You have probably heard people say that gardening is a good exercise but there’s a downside to that too. In any exercise that you do, you can hurt yourself. You know, lifting bags of soil, weeding, tilling, doing these things can injure yourself. Lower-back injuries, hip injuries, wrist and elbows, these were things that normally are associated with gardening. And one way you can prevent this from happening is to stretch, to warm up really well before you start doing the hard stuff.
You don’t need to do a bunch of calisthenics on or before you water your plants. But before you pick up that shovel or bend down and start pulling leaves it would be a good idea to be limbered up, and you can either stretch some or just walk around the neighborhood, take five to ten minutes of walking. And when you start the garden take on the easy steps first and don’t pick the up the shovel right away.
Chiropractors and back specialists see a lot of early week injuries because of folks that are trying to get too much done during the weekend. You got that really nice day and you are thinking, “Man, I got so much to do. To be honest, I can knock it all out right now. I can do all the weeding and I can do all the tilling. I’m going to do everything right now, right at this minute,” and actually that’s when you get hurt, so don’t overdo it. Otherwise, you are not going to have a fun recovery time so just take it easy and be sure you stretch before you start.
