Health
Get down to earth: how to turn your garden into your gym
Who needs a gym when pulling weeds, pruning hedges and digging dirt can give you a full-body workout — right in your own backyard.
By Mark Dapin
Physiotherapist Mark Stockdale of Balmain Sports Medicine in Sydney has been digging around for a solution to a common exercise problem.
“A lot of people don’t like the gym,” says Stockdale. “They don’t like exercise much: they find it intimidating and a bit boring, a bit over-complicated. And gyms are expensive.”
So he likes to plant a seed in the minds of receptive patients.
“If they’ve got a garden, they’ve got a gymnasium,” he says. “They don’t need anything else.”
And he’s not leading them up the garden path.
“I’m a gardener,” says Stockdale. “If you look at the basic movements in the garden, they’re large movements and, in a way, we’ve evolved to do them.”
The physical benefits of gardening
Yet, some of these movements have all but disappeared from urban life.
“People don’t get down on the ground anymore,” says Stockdale. “They don’t kneel. We never get below chair level.”
We’ve lost the huge physical benefits of “arranging yourself on the ground and sowing seeds”, he says.
“Just to get down on the ground – let alone get up – means you have to use big muscles like your glutes that you might not otherwise use. You have to challenge the kind of hip mobility that never gets challenged in a chair or a car or on the couch or in bed: that’s one reason why a lot of people ultimately end up stranded on the floor as they get older.”
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A physiologically favourable rising motion can involve anything from springing up like a surfer to using your own hands on your knees to “climb” yourself up, or even holding on to a shovel or planter box while you come to your feet.
“There aren’t as many rules as people think,” says Stockdale.
Just as much a philosophy as a practice
As one of the few physiotherapists known to be a keen gardener, Stockdale attracts expert gardeners, horticulturists and gardening journalists to his practice. “Because everyone else gets bored of it,” he laughs.
While he dealt with common garden injuries arising from incorrectly lifting bags of potting mix or pulling weeds, he listened to advice from his specialist clients and developed exercise classes themed around gardening actions and emphasising “big levers and compound movements”.
The classes developed into a kind of philosophy, and a methodology for the treatment of individual clients with specific problems. Today, Stockdale trains novice and experienced gardeners to both garden without injury and become fitter through gardening.
He stresses that it’s important to simply make hay while the sun shines – that is, there are health-and-fitness gains to be made just by getting outside and moving around.
4 ways to up your fitness through gardening
But here are his favourite 4 gardening exercises, to be completed as part of a normal gardening session.
Swinging a mattock or pick
“It’s a similar exercise to working on a chain gang,” says Stockdale. “It’s a beautiful movement and, if you do it properly, it covers almost every muscle.”
Common pick-swinging errors include reaching out too far; underusing the legs; overusing the back; forcing the downswing; and standing on the toes rather than flat on the feet.
The best physical results from pick-swinging can be had by varying the plane of the swing, perhaps even changing hands.
Moving dirt with a shovel
This is a large, lever-based motion, which ideally ends with shovelling the dirt over one shoulder.
Stockdale counsels against reaching too far with too much load on the shovel, and placing undue strain on the back. It’s much better to use the legs to power the swing, and to move around.
Lifting
A lot of people have the wrong idea about lifting, says Stockdale. “We’ve been told it should be a bend-the-knees movement, but it should actually be bum-out, bend- the-hips action.”
Lifting from a low, angled position – “like you’re a five-eighth or a wicket keeper” – is the safest and most effective method.
Pruning
“I probably see more gardening injuries from pruning than anything else,” says Stockdale, “People reach outside their base of support: they reach outside their feet.”
It’s important to keep a wide base and, if you need to reach further, it’s best to move your centre of gravity towards the plant and perhaps add an extension to your pruning tool.
The nicest gym you’ve ever been in
So, next time you're out in the garden pulling weeds, shifting soil or trimming the hedge, take a moment to appreciate the workout you're giving your body – without a treadmill or dumbbell in sight.
Gardening isn’t just good for your flowers; it’s a full-body exercise with fresh air, sunshine and a sense of purpose thrown in. And for those of us who'd rather be among the roses than under fluorescent gym lights, it's the kind of fitness that truly grows on you.
Feature image: iStock/Halfpoint
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