Hi all,
Over the past four weeks we have looked at various ways you can improve your gardening experience.
Here is a summary of what we talked about.
Gardening is a great activity, but it can play havoc with the body at times. Sometimes the back, knees, shoulders and neck can suffer, but there are some helpful things you can do to offset the chance of this happening and keep you in your garden longer.
* Improving your back, leg and shoulder strength will help prevent the onset of lower back, neck and shoulder pain significantly. You need to be persistent and keep the exercises going regularly, but if you do you will find you can work in the garden longer and more productively.
* Avoid repeated bending at your back. Squat and bend from the hips rather than your lower back and try to mix it up with other ways.
* Avoid sustained periods in one position, especially bending forward. Take the time to stand up and do a few back extensions.
* Wear gardening gloves and vary the width of the handles of equipment you use.
* Wear knee pads not only to protect your knee joints but to encourage you to use various positions when you are on the ground – kneel for a few minutes instead of bending forward.
* Divide the garden tasks into smaller portions – change your position often. For instance – it is very easy to injure the neck and shoulders when engaging in a lot of heavy clipping and trimming shrubs at shoulder height and above. Break this task up into 5-minute portions, alternating between upper arm tasks and then ground tasks such as weeding.
* A good motto is ‘the best posture is the next posture’.
Hope this helps!
Deb
Hi all,
Over the past four weeks we have looked at various ways you can improve your gardening experience.
Here is a summary of what we talked about.
Gardening is a great activity, but it can play havoc with the body at times. Sometimes the back, knees, shoulders and neck can suffer, but there are some helpful things you can do to offset the chance of this happening and keep you in your garden longer.
* Improving your back, leg and shoulder strength will help prevent the onset of lower back, neck and shoulder pain significantly. You need to be persistent and keep the exercises going regularly, but if you do you will find you can work in the garden longer and more productively.
* Avoid repeated bending at your back. Squat and bend from the hips rather than your lower back and try to mix it up with other ways.
* Avoid sustained periods in one position, especially bending forward. Take the time to stand up and do a few back extensions.
* Wear gardening gloves and vary the width of the handles of equipment you use.
* Wear knee pads not only to protect your knee joints but to encourage you to use various positions when you are on the ground – kneel for a few minutes instead of bending forward.
* Divide the garden tasks into smaller portions – change your position often. For instance – it is very easy to injure the neck and shoulders when engaging in a lot of heavy clipping and trimming shrubs at shoulder height and above. Break this task up into 5-minute portions, alternating between upper arm tasks and then ground tasks such as weeding.
* A good motto is ‘the best posture is the next posture’.
Hope this helps!
Deb
#movebetterforlife #gardening #thenextpostureisthebestposture#protectyourback #timeinthegarden
