exercises but nothing crazy. Got lovely sciatic pain from my back down my left leg as well.
Glad the weather is crap as I'm a bit of a fair weather rider so don't feel like I'm missing out too much
Really want to get back to stiniog/bpw etc for next summer but realistically it's more like gentle cross country stuff instead.
Awesome, appreciate it!
Everyones injury is different so it can be hard to tell. That being said im pretty sure you'll be able to get on the bike and rip some turns. Personally i just have to be reasonable with my expectatiins and careful not to overdue it. Thats why the dmtb is so great. But even with the eeb , after a setback, im extra careful not to do too much. It's become more important to be consistent and get out for more rides thru the week than get big long grueling rides in. I still get long rides in but its a slow building process and recovery days are super important as well as the first day back out. Rest days its walk around and do errands and stretching and first day back its a short get out of low intensity pedal kind of feel it out. I just found making it past that 2 yr mark, without going into spasm and the sline getting misaligned, gave me a definitive extra level of stability that paid off in the long run. A game changer. I didnt miss one day of physio(home) and stretching. During that time i focused on walking and ski touring if i did exercise. I think i only ski toured 15 days tgat first year and they were short days mostly walking with few actual turns. I avoid the ski hill for a few years. Ski touring became the best thing. Walking/skinning uphill and balancing on a skintrack is 90% of the day and its that little balancing every step that you fire your core muscles to get tracfion and use your stabilizers. Its also leg lifts with weight on your feet which also good for core strength plus the alignment from walking.At the top youre rewarded with some ez soft powder turns for that other 10% of the day. I went with low expectations on the distance or vertical i expected and because of that i was always pleasantly surprised how good the day was. Its hard not to have a tiring day ski touring so i set short routes without technicality and built from there. Just cruizy meadowskipping flatter pow turns and always left the possibility of turning around early. Its not a race just consistent safe effective training.
I think the 8 seconds/pilates doesnt completely focus on the spinalis. My understanding is they would do more reps and the 1" inch above the floor/mat isnt part of it. It then becomes an exercise that works on the larger/lifting/movement muscles in the back and even a bit of cardio. Your stabilizers(spinalis) will still be engaged , if youve retrained enough for them to work intuitively after the intitial injury shock but its not necessarily focusing on the spinalis muscles. By holding for the longer 25 seconds you are isolating and focusing purely on stability and the stabilizer muscles@Dirtnvert We did something very similar to that in my Pilates classes. The only difference was that we held for 8 seconds not 25. All the exercises and timings seemed to be based around 8; duration 8 seconds or 8 reps etc. It seems weird to me now that I never asked why. I will give that a try tonight when I'm watching TV. Thanks for the explanation.
The surgery sounds promising. Im also conversing with a buddy about discectomy. He is a physio and he ended up having to go with a discectomy and it seems to be working. It must be such a relief not having pinched nerves. In both cases thsts the alognment phase. The reinforcement , preventative durability, and sustainability phase is always going to be dictated by the amount of physio and stabilizer muscle reinforcement. And tendons still take 2 years to have proper tension or thats atleast how i understand it.
Well second time round I was worried about the usual complications, but tbh I was considering overdosing in August! Couldn’t ride, walk more than 100 yards, sleep, listen to conversations etc. had to be done. Mr Robert Corns my specialist is like Jesus to me now! He’s also a neorosurgeon and very knowledgeable. People have commented on how much friendlier I seem and big plus-upstanding again, not a bent, bitter and twisted person I had becomeMan... im sweating reading this thread. i had written a long post but when i submitted it i think i had taken too long lol. So I will give a brief account of my own experience...
Basically in a similar position with numerous slipped, bulging, deteriorated discs along with torn and fractured vertebrae ( how the F does a vertebrae become fractured!! ) a few years back after around 9 months of severe unbearable sciatic pain that all methods to relieve were in vain led to me opting for micro discectomy surgery which in short eliminated the direct sciatic pain but led to more issues and severe sciatic nerve damage.
Not sure on the actual terminology of areas damaged as its been a few years but i got back into cycling more after the surgery to aid recovery along with regular physio exercises blah blah blah..... pretty much how it goes for everyone but the cycling is a god send for aiding my pain.
