So ... so, umm, interesting.
I got some exercises, and ... I better back up a little.
I have had physical therapy for sciatica. They gave me a thick pamphlet of exercises, but it was stupid on a couple levels. That was not my current therapist. The pamphlet they gave me at the hospital last week was stupid on the same two levels.
1) The descriptions and drawings of the exercises are difficult to understand. One drawing - I am not making this up - looks like I'm supposed to sit in a chair on a pier somewhere and see if I can knock the top of a piling off with just my elbow. I can drive down to the docks in Wilmington, and ... oh, wait, no, I can't drive. Gonna have to put that one off.
2) There are too many exercises to do in the typical "protocol," and most of them are no damn good. When I got sciatica, the list was like 25 different exercises, but my physical therapist niece said most of them were useless, so she gave me a few I really needed to do. Same thing now - my protocol that they gave me at the hospital says: "scapular retraction ... serratus anterior punches in supine ..." a lot (a LOT) of crap like that.
So, I could spend 3 hours doing goog and figure out all the stuff they're trying to tell me to do, or I could just do what my therapist says. He says his worst four letter word is protocol, and he gave me four (count 'em, four) exercises to do, exactly
none of which are on the formal protocol.
BUT, he went through the pamphlet they gave me and wrote down the
GOALS they set for whether I'm making progress in therapy.
You see where he's going with that - he's going to do something completely different and unrecognizable from the stupid protocol exercises, and he's going to meet or exceed every benchmark on the list of goals, doing it his way. And he knows he's going to beat the goals, because that's my job and I have a history and he's seen me work.
I know this guy now.