Hands up who has overdone it when gardening!
This is one of the top pain triggering activities my clients complain of.
But its inevitable isn’t it? With all that bending and lifting?
Why does gardening trigger pain?
- Often it is mainly because you are doing more work than you are conditioned for: are you gardening fit? Do you do similar types of movement throughout the year, or do you suddenly expect your body to cope with a few hours of heavy work with no fitness preparation?
- Gardening involves movements that are more commonly pain triggering like bending, digging.
- The strong urge to complete a job!
It’s this last one that’s the main trouble.
The psychological need to dig the WHOLE plot, plant ALL the plants, weed the WHOLE bed.
Just a bit more to get the job finished, even though your body is complaining.
But gardening, for nearly all of us, is a voluntary activity. There is no need to wind up your pain, setting back your progress, for the sake of the garden.
Gardening doesn’t lend itself well to pacing i.e. doing smaller amounts at a time, that your body can cope with. If you take a break you need to wash your hands, maybe change your clothes, so taking breaks is inconvenient. You might have an allotment you travel to, so you can’t pop in and out. You need to get those plants in while the conditions are right. It’s so easy to over do it.
But there are ways of pacing without actually stopping.
Rotation
Just like with your plot, you will benefit from rotation.
- Plan your gardening sessions to have a mixture of digging, seed sowing and weeding.
- Swap between tasks before they have started to aggravate your pain.
- The total time you can tolerate on each task in a day can usually be more if you break it up.
And on a nice day, add in a 5-10 min Constructive Rest on the lawn!
Work smarter not harder
There are other things to consider: like how can you reduce the heavy work of gardening? E.g. use mulching, drip watering systems, or using a syphon to get a water butt closer to where its needed.
It might be something as simple as getting a second watering can to carry two half full, instead of one very heavy one asymmetrically.
You might have to rethink how you garden to stop the cycle of winding your pain up every season. For instance: no dig gardening as much as possible. Or avoiding creating work: like feeding the lawn so you then have to mow it more! Many lower input, lower disturbance methods are wildlife friendly too, so maybe you can do less, and sit back and watch the wildlife more?
What about getting help to break the back of a tough job, so you don’t ‘break’ yours?
Gardening is great for you – you don’t want to avoid all heavy work, but you can moderate it to what your body is ready for!
Be prepared
Ok, this is too late for that Spring rush of work you have just done. But if you want to do all the heavy work in the garden yourself you need to put in the prep!
This doesn’t have to mean spending the winter in the gym, but think about the heaviest weight you have to lift – a bag of compost say – do you lift that weight regularly in other contexts? If not, then a little bit of lifting regularly over time is all that’s needed. This can be a simple as filling a backpack with something modestly heavy (for your current capabilities ), leaving in a corner of a room, and lifting it whenever you pass it. You can start very small and build up the weight as it gets easier. So, eventually, it’s normal for you to lift a compost bag amount of weight.
Do you routinely bend or move in way that’s similar to digging or weeding? No? Then pick some exercises that are similar kinds of movements eg squats, modified press ups, twists with weights. Start small and test your tolerance as you go along (a little muscle soreness the next day is normal, a a big pain flare up is obviously to be avoided!). Or go to classes, or a trainer to get an exercise routine that will support your gardening fitness.
Gardening will still have it’s unique sneaky challenges though, so remember to start your gardening year with some ‘warm up’ sessions. Try and choose some less weather dependent stuff to get you moving in the garden, rather than waiting for those sunny Spring days to to everything all at once.
Simple rotation. and a little moderation can get you doing a lot more without the pain.
Just fight that urge to neatly complete a task when it doesn’t matter. You matter a whole lot more!
Learn to stop with tasks unfinished and just enjoy your garden.
Change the ‘how’
Fitness, pacing and rotation are fundamental, but add in some Alexander Technique skills and you make a huge difference to how much gardening you can manage.
How you move matters, and Alexander Technique gives you skills to move with ease and efficiency. It helps:
- Movement variety, so you don’t use all the same muscles all the time.
- You can choose efficient, easy movement patterns.
- To reduce muscle co-contraction so you aren’t fighting yourself through movement.
- Balancing and counterbalancing better to make things more stable and easier.
- Better awareness, so you stop before you overdo it…..
There’s many ways that Alexander Technique can increase your tolerance for gardening and make it a pain-free experience!
With thanks to Gemma of Embodied Mindfulness
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