Sciatic pain in lower legs after a workout

I'm a 43year old male. I've started working out, under the supervision of gym trainer. and at the same time, have been doing pysical therapy for an old calf injury, for 3 months. My legs generally feel much better, until 2 weeks ago.

On that day, I was doing my normal lower body routine, including an exercise called the 'booty builder', where you have a belt around your waist and then do a bridge, lifting up some weights. I had possibly progressed too quickly on this machine, as I had added an extra 20 lbs that day. I had no pain or discomfort during it. I had also done an ab workout at home, which is very comprehensive and exhausting. I've done it maybe 20 times without issue.

Well, the next day I had extreme calf soreness and pain and tingling in my peroneal area and shins. After modest improvement by a week later, I had started back on some lighter leg exercses, and also a yoga ball bridge and the ab exercises again. The next day, I realized I had re-aggravated my sypmptoms.

It was at this point I did research and realized it was not normal muscle or tendon issues, but the sciatic nerve. It's been an0ther week, but there has not been much improvement. After much ChatGPT questioning, I feel this is a temporary sciatic inflammation, probably due to one of the aforementioned exercises, though it's a bit mysterious to me that they caused this. The other possibility is that TMS is using this excuse as a trigger for a new syptom.

The most likely possibility, IMO, is that the nerve inflammation is pysical, but TMS could still use this to make it chronic and make me think I now have sciatica to deal with all the time. I would like some advice, on if people think my current symptoms are TMS. More importantly, it would give me confidence to know that all long term sciatica symptoms are actually TMS, from people's experience here, and that will give me confidence to know that any non-TMS issue I'm having should only be temporary.

Final note: I had similar lower leg tingling and pain after many years ago playing basketball for the 1st time in 15 years. It took about a month to feel normal again, but all the syptoms went away.

 

I have known about TMS since 2009, and have most of around a dozen TMS books, so I know all about it. But, do tend to get brand new syptoms every couple of years or so that I have trouble figuring out if they're TMS or not. This is another instance of that. Here is a list of my potential TMS syptoms over the course of my life. Only some of these I have had 100% confidence in TMS. I tend to only have 1 or 2 really bothersome symptoms at a time, and I do the TMS work, such as re-reading books and journaling when symptoms are bad. When I get new symptoms, I try to find evidence that they are TMS, which usually means going to the Doctor to rule out non-TMS issues early on. That's where I'm at with this current problem. I have an appointment in 10 days, but I am concerned about the nocebo affect, so I hope to figure out if it's TMS before I go, in which case I would cancel my appoinment.

TMS symptoms:

 

I think you know that we can't tell you whether or not you have TMS. You are following the procedure we all have to go through. First go to medical providers to try to rule out a medical/physical cause. Yes, there is a risk that they are wrong and you leave with a nocebo. You will just have to work through that with the usual tools like an evidence sheet and reading success stories to try to bolster your belief that it is TMS. But it is always a pretty gray area and we just have to feel our way through it the best we can.

I can tell you that as someone who has had TMS my entire life that it shows up in very novel ways each time. Even after achieving recovery 12 years ago from my main TMS issues, I have continued to have relapses and have to go through the is-it-or-is-it-not TMS dance. Once I finally determine that it is in fact TMS, then I can get myself on the road to recovery, which happens much quicker now than it used to.

 

Thanks for the general knowledge thought process stuff everyone, that is very helpful. Part of my evidence gathering process for a specific symptom is to find people who have went through this specific symptom or scenario. This is one of the best ways to prove something is TMS. So, my question is a legitimate one, even if zero information is provided by me. I have read in many TMS books that sciatica is TMS. However, I'm not yet 100% convinced that minor nerve irritations from working out to hard one day are also TMS. Three years ago, i had similar symptoms in my lower leg (but different enough to where I think this time could be a different root cause), and it went away in 1 month, without me considering if it was TMS or not. So, if there is anyone who responds with specific, helpful experience on Sciatica, that is what I'm looking for with my question