Gardening, without the usual back pain
It's that time of year. Time to start to thinking about your spring garden. And if you're like me, time to pull all the weeds and finally clean out the old leftover stuff in your garden bed from last year.
Just yesterday I saw one of our neighbors bending over pulling weeds and I said out loud, to myself-
"Oh man, that's gonna hurt tomorrow."
I'm sure you've heard "bend with your knees, not with your back", but do you really do it? Maybe when you're lifting something really heavy, right? But I bet you don't think it's important when you're just bending over to pull weeds.
Well, it is. Why, you ask?
Because your upper body is heavy, making up at least half of your body weight. When you make your lower back hold all of the weight it can strain the muscles, tendons and ligaments, and put extra pressure on intervertebral discs. It's simple physics - your upper body creates a moment arm around the fulcrum at your lumbar spine. if nothing else helps hold up the weight of your upper body, the lumbar spine takes the whole load.
There are ways to lessen the load that your spine feels though. I spent about an hour cleaning out our raised bed last weekend (you can see the before and after photos up at the top) and here's what I did to avoid having a sore back the next day.
The best approach is to work in a variety of different postures throughout your garden session - it gives the body plenty of chances to recover and to share the workload among different muscles groups.
- Move your feet - instead of reaching all the way across the bed, walk around; always get as close to your work spot as possible.
- Take a seat - instead of bending your back to get your hands lower, take a seat; you want to avoid long periods of twisting though, so it's good to get switch sides often
- Lean on in - if you have to reach out in front of you, rest your hand on the ground and lean on it to help support the weight of your torso and take some of the load off your back.
- Use your legs - bending your knees allows those big leg muscles do some of the work. It can also relieve some back strain if your hamstrings are tight.
- Straighten up often - give your body plenty of chances to recover from bent over work. Stand up and re-set your posture every couple minutes.
- Sun salutation - when you're taking a break to straighten up, you can reverse that hideous bent over posture by gently opening your chest towards the sky.
- Try pads and tools - kneeling pads are great! and so are little stools if you don't have a wall or raised bed to sit on.
