TIPS FROM A TRAINER | FUNCTIONAL TRAINING FOR GARDENING
The benefits of gardening are wide-ranging. Depending on what you’re growing, you can harvest nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables for you and your loved ones. You can also reduce your carbon footprint by growing consumable foods at home – whether it be in your backyard, on a patio or balcony or even in a sunny apartment window. Even if you’re tending to a flower garden, the mental benefits of caring for a living thing can be so rewarding. Gardening can also create an introspective, meditation-like activity that also keeps your body moving.
The spring, summer and even fall months in Kansas City allow for opportunities to stay active in your garden regularly. Personal Trainer Terrill Beverly has tips to help prevent injury from the repetitive motions you’ll be engaging in while planting, weeding and harvesting throughout the seasons.
Common Gardening Injuries
The three most common gardening injuries include:
- Low back pain from bending over, maneuvering in awkward spaces and lifting heavy items like soil
- Shoulder tendonitis from performing overhead activity such as hedge or tree clipping
- Tennis elbow from repetitive motions like gripping, clipping and pruning weeds and branches
Prevention Training
The following exercises will help prepare your body and prevent injury:
PLANK
Either forearm or standard planks will help strengthen your entire body, but especially your low back and shoulders.
SQUATS
Learning to squat with proper form will enable you to get low to the ground for activities like planting and weeding while avoiding bending over and straining your low back.
SHOULDER BAND FRONT RAISE
This exercise will help strengthen your shoulder muscles (deltoids) and upper chest (pectorals), allowing you to trim hedges and trees that are above you and lift heavy items without straining your upper body.
SHOULDER BAND LATERAL RAISE
This exercise will help strengthen your shoulder muscles (deltoids) and upper chest (pectorals), allowing you to trim hedges and trees that are above you and lift heavy items without straining your upper body.
BANDED TRUNK TWIST
Twisting and reaching are two common movements involved in gardening. This exercise assists with building core stability and restores flexibility and movement to midsection muscles.
You may know from past experience that a strenuous day of gardening can result in soreness. Don’t let that stop you from engaging in this activity that is so abundantly healthy both mentally and physically. Prepare your body with our suggested prevention exercises for a long and injury-free season outdoors.
