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Gardening

Gardening

Exercise Description:

Gardening is a pastime that can provide significant health benefits to people of all ages. Mowing, shovelling, spading and weeding can condition the body by enhancing muscular strength, coordination and flexibility. Beyond the physical benefits, gardening gives you a feeling of accomplishment and allows you to literally "take time to smell the roses". You may enjoy gardening so much that you don't even think of it as exercise. But you can burn as many kilojoules pushing a lawn mower as you can taking aerobics at a health club.

What Muscles You Work:

Gardening can use all, or a combination of the body's major muscle groups, depending on what you are doing. This activity can improve muscle strength and endurance.

Tips To Improve The Exercise Benefits of Gardening:

  • Change positions and stance every few minutes to avoid feeling stiff at the end of the day or the next morning. For example: crouch, kneel, stand and then bend. 
  • Combine stretching with light gardening activities, such as the "lunge and weed." Lunge forward with one leg, weed for about 10 seconds, then stand up and alternate legs. 
  • Alternate your grip when raking, digging or hoeing. If you're right-handed, rake or hoe first with a right-handed grip, then switch to a left-handed grip. 
  • Avoid staying on the knees too long and hunching the back and neck muscles for long stretches. Take frequent breaks, look up at the sky and stretch out by doing some pruning in between. By varying your overhead pruning activities with the bending and weeding activities, you will take a load off specific muscles and get in a little "cross-training." 
  • Repetitious activities improve fitness and help avoid injuries. You will get more exercise taking smaller loads in your wheelbarrow and making more trips than you will by making fewer trips with heavier loads.

How Not To Get Hurt:

Pay special attention to your back. Always lift with knees bent, back straight, using your legs to raise your body up. This sounds easy, but it is almost contrary to what a body wants to do when lifting a heavy object. Be sure to reposition yourself frequently to distribute the "work" to different muscles. Avoid twisting that can lead to pulled muscles. Stretching is essential to reducing the risk of injuries, pain and stiffness.

Essential Equipment:

  • Garden gloves. 
  • Comfortable clothing like a loose-fitting t-shirt and cotton shorts. 
  • Well-fitting socks constructed of a fabric that keeps moisture away from the skin to prevent skin soreness. 
  • Sturdy shoes or boots. 
  • Hat and sunscreen. Even on overcast days the sun's rays can damage the skin. 
  • Water, water, and more water.
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