EITHERnone of the reasons gardening It’s so good exercise that the sheer joy of doing it disguises how hard you’re working, so you end up pushing yourself harder than you would in the gym. Scientific studies show East – It’s not that I need proof. When I manage to steal a moment to prune a tangle of triffids, I find it hard to stop. Before I know it, I’ve been swinging a chainsaw up a pole for four hours.
The only drawback is that the endless pulling, pushing, lifting, and bending can cause, or exacerbate, aches and pains. NHS Digital figures for 2020-21 (also known as the great gardening and DIY boom) record 12,355 hospital admissions in England with injuries related to “overexertion and strenuous or repetitive movements”. But it does not have to be like that.
Madeline Hooper, a retired public relations executive living in Upstate New York’s Hudson Valley, reached a point where she could no longer ignore her neck pain. “I love gardening,” she says, “and no matter how long it takes to weed the bed, I’m weeding the entire bed. But she had terrible pain in her neck and upper shoulder.” Being the she-can-do type, she sought the help of personal trainer Jeff Hughes, whose simple, common-sense approach worked. The pair have now teamed up on an American TV show called GardenFitin which they travel across America, admiring the gardens while helping to educate the world on how to care for the garden painlessly.
The first thing to know is that posture is everything. “If your head is back and your chest is puffed out and your shoulders are back and down, you feel tall and powerful,” says Hughes. “Whatever you do, you’ll be engaging the right muscle, whereas when you slouch, you’re engaging muscles that aren’t designed to do the job. And that’s what we do when we get tired.”
Hooper’s technique was a perfect example of this. “Your shoulder lifts your arm,” says Hughes, “and your trapezius lifts your shoulder. If you’re doing something all day and your shoulder gets tired from lifting your arm, your body is smart. Goes: what else can raise your arm? Suddenly your trapezius is doing something it wasn’t designed to do, and of course your neck is going to hurt.” The solution is simple: “When your shoulder gets tired of lifting your arm, stop lifting your damn arm!
“As soon as you start to realize that you can’t hold the posture properly anymore, do something on the ground or grab the shovel and dig. Now you’re going in the opposite direction with your shoulders.”
British television presenter and garden designer danny clark follows a similar philosophy. “Keep changing jobs,” she says. “I always say, ‘little and often.'” He has his own sequence. “I don’t get into heavy lifting or digging. I will warm up the body by mowing the lawn.” Coming from a sports background, he says, “I’m very aware of my body and what it can and can’t do.” For some, it takes a mental adjustment to stop completing a task in one sitting. “Don’t try to finish it, because the garden is never finished,” Clarke says coolly. “That’s the beauty of it: it’s infinite. Savor every moment. Enjoy it.”
Sometimes strengthening exercises are required to correct posture that causes pain: Hughes recalls an outfielder named Bob, who appears on the TV show with lower back pain. “He didn’t stand up straight when he walked,” says Hughes. “Your lower back supports everything above it, so if you’re slouching, it’s straining.”
If this sounds like you, you might want to try this out. “Relax your shoulders,” says Hughes. “Imagine you’re wearing your favorite pair of jeans and I want you to take your shoulder blades very slowly and slide them down into your back pockets.” This creates a pivot effect, where your chest puffs out, you breathe easier, and your spine is aligned. As he holds this up, he adds, “whatever muscle is starting to tire right now, that’s your weak muscle that you need to strengthen.” The longer you hold this pose, he says, the more training those weak muscles will get, eventually allowing them to do their job automatically.
To awaken these muscles in Bob, Hughes gave him an elastic exercise band to hold in front of him like handlebars and then lift above his head. The effect was immediate, and Bob marveled at his new ability to stand up straight. “Your whole perspective changes,” says Hughes, “because now your peripheral vision is better.” Hughes gave Bob four weeks to practice his new posture and briefly repeat some movements with his exercise band every day.
As you work in your garden, orchard, or community plot, shoulder blades in your back pockets, the next step for you to master is what Hooper and Hughes call an “armchair,” which isn’t as quiet as it sounds, but it could save your life. back when he is bending or lifting. “If you spread your feet, you’re automatically lower to the ground,” says Hughes. “Everything falls over, and when you bend over, your knees and butt stick out and you land on a good squat base.” Then you rest your arms on your legs. “Now your lower back doesn’t support your body. If you apply that to the next eight hours, your back will be your best friend at the end of the day.”
When using one arm to weed or plant, you can keep the other supporting arm resting on your leg, but switching arms is crucial. Hughes says that it is essential to train the non-dominant hand to do its fair share of the work. Not only will this spread the load across your arms and shoulders, but “you’re going to be balanced with your torque; you are beginning to balance your torso.” Similarly, if you’re on a ladder, he says, “Turn around, now you’re going the other way.”
Balance reappears in the pair’s latest top tip, which they call the “seesaw” and involves, again, being more aware of your body as you work. If you’re straightening your arm while holding a heavy clipper, you need to counteract that weight by keeping your shoulder blade down, so, Hughes says, “You can match the pressure here with the pressure there, like a little seesaw rebound effect. ”
Hooper says that within four weeks of integrating Hughes solutions into his life, healthier habits settled in and he began to feel better. “After six weeks, I never had pain from gardening again.
“I wish I had learned this when I started gardening,” says Hooper. In all the gardening courses and books he has taken, he says, “nobody teaches this.”
