Squats + sciatica = owie

[laurashapiro]

As some of you know, I've been building up my capacity again after almost a year off from lifting heavy things, due to a rotator cuff impingement. I'm nowhere near my pre-injury maximum, but I am starting to heave around fairly respectable amounts. Just in the past couple of weeks, I began squatting with 20 lbs. And the sciatic pain began.

I have had sciatica (the helpfully-named "unknown etiology" kind) for about 15 years. Most of the time it's in good control with minimal discomfort, due to a sit/stand workstation at my job, exercise, constant work on my posture, and limited time sitting. It hasn't really bothered me in a while. Needless to say, I am chagrined to have, apparently, irritated my sciatic nerve again even though I'm squatting only about 3/4 what I was up to before I hurt my shoulder.

So far, Mr. Google suggests that people with sciatica not to squats at all ever. Or deadlifts. Or leg presses. I did find a couple of suggestions to go down to a lower weight/more reps until the pain stops, and while that's not as discouraging as just giving up my lower body workouts, it still kinda sucks. So I thought I'd ask here if any of you have experience with sciatica, and what you do to build lower body strength.

exercise modification question

[calligrafiti]

Hello all. I'm new here, but rydra_wong suggested this would be a good place to ask about modification to an exercise I'm trying to do. There aren't any weights involved other than my own body, I'm afraid. However, it is a heavy thing.

I've recently started the LifeHacker exercise challenge (although I question the use of the term "normal" in their subhead, "exercise for normal people"), and I'm having some trouble with the squats section of the program. I'm quite fat, and doing more than one or two squats makes my knees hurt a lot. While they show modifications for most of the exercises, they don't show any mods for squats other than using a chair or pole for stability. I'm using a chair. My knees hurt while I'm squatting in a very stable manner.

If anyone here has suggestions for modifications to the standard squat exercise, or alternate exercises that work the same muscle groups, I'd love to hear about them, please.