During pre surgery and actual surgery it was brought to attention that i had quite a lot of other issues/ Damage that would eventually flare up and that this surgery would do nothing for them issues and was solely to relieve the sciatic pain now, i could not bare the pain any longer nor being in a regular zombified state from the useless meds that virtually did no pain relief so i said lets do it...
One thing for sure is that i will NOT have that surgery again. Maybe i was an unlucky patient! but i thought sciatic pain was the worst i had experienced until post surgery.
Longer story short... i was rushed back to hospital 2 days later and was literally passing out in pain, my sciatic nerve had so much severe damage ( still unclear if this was caused by the slipped / bulging disc or the man handling during surgery ) which was causing complications. After 3 weeks under close observation i could come home and the road to semi recovery would begin. Physio and Emtb seemed to really work albeit some manageable flare ups with my back but never sciatic until recently
Now a few years later is the time of flare up that i was told about and facing just about manageable sciatica,
I am shit scared of going through what i went through previously as it had more than just physical affects on myself and more importantly my wife and children.
I got lazy on my exercises and that is whats KEY. As mentioned already its so important to keep them up even on your good days. I have begun redoing the given exercises and appreciate this thread to hopefully find some unknown to try.
I sincerely wish you a full recovery along with all others that are going through similar.
pmsl.... this is my short version !!
Damn that's rough!Man... im sweating reading this thread. i had written a long post but when i submitted it i think i had taken too long lol. So I will give a brief account of my own experience...
Basically in a similar position with numerous slipped, bulging, deteriorated discs along with torn and fractured vertebrae ( how the F does a vertebrae become fractured!! ) a few years back after around 9 months of severe unbearable sciatic pain that all methods to relieve were in vain led to me opting for micro discectomy surgery which in short eliminated the direct sciatic pain but led to more issues and severe sciatic nerve damage.
Not sure on the actual terminology of areas damaged as its been a few years but i got back into cycling more after the surgery to aid recovery along with regular physio exercises blah blah blah..... pretty much how it goes for everyone but the cycling is a god send for aiding my pain.
During pre surgery and actual surgery it was brought to attention that i had quite a lot of other issues/ Damage that would eventually flare up and that this surgery would do nothing for them issues and was solely to relieve the sciatic pain now, i could not bare the pain any longer nor being in a regular zombified state from the useless meds that virtually did no pain relief so i said lets do it...
One thing for sure is that i will NOT have that surgery again. Maybe i was an unlucky patient! but i thought sciatic pain was the worst i had experienced until post surgery.
Longer story short... i was rushed back to hospital 2 days later and was literally passing out in pain, my sciatic nerve had so much severe damage ( still unclear if this was caused by the slipped / bulging disc or the man handling during surgery ) which was causing complications. After 3 weeks under close observation i could come home and the road to semi recovery would begin. Physio and Emtb seemed to really work albeit some manageable flare ups with my back but never sciatic until recently
Now a few years later is the time of flare up that i was told about and facing just about manageable sciatica,
I am shit scared of going through what i went through previously as it had more than just physical affects on myself and more importantly my wife and children.
I got lazy on my exercises and that is whats KEY. As mentioned already its so important to keep them up even on your good days. I have begun redoing the given exercises and appreciate this thread to hopefully find some unknown to try.
I sincerely wish you a full recovery along with all others that are going through similar.
pmsl.... this is my short version !!
The whole story is too long. Basically, I have degenerative disc disease. This resulted in insufficient space between some of the vertebrae. That can lead to bad nerve pain and other arthritis-type back pain. For me, surgeries have been the only treatment that works, and it doesn't necessarily provide complete relief. Opioids work well for me but a person can't take them long term.Would be fascinated to hear your story, that scar is crazy!
And yes, would love to hear any advice you can give
I was told that by a guy in his mid 40's when I was in my mid 20's. Almost fifty years later, sadly, I have cause to remember him! I had regular recurrences until I discovered Pilates. I still get recurrences, but they are much less frequent and mild in comparison.
I guess I wasn't clear. My chiro treatment was a total rip-off/quackery.
