Gardening can exact a painful toll on an aging body. Tara Parker-Pope writing for The Wall Street Journal (Saturday/Sunday, July 14-15, 2007) writes that gardening it tough on your body, and gives you some tips on how to garden safely.
Most people don’t view a day in the yard as a workout but gardening involves stretching high and bending low, not to mention pushing a wheelbarrow or lugging heavy bags of soil. People who exercise regularly incorporate a warm-up and a stretching routine into their program, but people who garden seldom think about gardening fitness.
Gardening causes anywhere from 1/3 to ½ of all summer recreational injuries and can lead to carpal-tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow and other repetitive stress injuries.
Does this mean you have to give up gardening? Gardening is therapeutic; it is a good workout and may even reduce stress and anxiety. Good form is everything. Approach gardening as any other workout. Stretch your muscles and focus on your legs and lower back. Move about and change position often instead of doing the same task for hours on end.
Use equipment that is comfortable for you and ergonomically sound. Consider gardening benches, long handled tools or fatter handled tools. The goal is to keep your spine as straight as possible. Even with good equipment you need to limit your time in any one gardening activity so that you don’t overuse a muscle or joint.
Don’t laugh. Seriously consider Yoga for Gardeners by Veronica D’orazio or a video by Gail Dubinsky on Yoga for Gardeners which includes 6 yoga sessions with yoga postures that can help gardeners prepare for and recover from a day of gardening. If all else fails, you may have to switch to container gardening to eliminate all of that bending and stretching.
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