Tips for Safe Gardening & Yard Work

Every spring, gardens across NW Calgary wake up — and so do the backs, knees, and shoulders of the people tending them. Gardening involves sustained bending, repetitive gripping, awkward kneeling, and surprisingly heavy lifting, usually after a winter of doing none of those things. Here's how to keep it joyful.

Treat it like a workout (because it is)

• Warm up first. Two or three minutes of brisk walking and some easy squats and arm circles before you touch a trowel. Cold tissue strains easily.
• Start with shorter sessions. The first gardening weekends of the year are when most injuries happen. An hour a day for a week beats six hours on the first warm Saturday.
• Rotate tasks every 20-30 minutes. Weed, then prune, then water, then weed again. Repetition without variety is how tendons get cranky.

Positions that save your back

• Kneel rather than bend. A kneeling pad or garden bench keeps you close to the work without folding your spine in half for an hour. Alternate which knee is down.
• Hinge for anything on the ground. Hips back, knees soft, back long — the same pattern as a deadlift, because it is one.
• Keep loads close. Bags of soil hugged to your torso, not carried at arm's length. Half-fill the watering can and make two trips.
• Step to turn. Twisting under load — the shovel-and-fling — is the classic gardening back injury. Move your feet instead.

Spare the small joints

Long pruning and weeding sessions overload thumbs and forearms. Choose ergonomic, well-fitting tools, keep blades sharp (dull tools demand double the grip force), and break up gripping tasks before your hands ache, not after.

After the session

A short walk and a few gentle stretches — hip flexor openers, back extensions, chest stretches — help undo the gardening crouch. Next-day soreness is fair; sharp, persistent, or radiating pain isn't, and earlier treatment is simpler treatment.

If the garden won that round, we're open 7 days a week with direct billing. Call 587-355-3555 — Nolan Hill Physiotherapy & Massage, NW Calgary.