Pull Your Weeds, Not Your Back
How to Prevent Gardening From Taxing Your Body

Though it relieves stress and lowers blood pressure, gardening, if not done with proper
attention to your back and spine, can exacerbate existing soft tissue injuries and strain
muscles and joints from excessive twisting and bending. Below are just a few tips to
make your gardening experience as fruitful as possible:

- Ideally, you’ll want to stretch your muscles before you begin your gardening
routine to prevent sprains and stiffness. Once you start your gardening routine, try
to re-position yourself or do a quick stretch or two every 30 minutes.

- If you suffer from chronic back and neck pain, build raised beds to prevent
excessive bending. (They’ll also be easier to keep weed-free and pest-free if
constructed correctly.)

- Even if you don’t have arthritis, consider investing in ergonomic gardening tools.
There are several styles of ergonomically angled gardening tools that keep the
hand and wrist in a natural position and exploit the strength of the forearm and
upper arm.

- As always, be mindful of your posture and positioning while gardening. Alternate
your pose every so often and stand up to stretch your arms and legs every half
hour.

- A potting bench is an attractive addition to a backyard area and makes the potting
a more ergonomic endeavor while also providing a convenient place to store your
gardening implements. Look for one with a hole for a large bucket to store potting
soil to reduce the need to haul those awkward bags of potting soil.

- When you do need to lift bags of potting soil or anything heavy, remember to lift
with your legs, not your back. Better yet, use a wheel barrow to transport objects
from place to place.

- Use a foam pad or a towel when you are on your knees to weed or plant.

- Make your gardening life a little easier by building an automatic watering system
(even if it’s simple lawn sprinklers set to go off with timers). The less you have to
wrestle with the hose, the better.

- If you feel achy afterward, apply a cold pack on the area of pain for the first 48
hours or apply a heat pack after 48 hours and consider scheduling a massage or a
chiropractic visit.

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