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Gardening
for Fitness
Few things can be more
enjoyable than your garden, and gardening
offers a terrific whole-body workout plus
a shopping list of side benefits. Getting
your garden into shape gets you into
shape, provided, of course, that you do
the grunt work. In fact, so powerful a
workout does gardening offer that it can
be considered an active sport, just like
tennis or baseball. It takes a lot of
hard physical labour to create and
maintain that backyard paradise, which
someone will be sure to tell you youre so
lucky to have!
Double-digging beds, hoeing clayey soil,
raking leaves, mowing lawns, turning
compost, shovelling manure, incorporating
fertiliser, working with a crowbar,
collecting and positioning rocks, pushing
overflowing wheelbarrows, planting,
pruning and weeding ... those will
strengthen all your major muscle groups
as well as your cardiovascular system.
An extra benefit includes being out in
the fresh air and sunshine, something
todays hectic lifestyle doesnt allow most
people to enjoy in sufficient quantities.
You are channelling that vital creative
urge, building something of great beauty
that will give you, your family and
everyone who walks past so much pleasure.
You may even be growing your own healthy,
fresh, organic fruit, vegetables and
herbs, which taste so superior to those
you buy in the shops, you can never go
back to the commercial varieties. Also,
your gardening time gives you space to
think, plan, pray and meditate while you
work up a sweat.
Workout warm-up
While gardening is as
physically demanding as many sports, most
gardeners dont prepare their bodies
properly for their sport by gradually
warming up and stretching before getting
into the serious stuff. They are more
likely to head straight for the garden
shed on Saturday morning after a
sedentary week at the office and haul a
25kg bag of manure across the yard, then
wonder why their back goes out. Theyll
spend two solid days on serious pruning
and wonder why they have pins and needles
in their forearm. Theyll spend the best
part of a day squatting down, planting
out the spring bulbs, without having
worked first at conditioning their
joints, then find they can barely hobble
up to the house that night. Small wonder
back problems, knee problems, carpal
tunnel syndrome (CTS) and tendonitis are
major problems for serious gardeners.
Even those weekend garden warriors who
stay in shape by doing gym workouts
during the week will find their intense
Saturday and Sunday sessions reveal
muscles they never knew existed.
Swimming, cycling and running may
condition you aerobically, but they wont
necessarily prepare you for the carrying,
pushing, pulling and crawling on all
fours that gardening demands.
If youve decided to adopt gardening as
your official fitness routine, you must
treat it like any other workout. No
matter how anxious you are to hit the
soil, first warm up and stretch every
part of your body. Ease into the chores,
gradually building the intensity of what
you are doing. During the day take
regular breaks to stretch the muscles
that are tiring, and when the days work
is finished, spend a few minutes
stretching all your muscles before you
hit the shower. If its been an especially
heavy session, you may decide to follow
your shower with a relaxing soak in a
bath scented with a few drops of
essential oil such as lavender.
Repetitive Strain Injury
(RSI)
Gardeners, especially the
weekend warrior types, are as prone to
painful carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) as
data input operators. Women experience
CTS more than men, with pregnant women,
and menopausal women who take oral
contraceptives, at greater risk still.
The risk for both sexes increases if you
are overweight or dont exercise much. The
carpal tunnel is formed by the wrist
bones (carpals) and the transverse
ligament running across the base of the
palm like a watchband that holds them in
place. The nine tendons that move the
fingers, and the median nerve leading
into the muscles that move the thumb,
pass through this tunnel down into the
wrist, bundled together in a sheath
called the synovium.
When you perform repetitive hand and
wrist movements such as pruning or
typing, the tendons and synovium become
inflamed and swollen. Even a slight
swelling in the wrist area can compress
the nerve enough to short-circuit the
signal. Symptoms resemble the sensation
you experience when your foot goes to
sleep: tingling and numbness, or pain in
the hands and fingers, especially the
thumb and first two fingers. The more you
use your hand, the more it will hurt. As
the condition progresses, your hand may
become so weak that even gripping a glass
is impossible.
The best treatment for CTS is to not let
it develop. Implement preventative
measures: avoid doing repetitive actions
such as pruning or deadheading for long
periods; take regular breaks; mix up
gardening tasks; and do a couple of hand
exercises at the first sign of
discomfort, even if it is simply shaking
out your hands. If you are a new gardener
or have not gardened for some time,
gradually increase the duration of your
work. Avoid keeping your hand in a fixed
position for long periods. When you are
crawling around the garden on all fours,
dont press your body weight onto the heel
of your hand; it is too much for those
delicate wrists, even if you dont weigh
very much. Use good-quality, lightweight
tools and maintain them in top condition.
Try to improve your ambidexterity to
protect one hand from overuse; doing this
gives your brain a great workout too!
Dont ignore the symptoms of CTS. For mild
to moderate cases, vitamin B6 appears to
be effective; take 50 milligrams per day
to end the tingling. To boost the
vitamins healing power, take 10
milligrams of riboflavin with it. You
will need to continue the regimen for at
least three months to gain full benefit.
Additionally, ensure you are consuming
sufficient omega-3 fatty acids to help
control the inflammation. Eat oily fish
three times a week and supplement with
one tablespoon of flaxseed oil each day.
Dont cook with the oil; use it on salads
or spread it on bread instead of using
butter.
