Flexibilty/stretching including sciatic pain relief

Flexibility is so important for injury prevention and to help your posture. It helps relieve or prevent back pain, hip pain, leg pain, etc, Muscle tightness and muscle knots can occur, because of bad habits, bad posture.

Stretches/flexibility (Hold stretches for at least 30 sec)

           Stretching will help you prevent injury and it also helps relieve back pain. Back pain comes from tight glutes, tight lat muscles, and from having an anterior pelvic tilt (bent forward with butt sticking out) or a posterior tilt (pelvis shifted forward where the hamstrings and butt are tight). Your knees can also buckle in or supinate outward. 

          Neck & traps stretches. You can also ankle your head down to the right Ur left at an angle to stretch the levator scapula. 

(Piriformis stretch), on your own without somebody twisting your leg for you. Stretching this muscle can relieve sciatic nerve pain or piriformis syndrome. All three pictures below

     

     

Chair stretch. Push down on your knee and lean forward on the chair or do the one on the floor 

  

(Buttocks)

Pull on the knee more

(Hamstrings) 

   

   

You can use an athletic band also, get assistance or use a wall for better support 

      

(Quads) careful not to pull on the foot unless it's flexible

    

(Hip flexors and quads) 

Only do these if you can handle them. You can touch your knee on the floor with this type of lunge stretch. Point your toes forward, step ahead so you get more of a stretch, keep the knee behind toes.

       

(Adductors) 

Using the stairs or bench or ply-metric box, etc, to raise one foot/leg up, will provide you a quick stretch vs the side lung using the floor. The higher you step up, the more rang you get. (This is me (Adam) by the way) 

Don't push on your knees such as this below. Keep feet lined up. 

(Glutes) 

Good back twister 

    

(Back) 

  

(Calves) 

    Extend the leg for the gastrocnemius, and bend the knee in for the soleus muscle stretch

  

Lean in on your stretch to feel it more 

     

Here are 100% wrong stretches to do in this picture from my NASM book. A hurdle stretch places great strain on the tibial collateral ligament, which is on the inside of the knee. The plow stretch places much stress on your neck and spine obviously, the shoulder stand places strain on the neck, shoulders and spine, the straight-leg toe touch places high stress on the vertebrae, cartilage or possibly ligaments, and arching your quads will place high stress on the knee caps and surrounding tissues. People with a history of any back injury, weak ligaments or degenerative cartilage, or any body problem besides healthy people should all avoid these.