How to Protect Your Back from Injury when Gardening

Gardening is profoundly rewarding hobby, offering physical activity, emotional health, and a connection to nature. However, being such a physical task comes with its own set of challenges, particularly regarding back health. The regular bending, lifting, and twisting involved – often in small awkward spaces – puts strain on your back, leading to muscular discomfort or even a more significant injury. To help you stay pain-free and enjoy gardening to its fullest, we’ve compiled some essential stretches, exercises, and know-how tailored specifically to gardeners. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting to flex your green thumb, this guide is for you to protect your back, and that’s good for you, and good for the garden.

Prevention is Better than Cure

As gardeners ourselves being unable to garden due to a back or any injury is an incredibly frustrating feeling. And these little injuries seem to appear from nowhere too. How many times have we just twisted a certain way and felt a little pull? That’s why the best medicine is preventing rather than managing a back injury. We can all decrease our chances of sustaining an unexpected injury by preparing our bodies for activity, especially as we get a bit older, when our bodies don’t regenerate or heal as quickly as when we were younger.

Incorporating specific stretches and exercises into your routine can make you ready and fitter for gardening, increasing your flexibility, strengthening the back and connected muscles, ultimately reducing the risk of injury. The good news is that it doesn’t have to take a long time from our day in the garden, these will take very little time to do.

Then there’s also the right way to do things such as the right lifting technique, and even using the right tool for the job so we don’t push ourselves too hard.

Let’s delve into our holistic approach to injury-free gardening.

Warm Up Beforehand

The first thing to do prior to any gardening is to warm up a little. We would advise going for a brisk 10-15-minute walk to help blood start to flow around the body and into the muscles. The warmer the muscles, the less likely they’ll be to suffer injury generally.

Do Some Stretching

Then, doing some simple stretching to loosen up before reaching for the tools will pay dividends. It will give your back and whole-body time to prepare for all the moving, twisting, lifting, and digging it will be doing throughout the day. The stretches themselves should target your back and core, shoulders and arms, and leg muscles. Here are some we recommend:

Forward Bends

A classic stretch that most people know to use to loosen the legs off, specifically the hamstrings and lower back. Stand with your feet hip-width apart, knees can be very slightly bent, then slowly bend forward at the hips, and reach towards the ground. Hold the position for 15-30 seconds and repeat three times. Stretch only as far as feels comfortable; you don’t have to touch your toes.

Side Bends

With feet hip distance apart, loosely grab your right wrist or right hand with your left hand, and then stretch sideways over to your left gently until you feel the stretch. Breath out when stretching out, and breath in when coming back to a neutral position.  Hold it for up to 20 seconds. Repeat on your right side and repeat both sides three times.

Overhead Reach

Keep your feet hip distance apart and reach with your arms straight overhead interlacing your fingers with the palms facing upwards. Raise your arms upwards as you try to press your shoulders down. Hold for about 10 seconds then relax bringing your arms back to your sides. Repeat three times.

Cross-body Shoulder Stretch

Start with feet hip width apart again. Take your right arm and cross it over your chest towards the opposite shoulder. Take your left hand and use it to hold your right arm in place at the elbow, placing some gentle pressure to get a good stretch. Hold for about 20 seconds. Repeat on each side three times.

A Good Upper Body Shake

Remember that one you did when you were younger in PE? Give yourself a moderate shake through your arms – including fingers all the way up to your shoulders – and upper body to loosen anything else off.

Do some arms circles too, shoulder shrugs and you’ll be much looser than you were at the beginning and ready to garden!

Follow Proper Technique

Proper technique, especially when it comes to bending and lifting is essential around the garden to protect your back. Not doing things correctly will cause an injury at some point even after warming up and stretching. Here are some of the most common techniques we all often forget or don’t do thinking we are saving time:

Bending

When it comes to bending over, bend the knees and squat or kneel to get down instead of bending over. Bending over puts significant pressure on the lower back and stretches the muscles and ligaments excessively.

Lifting

When lifting anything heavy, bend at the knees and lift with your legs, not your back. Generally speaking, your legs are much more powerful than your back and can take more stress. Keep any objects close to your body when lifting too.

Kneeling

Kneeling instead of bending protects your back. Though when kneeling, use a kneeling mat or pad to protect your knees too. You can kneel with both knees or with one knee at a time and switch them over every so often to ease strain. 

Twisting and Overreaching

Twisting and leaning or reaching awkwardly often puts our bodies in one of the weakest positions it can be in and usually results in some kind of back strain or injury. Avoid this entirely if you can. Try to move your whole body, maintain a neutral spine as you work, keeping movements smooth and avoid any sudden twisting or reaching motions.

Digging

When digging be sure to avoid the twisting as above. You should have as minimal a back bend as you can but greater bends at the knees. Avoid erratic movements and keep to a repetitive motion. Keep the shovel as close to you for more control and force.

Use the Right Tools for the Job

Take further strain off your back and body by using the right tools. Here are some essentials we recommend:

Wheelbarrow

Wheelbarrows help you move heavier loads faster and more easily than you can carrying by hand when you might strain to do so. If the weight is too heavy you might strain further and get into bad body positions that can cause injury. The back is often one of the main parts of the body to take this kind of strain. So, chuck it in the wheelbarrow and save yourself. It will still take some effort and time to move of course, but you hold a much more stable position with a wheelbarrow.

Tools with Long Handles

Long handed tools are great as they prevent you from slipping into those bad bending over habits so often, meaning you can take a lot of the strain off your lower back. You’ll still have to use smaller tools of course, but not as often.

Kneeler and Stool

Gardening kneelers and stools encourage better posture as they provide support for your lower back and knees, reducing the risk of strain and injury.

Take Breaks

Remember to take regular, well-earned breaks and stay hydrated. Remember to eat too, your muscles need the energy to keep going. When your body is low on energy muscle fatigue happens faster making you more prone to an injury. If you find that you are feeling sore, it’s probably a good time to stop and rest right away.

Don’t Try to Do Too Much at Once

Avoid overly repetitive motion injuries by dividing up each task into sections that allow you to switch activities and posture frequently. This will ease the strain on your body. For example, weed one of your beds or borders and then stand up and water it. Then go and cut a section of the grass before resuming weeding again. Take a break for lunch then lift those compost bags. Then you’ve earned a tea and bickie. Try and spread out your gardening work over a few days too which will help your recovery. Any task performed for too long typically results in poor posture as you tire and increases the strain on your back.

Do a Cool Down When Finished

You might be thinking, after all that warm up, stretching and gardening there’s more?! Don’t worry, your cool down can be a nice 15-minute walk. This is better for the recovery of your back and other muscles than just stopping and putting your feet up as it helps the blood to keep flowing around your tight muscles. If you don’t do this you might find they feel much tighter feeling, even a bit sore, and take longer to recover. 

A Healthy Back Makes for a Flourishing Garden

By incorporating these stretches and following the proper techniques during gardening, you can help protect your back and stay injury free and be able to garden freely without pain for years to come. Staying healthy is the key to a thriving garden and a thriving you so look after yourself. And remember, you do experience back pain, stop, and rest immediately. Happy gardening!