Watching your back
Keen gardeners will need to
invest some time and effort into keeping
this injury-prone area of the body in top
working order. The most important
component of a healthy back is strong
abdominal muscles, so do your stomach
crunches every single day. Four layers of
overlapping, criss-crossing fibres form
the abdominal muscles, acting like guy
wires to keep your back in line. If those
wires are weak, their hold on the spine
wont be sufficiently protective. Strong
abdominal muscles prevent not only the
back muscles from overworking, but also
the leg muscles. If your back lacks
flexibility and strength, when you bend
over to pick up something, your
hamstrings and knees have to work harder
to compensate. Every day perform
yoga-based exercises, which are ideal for
strengthening the back. Exercises might
include: supine or standing hip flexor
stretch, cat stretch, spinal twists,
spinal rolls, side-to-side hip rocks,
pelvic arch, bridge, cobra, shoulder
stand and plough pose.
Arming yourself
Just as swimmers lift
weights to help power them through the
water and improve their overall
performance, so gardeners will find that
toning and conditioning arm muscles
through resistance training will help
power them through all the heavy chores
they constantly tackle.
By strengthening the muscles of the
forearms you can help prevent tennis
elbow. Be assured that you dont have to
play tennis to develop this ubiquitous
condition. When forearm muscles are
required to do more than they are
conditioned for, irritation and
roughening occur at the point where the
tendon anchors the major muscles in the
forearm to the upper arm bone. The
telltale symptom is pain on the outside
of the joint just above the elbow crease.
The two most punishing motions to the
tendon are repeated tight gripping while
turning the palm downwards (pronation) or
upwards (supination), which are actions
you perform constantly when working in
the garden, such as when you pull weeds.
If you havent been doing upper body
resistance training, start with light
weights (say, one kilogram) and gradually
build up. If your upper body is fairly
strong you will probably be able to use
heavier weights. Heres how to test
whether you have the right weight: when
you complete a set of eight or 12
repetitions, the muscles should feel
slightly fatigued; if you feel as though
you can easily complete another set
without resting, they are too light; if
you cant get through a full set, they are
too heavy.
The most beneficial exercises for
gardeners include: biceps curls, both to
the front and to the sides; chest press;
flies; side arm lifts; front arm lifts;
military press; upright row; bent over
row; and French press for the triceps.
Additionally, perform floor push-ups or
wall push-ups and triceps dips.
To build the muscles of the forearm, hold
a one to one-and-a-half-kilo weight in
your hand; your palm should be face down
resting on a table, elbow bent, with the
wrist at the edge of the table to support
it. Now, slowly rotate the forearm
clockwise until the palm is facing to the
ceiling; the move should take five
seconds. Equally slowly, rotate the
forearm so you return to the starting
position. Rest for two seconds. Build to
12 repetitions on each arm.
To strengthen the wrist flexors, start
with the same-sized weight, palm upwards,
hand resting on a table as for the above
exercise. Now, bend your wrist upwards to
the ceiling, hold for five seconds, and
return to the starting position. Build to
12 repetitions on each arm.
To improve wrist flexibility, stand with
arms stretched out in front of you at
shoulder height, palms facing the floor.
Now, flex both hands upwards very
strongly and feel the stretch under your
arms. Hold for five seconds, then drop
your hands down from the wrist and hold
for another five seconds. Repeat the
sequence six times. To increase the
stretch, place your hands against a wall
for both phases of the movement.
Knee-high needs
Gardeners knees are
constantly assaulted from all directions:
front, back and sides. Strong, healthy
knees that allow you to comfortably squat
and crawl around as easily as a baby make
life so much easier for a gardener. They
also help protect against back injury
because they enable you to pick up heavy
items correctly, which is by bending your
knees and using your abdominal and thigh
muscles, rather than bending your back
and putting pressure onto the discs in
the vertebral column.
Squatting incorrectly can stress knees by
straining, and possibly even tearing, the
ligaments. The safe way to squat is with
your heels in contact with the ground and
your weight spread across the entire
surface of your feet, which should be
positioned about 30 centimetres apart.
Squatting with heels raised off the
ground, or with your weight forward on
your toes, places excessive pressure on
the knees and may damage the knee
ligaments.
For most of us, squatting this way is
difficult. Flexible, stretched calf
muscles and Achilles tendons (the tendon
that attaches the calf muscle to the back
of the heel bone) are prerequisites, so
perform calf raises to strengthen the
muscles, and calf stretches to boost
flexibility.
Strong quadricep muscles (the large
muscles in the front of the thighs) are
also essential to support your knees.
Plies, lunges and squats all build the
quads; movements should be slow and
controlled for each exercise, with your
back kept straight and head erect. When
performing squats, avoid going too deep.
Hold the squat for five slow counts
before rising out of it. The yoga chair
pose is another powerful exercise.
Heres how you can learn to squat down
again if you havent been able to do it
for a long time. Stand with your back in
contact with a wall and your feet about
15 centimetres or so away from it. Slowly
slide down the wall, keeping your back in
contact to support you. Go as far as you
can without discomfort. Keep working at
it until you can squat down comfortably;
it may take a while, but you will get
there. If you are doing a job that
requires long periods of squatting, or on
your knees, its important to get up
periodically to give them a break. People
with arthritic knees will need to use
kneeling pads, cushions or stools to
protect their knees, especially at times
when the ground is cold and damp. Always
position yourself as close as possible to
the work you are doing. This saves you
from leaning too far forward; the
straighter you keep your spine, the less
strain you place on it.
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substitute for independent professional
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contained in this Web site are for
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