8 Tips to Prevent Low Back Pain this Gardening Season
With the start of spring, many of us begin planning our gardens, including weeding, raking, and preparing for planting. Gardening has many health benefits, but injuries can occur. In fact, over 300,000 people sustain a gardening injury year. Most gardening injuries occur gradually over time due to repetitive tasks, such as bending, lifting, squatting, and kneeling. The low back can be particularly susceptible to injury during gardening as bending, lifting, and squatting can cause you to twist your body into awkward positions or to overstretch, leading to muscle strains or sprains or persistent lower back pain. Check out our 8 tips to prevent low back pain this gardening season!
Low Back Pain After Gardening
The lower back can be particularly susceptible to injury during gardening due to the repetitive bending, lifting, and squatting required, which can cause you to twist your body into awkward positions or cause you to overstretch, leading to muscle strains. A sprain occurs when a ligament is overstretched, whereas a strain results from overstretching or tearing of muscles or tendons. Improper body mechanics and lifting technique can also speed up age-related changes in your spine, contributing to increased low back pain.
The low back, or lumbar spine, extends from just below the rib cage to the upper part of the buttocks and is comprised of 5 vertebrae. The low back muscles and lumbar spine support the weight of the upper body and contain many nerves that supply feeling to the muscles in the pelvis, legs, and feet.
Low back pain can be dull, burning, and throbbing or sharp and shooting. It may be felt at a single point or over a broad area and pain can radiate down one or both legs (sciatica) or cause muscle spasms and stiffness. Mechanical back pain is the most common form of low back pain that results from injured muscles, ligaments, vertebrae, facet or sacroiliac joints, or discs in and around the spine.
Tips to Prevent Low Back Pain during Gardening
Here are 8 tips to prevent low back pain this gardening season:
Always warm up before gardening with dynamic exercises, such as lunges and squats and a brisk walk, to activate and warm up lower body muscles and increase blood flow and flexibility in your legs and hips. Focus on stretching the lower back, hamstring, and hip muscles to minimize the risk of a muscle strain.
Use proper lifting technique. When lifting a heavy object like a pot or bag of soil, squat, bending at your knees and hips while keeping your back straight. Let the leg and arm muscles do the heavy lifting instead of relying on your back. Keep the object close to your body and your feet shoulder-width apart.
Pivot, don’t twist. To pivot means to move your feet and hips in the same direction as your upper body instead of keeping them planted and twisting at the spine. Twisting can harm your lower back, overstretching ligaments or muscles and causing low back pain.
Shuffle as your rake. When raking, use smaller strokes and shuffle your feet back and forth, rather than keeping your feet planted and bending your back to extend your reach. Shuffling while raking can help you avoid putting undue pressure on the muscles of your low back and helps you keep neutral spinal alignment.
Use correct body mechanics. Stand tall with your shoulders back and avoid slouching. Keep your spine aligned and weight distributed evenly. Engage your core muscles by gently pulling the belly button toward the spine, which provides stability and support to the low back. Follow proper lifting technique to minimize strain on your back.
Take breaks and change positions often. Start your gardening season with shorter work sessions, such as 20–30-minute intervals, and gradually increase the duration as your stamina improves. This reduces the risk of overworking and fatigue, which can increase the risk of injury. Change positions often, as staying in one position doing a repetitive task for an extended period of time can increase your risk of injury. Alternate between different gardening activities to distribute the workload across muscle groups.
Use ergonomic tools. Choose tools with long handles, which allow you to maintain a more upright position as you work and require less bending and reaching. Use a wheelbarrow or cart rather than doing heavy lifting.
Create raised bed or vertical gardens to reduce strain on your back. Raised beds bring the garden to a more accessible height, reducing the need to bend or kneel. A vertical garden allow you to tend plants at a comfortable standing height.
Gardening is a full-body physical activity and one of the many joys of springtime. Follow these 8 tips to prevent back injury this gardening season. If you do experience back pain during the gardening season, our physical therapists are here to help and address your pain effectively and efficiently to get you back out in the garden.
