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Gardening is generally thought of as a pleasant, genteel pastime to while away the hours. Though you may be surprised that time spent tending your garden can help with both your physical and cardiovascular fitness. It will not make you pumped up and buff however time spent in the garden can help to give you a general all-over workout whilst you are tending to your plants, weeding or even just cutting the grass. Think about that for a moment. Just about any activity you take in the garden is a form of exercise. Bending down to weed and standing up again repeatedly, digging holes to plant new stuff, fetching and carrying bags of fertiliser, pushing the lawnmower around to cut the grass and all the emptying of the cuttings in to a sack to be disposed of. It’s all exercise in the fresh air with the added bonus of something productive whether that be a beautifully manicured flower bed or a few vegetables for the dinner table. As with any other form of exercise, a bit of a warm up first before you hit the garden is not a bad idea. A little light stretching to warm up the muscles and tendons you’ll be using out in the garden will help to get you moving. Also, beware that the repeated bending down and squatting whilst weeding can be bad for your back so be sure to give yourself a few minutes break often to protect against stress and strain injuries associated with being in unnatural positions for long periods. Then after your warm up, get out there and hit the garden to continue your workout. Routine weeding and pruning are amongst the most common things you attend to in your garden. To weed and prune thoroughly you will be using tools such as forks and shears repeatedly to dig up weeds and cut through shoots and branches which need cutting back. The effort you need to use to cut through these things will help to tone up your arm muscles. Consider switching between right and left hand and changing body position to give yourself an overall workout. When it is time to plant out potted plants or apply fertiliser or other soil treatment this will inevitably involve the lifting and carrying of heavy fertiliser bags. This is effectively the same as lifting weights at the gym. Be careful to lift with your legs and not your back as you would with any other heavy weight you are lifting. The effort of all that lifting and carrying will help to tone you up too and the exertion involved beef up your cardiovascular fitness when it makes you “blow”. Do not over do it and take a break if it gets too much. Even cutting the grass is an aid to your overall fitness. It’s not just pushing the lawnmower up and down because while you are doing that you are actually using all sorts of muscle groups. Your legs and thighs to push and walk, your arms and shoulders to push and steer the mower where you want it to go. If you have an old style manual mower you will of course work harder and involve more effort though even the electric models we mostly use these days require some effort to push along and that all helps with your gardening workout. So do not view gardening as just another boring chore to be done. It can actually be good for you from a gentle exercise point of view thus being beneficial to your health in addition to a garden which looks great and (if you are in to vegetables) put food on the table. Now you have a fresh perspective on gardening, why not extend that in to an area you may not have considered before and introduce a wormery. It’s quick, cheap, helps you to recycle by using grass cuttings for the worms to do their magic with and produce natural compost you can use to enrich your soil. For more information on how you can set make your own garden wormery and a download free ebook on the topic please click here.
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gardening, gardening for fitness, weeding, grass cutting,
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