You are passionate about gardening, but bending, lifting, and repetitive motions can sometimes lead to sore muscles—or even injuries, please keep reading. We’re going to get into the top 3 ways to prevent injury from gardening.
With the snow melting and garden beds poking out in the backyard, we are all super excited to get back into the garden. It goes without saying that jumping right into moving dirt, tilling, digging etc, should be eased into. Please, please, please, don’t jump off the cozy winter couch and jump into a full day of garden chores! I would advise to slowly ramp up the intensity and time as the spring season allows. I’m not going to get into too much detail here (we will in the 3-part Feel Good: Gardening Series at the end of April though!), but I do want to provide you with some tips that I found over the years have helped me decrease my muscle soreness and prevent injury, aches and pains:
Dress warm.
In early spring, we are super keen to get out a move around the garden. Remember – it’s still spring! Dress appropriately by keeping your core (heart and lungs) warm. With either a vest or base layers. This helps keep your circulatory system pumping warm around your whole body! Another vey important area to keep warm to prevent injury is your arms! Grabbing the shovel, trowel, rake – you need your wrist and forearms. Long sleeves and proper gardening gloves will go a long way. But I have an amazing ‘hack’ from back in my tree planting days: cut off the foot of an old pair of wool sock and use a wrist warmers.
Strength & mobility.
This is super important no matter what activity you are performing. Depending on what needs to be done in the garden, you need to lift, reach, pull, build, bend over, climb, etc. In the upcoming Feel Good: Gardening Series we will break down all these common motions performed in the garden and strengthen into them. If I can continue with an action step that you can do now, is start getting strong: complete some body weight squats, dead lifts, overhead presses, pulls and pushes.
Proper mechanics and form: No reaching.
I’m thinking of some of my first tasks in the garden: raking, pulling old plants, digging, tilling. One thing that comes to mind to prevent an especially sore back and shoulders is to NOT REACH. For example when raking, keep a stable ‘ready stance’ and perform smaller rakes towards you. If you start reaching to get a ‘maximum’ range, I will suspect that you will be putting pressure into your low back and shoulders. Create a smaller working space, move your feet more to get in a better position to complete shorter rakes. You’ll actually do a better job too 😛. Same goes for pulling old plants. Don’t reach across the bed, get nice and close to the plant, make sure your footing is stable and then give it a yank!
Join me 🙂
I hope these few tips can help you get motivated in injury prevention for the upcoming gardening season! If you are interested in joining the Feel Good: Gardening Series to help prevent injuries, I am hosting 2 cohorts starting in April.
Evening cohort on Tuesdays at 5pm: April 22, April 29 and May 6
Daytime cohort on Thursdays at 12noon: April 24, May 1 and May 8
Click here to sign up or email us: hello@momentumtherapyandmovement.ca
What’s an Athletic Therapist?
An athletic therapist specializes in the prevention, assessment, and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal injuries, focusing on your muscles, joints, and ligaments. Whether you are recovering from a sports injury or dealing with everyday aches and pains, they’re here to help. Athletic therapists are the go-to professionals for active individuals, whether you’re an athlete or simply someone who enjoys staying active and needs help recovering from both acute and chronic injuries. They use a combination of manual therapy, tailored exercise programs, and functional rehabilitation to get you back to the activities you love.
What’s a Physiotherapist?
Physiotherapists treat a broad range of conditions, addressing everything from musculoskeletal issues to neurological concerns such as stroke recovery and even respiratory problems. Using a mix of manual therapy, exercise-based treatments, and various thermal and electrical modalities, physiotherapists work to improve your movement, reduce pain, and enhance overall function, to help you feel and move better in the long run.
What’s a Chiropractor?
Chiropractors specialize in diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal conditions with a particular focus on manual manipulation techniques. By performing these adjustments, they aim to restore proper alignment, to enhance healing and optimize the body’s natural function. With a hands-on approach to treatment, chiropractors work to alleviate discomfort and improve overall mobility to help you feel better and move more freely.
Book a class or an appointment here with an Athletic Therapist at Momentum Therapy & Movement
Looking at the joints in the body, every other joint is predominantly built for either mobility or stability. This is an important concept to understand when you are looking at the body as a whole.
All joints have the capacity of both stability and mobility. But each joints predominant function is either one or the other.
Predominately mobile jointsare multidirectional and have lots of range of motion. They go in many different directions for example the hip joint does: Flexion, extension, adduction, abduction, internal rotation and external rotation.
Predominately stable joints have 2 main directions. For example the knee does flexion and extension really well.
If you lose mobility in a joint, another area in the body will have to pick up the slack. And same for if you lose stability in a stable joint, another area in the body will be forced to pick up the slack. If a joint is doing it’s job and the job of another, this will be a great spot for an injury to occur.
Mobility / Stability Skeleton