One error I see all the time when patients or therapists aren’t having success in treatment is that they “treat the pain” as in, they focus on the part of the body that hurts. This is tricky since the pain your brain outputs isn’t always the same place as where your nociceptive input is coming from.
It’s very common for the muscles in the back to cause pain down the leg. Patients then tend to think ‘I have a leg problem and not a back problem’. It’s common to have a “somatic referred pain” in which the body outputs a pain signal to seem like an area shared by the same nerve or group of nerves.
The problem here arises from the fact that the small muscles in your back share the same nerve often as the large muscles at your calves. Our brains are terrible at putting our pain output where our real problem is. Instead of working on the back, we focus on the leg pain with our exercises and hands on therapies.
A better approach is to treat the way you move or the postures you assume. In a lot of cases this is a more reliable way to improve function and reduce pain.
For More Information:
Bogduk N. On the definitions and physiology of back pain, referred pain, and radicular pain. Pain. 2009 Dec 15;147(1-3):17-9. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2009.08.020. Epub 2009 Sep 16. PMID: 19762151.
Synaptic Physical Therapy 