Gardening Injury-Free: 6 Essential Tips from a Pilates Teacher
Gardening is rewarding but can be tough on your body, making it difficult to garden injury-free.
Kneeling, bending down (and getting back up!) and lifting heavy compost bags can leave your back and knees aching.
Let’s explore the real challenges of gardening and how treating it like a workout can help. By regularly incorporating exercises tailored to gardening tasks and improving your body awareness, you can stay flexible and enjoy gardening injury-free. This blog will share tips and joint-friendly movements for you to garden more comfortably and safely.
Enjoy your garden and stay injury-free.
Gardening for health is powerful, it’s even being prescribed to improve mental and physical health [1] [2]. Physically, gardening can help you improve strength, balance and dexterity, while being outside. Green spaces are good for us and the process of nurturing something from seed can boost long-term mental health [3] [4]. Growing your own food can even improve your diet! The key is to reap these benefits of gardening while keeping injury-free!
People often tell me they’ve overdone it in the garden and they are aching. Clearing out the shed all day or weeding the vegetable patch (when the sun finally appears) can leave muscles sore, especially after hours of work! If soreness doesn’t resolve with rest or an Epsom salt bath (my favourite), we need to look at how we are doing things.
Just like planning a gym workout, a little bit of thought beforehand can make a big difference to how you feel afterwards. It’s a physically demanding activity, so improving leg strength, balance and flexibility will help. Lifting, bending, reaching and carrying correctly are skills we need to pay attention to, to keep more comfortable.
Gardening is a Workout—Let’s Treat It Like One!
To help you stay injury-free, here are my 6 top tips for gardening:
1. Warm Up and Cool Down
The sun is out and you’re eager to garden… your muscles and joints will thank you for a little warm up first!
- Preparation: Wear weather-appropriate clothing, stay hydrated, and make sure you have all your tools ready before starting.
- Timing: If you have arthritis, consider gardening in the afternoon when morning stiffness has eased. Choose your timing for specific tasks, for instance, wait till it’s rained so the ground is easier to dig.
- Warm Up/Cool Down: Focus on the major joints—back, neck, shoulders, hips, and knees—but don’t forget the smaller joints in your hands and feet too, especially if it’s cold. A walk, some squats and movements to mobilise your back before and after gardening would be a good start.
2. Vary Your Tasks
- Alternate Activities: Avoid staying in one position for too long (now, that’s a top tip for daily life not just gardening!):
- Avoid neck tension by alternating tasks such as watering hanging baskets or tying in climbers (working up high) with watering pots or weeding (working at floor level).
- Repetitive overhead movements can lead to shoulder impingement, so alternate activities to prevent shoulder injury.
- Avoid prolonged kneeling, which can cause knee pain and stiffness, by switching between standing and kneeling or taking a mini-break.
- Balance your Efforts: Try not to use just one side of your body for long periods; digging or loading a wheelbarrow from the same side for example. This helps prevent overuse that can lead to muscle strain and imbalances. Your cool down and mobilising exercises will help maintain this balance too.
3. Learn Joint-Friendly Movements
Understanding how to move in a way that respects your joints is key to keeping them healthy. As a Pilates teacher, in my classes, I emphasise the importance of correct movement patterns that benefit your daily activities, including gardening. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Hip Hinge Technique: Spend less time rounding your back and instead master the hip hinge! This movement involves folding at your hips and knees instead of rounding your back. This distributes the load through your legs back strain. This technique is used as a way to bend and lift safely; it can help prevent back pain and is recommended for those with osteoporosis [5] to promote better bone health.
- Leg and Hip Strengthening: Practice exercises that focus on correctly aligning and strengthening your legs and hips. In time, this improves your ability to safely and comfortably get up and down from the floor, essential for gardening tasks.
- Functional Reaching Exercises: Incorporate standing or floor-based functional reaching that mimic the movements required during gardening. These exercises enhance your range of movement, coordination and balance when reaching for things in your garden.
- Hand and Forearm Strength: Strengthen the smaller muscles of your hands and forearms to handle finer tasks in the garden and reduce strain on larger shoulder muscles.
- Core support: Strengthening muscles that support the spine (sometimes called your ‘core’ muscles) reduces the risk of injuring your back when lifting, twisting, and carrying garden items. When working efficiently, these muscles help us keep good posture as we work in the garden.
- Back Extension Exercises: Strengthening your back muscles, specifically your back extensors (aka the muscles that keep you upright), can help to keep your back pain-free while gardening. If you are spending time flexed forward, take a moment to actively use your back extensors to gently arch backwards to counterbalance and stretch out. This improves spinal flexibility and alignment, meaning you could feel less stiff after gardening.
By focusing on these joint-friendly movements and being aware of your movements, you can enjoy your gardening, while promoting overall joint health and reducing the risk of injuries.
4. Pace Yourself
As with so many things in life, pacing yourself pays off in the end…
- Plan Breaks: Plan your gardening sessions with breaks in mind. Setting a time limit and using a timer can remind you to take regular breaks.
- Manage Weight: Avoid carrying heavy loads. Carry half a watering can instead of a full one, or use an ergonomic bottle for watering… better still consider setting up a watering system.
- Share the Load: If possible, find someone to help you with your hardest tasks. Work together or trade skills with a neighbour, or maybe you have a friend who loves weeding (…we can all dream!). Sharing the work can make gardening more enjoyable and less physically demanding.
5. Use Gadgets to Garden Injury-Free
Working at a sensible height, like placing smaller pots on a workbench, can help you maintain better posture more easily. Also, keep in mind your posture and the positioning of your joints by investing in ergonomic tools, gadgets, or automations:
- Ergonomic Tools: These types of tools help your joints work more efficiently and can keep things more comfortable, for example long-handled secateurs. A garden kneeler, which combines a kneeling pad and a seat with handles, is another great example. It helps you stand up more easily and keeps tools handy.
- Protective Clothing: Protect your joints and prevent injuries with proper footwear, a foam kneeling pad or strap-on knee protectors, and supportive gloves.
- Automations: A simple watering system can help you avoid carrying heavy watering cans, which can affect your posture.
6. Question Everything!
Finally, if there are tasks that you really don’t enjoy and you can’t find a gadget to assist, question if it’s really important to you and your garden. Does it bring you joy? If the answer is yes, perhaps it’s time to ask for help. If it’s a no, then it might be time for a re-think and time to use the space differently, for something that makes you happy!
Gardening Injury-free – Planting the Seed for Pilates for Gardeners
Gardening is rewarding but at the same time it can be physically challenging. A bit of planning can make your gardening more enjoyable and, quite literally, less of a pain. Use gadgets, focus on the parts of your garden that bring you the most happiness and treat your body with respect. By improving your body awareness, strength, balance and flexibility you can avoid injury and enjoy your garden for years to come.
A couple of amusing gardening-related quotes from my class members:
‘Pilates is the best antidote to shovelling compost.’
‘I’ve been clearing my shed all day and I definitely need my Pilates class tonight!’
Combining Pilates with your gardening routine can make a world of difference to how you feel after gardening and you’ll be more likely to garden injury-free. It’s an excellent way to build strength, improve flexibility and posture. The controlled movements and focus on core stability make it an ideal complement to gardening!
I hope the tips I’ve shared help you enjoy your time in the garden even more. If you’ve enjoyed this blog, join my newsletter using the box below for more practical tips delivered straight to your inbox. Feel free to get in touch about our small, online Healthy Bones Classes (where we practice joint-friendly movements) or to be the first to know about our upcoming Pilates for Gardeners classes!
