The warm weather has come round again and the garden is out there, wordlessly calling you to action. If not much has happened out there yet it soon will as the warmth and light take effect. There's so much to be done as we try and prepare the plot for growing that perfect lawn, vegetables and flowers.
An epidemic of digging is followed every year at this time by an epidemic of low back pain, neck pain and other injuries. Most of these are preventable with just a bit of planning and preparation.
The winter has, for many of us, been a quiet time physically as we have done relatively little exercise or physical activity. So when March comes we are spectacularly unprepared for the burst of intense physical work needed to get the garden into order and prepared for the crops.
Advice on warming up before you get stuck in to the work is useful in itself but leaves out a crucial part of the equation, the amount of activity you decide to do when you start or later on. You could warm up really thoroughly but if you perform far too much gardening initially you will suffer due to your body's tissue tolerances being overstepped.
Preparation by warming up may well be essential but if you omit to keep activity levels under control, you may not be able to manage useful levels of work. Winter means we have all done less physical activity, particularly exercise, and our tissues will have a reduced tolerance to physical stresses. Athletes do not go out and perform their event at full tilt when they start training but gradually increase the intensity of training and performance.
Most people fall into the mistake of overdoing things significantly when they start out a new activity, usually because the body does not tell us that we have overdone things until its too late. This makes the decision about the level of activity we should do very difficult to judge. If we get out there in the garden, grab a spade and start digging we are highly at risk of doing too much.
Physiotherapy practices and chiropractors and osteopaths all report a significant increase in painful conditions and injuries from outdoor pursuits such as tending the garden in the springtime. Back pain is overwhelmingly the most common presentation although other joint injuries and ligament sprains are also represented. Typically people aggravate an injury they already had before.
11 Methods for Injury Avoidance and Successful Gardening
1. Be prepared for the spring work by keeping yourself fit with exercise or regular activity during the winter.
2. Follow a stretching routine each time before you start.
3. When you are doing a lot of ground level work such as weeding, kneel down either with a kneeler or knee pads.
4. Take regular breaks at intervals you decide before you start.
5. Start with very short defined times of activity initially and keep the task down to two hours or less in the first few days if you are fit. If you have problems this will need to be lower.
6. Plan a graded increase in activity, using pacing technique, sticking to times you have decided.
7. The trap is when you feel good, so limit the increases in activity to the times you decided even if you feel you could do more.
8. Lift well and get someone else to help you if the load is heavy.
9. Avoid side to side swinging movements with a mower; use a steady forwards and backwards movement instead.
10. Change tasks routinely, ensuring you don't do consecutive tasks which are physically similar. Digging could be followed by a bit of pruning or raking to give the position a rest.
11. Stop the job if you feel any significant pain or soreness and re-evaluate the next day. If it's just soreness in the muscles then you can resume the task at a lower level.
The most important thing is to pace and decide the level of work before starting. And to stick to it. - 14130
An epidemic of digging is followed every year at this time by an epidemic of low back pain, neck pain and other injuries. Most of these are preventable with just a bit of planning and preparation.
The winter has, for many of us, been a quiet time physically as we have done relatively little exercise or physical activity. So when March comes we are spectacularly unprepared for the burst of intense physical work needed to get the garden into order and prepared for the crops.
Advice on warming up before you get stuck in to the work is useful in itself but leaves out a crucial part of the equation, the amount of activity you decide to do when you start or later on. You could warm up really thoroughly but if you perform far too much gardening initially you will suffer due to your body's tissue tolerances being overstepped.
Preparation by warming up may well be essential but if you omit to keep activity levels under control, you may not be able to manage useful levels of work. Winter means we have all done less physical activity, particularly exercise, and our tissues will have a reduced tolerance to physical stresses. Athletes do not go out and perform their event at full tilt when they start training but gradually increase the intensity of training and performance.
Most people fall into the mistake of overdoing things significantly when they start out a new activity, usually because the body does not tell us that we have overdone things until its too late. This makes the decision about the level of activity we should do very difficult to judge. If we get out there in the garden, grab a spade and start digging we are highly at risk of doing too much.
Physiotherapy practices and chiropractors and osteopaths all report a significant increase in painful conditions and injuries from outdoor pursuits such as tending the garden in the springtime. Back pain is overwhelmingly the most common presentation although other joint injuries and ligament sprains are also represented. Typically people aggravate an injury they already had before.
11 Methods for Injury Avoidance and Successful Gardening
1. Be prepared for the spring work by keeping yourself fit with exercise or regular activity during the winter.
2. Follow a stretching routine each time before you start.
3. When you are doing a lot of ground level work such as weeding, kneel down either with a kneeler or knee pads.
4. Take regular breaks at intervals you decide before you start.
5. Start with very short defined times of activity initially and keep the task down to two hours or less in the first few days if you are fit. If you have problems this will need to be lower.
6. Plan a graded increase in activity, using pacing technique, sticking to times you have decided.
7. The trap is when you feel good, so limit the increases in activity to the times you decided even if you feel you could do more.
8. Lift well and get someone else to help you if the load is heavy.
9. Avoid side to side swinging movements with a mower; use a steady forwards and backwards movement instead.
10. Change tasks routinely, ensuring you don't do consecutive tasks which are physically similar. Digging could be followed by a bit of pruning or raking to give the position a rest.
11. Stop the job if you feel any significant pain or soreness and re-evaluate the next day. If it's just soreness in the muscles then you can resume the task at a lower level.
The most important thing is to pace and decide the level of work before starting. And to stick to it. - 14130
About the Author:
Jonathan Blood Smyth, editor of the Physiotherapy Site, writes articles about Physiotherapy, back pain, orthopaedic conditions, neck pain, injury management and physiotherapists in Cambridge. Jonathan is a superintendant physiotherapist at an NHS hospital in the South-West of the UK.
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