5 Quick Yoga Poses That Get You Ready For Gardening
Gardening is physical work, make sure your body is ready to weed, pull, plant, and water!
Gardening, like shoveling snow in the Winter, is physical work. But also like shoveling, rarely does anyone warm up before they head out into the garden. Whether you’re out there for an hour or all day, you must prepare your body for the physical challenges of gardening. Otherwise you’ll end up in my acupuncture office or yoga studio complaining of a sore back (or shoulder, or wrist…).
As we age, warming up and cooling down must become an essential part of doing any type of physical activity. If not, that’s when injuries happen. Running outside to weed for an hour wasn’t as big a deal when you were younger, but now it can leave your body aching. If you spend even 5 or 10 minutes ahead of time warming up your body, it can make the difference between going back to your day with ease, or going back in pain.
I often describe practicing yoga as Cross-Training for Life. The stretching, strengthening, and balancing that you practice on the mat prepares you for all that life can throw at you. It gives you better body awareness which easily translates to any other sport or activity that you do.
This Summer I will be writing essays about yoga sequences that you can practice before and after doing different activities, like this one. Each will contain a short video for you to follow so that you can feel stronger, more mobile, and more comfortable in your body.
If you have any requests for sports or activities that you like that require a bit of a warm up and cool down, comment below! I love to take requests.
Benefits of yoga for gardening
Gardening often entails lots of repetitive movements. Digging, weeding, pulling, lugging, and twisting require a strong core, back and legs. Ideally you want to pull from your core, not just your arms. The more you can use the big muscles in your body to do the hard work, the less the smaller muscles hurt.
There is also a lot of bending over, which over time can make your back cranky. Keeping your spine straight or supporting yourself with your arms and/or legs can help. It’s important to understand proper body mechanics and apply them as much as possible.
Hip hinge
When bending over to weed or do anything low to the ground, you want to hinge from the hips rather than round your spine. Keep the spine straight and tip forward from your pelvis. This requires some hamstring mobility and engaging your abdominal muscles keep the spine straight.
You might want to “take a knee” when working low to the ground. You can use the hip hinge while leaning an elbow on your front thigh. Make sure to switch legs at some point so that you balance out. Weeding with your non-dominant hand might not be as efficient, but when it comes to overuse injuries, your body will appreciate your using both sides.
Pull from your core
I often have patients who come with sore arms after gardening. Either their wrist, shoulder, or forearm hurts from grasping and pulling. When the movement is small and repetitive, the smaller muscles of your arm get tired. If you can pull from your core, using the hand to grasp the weeds and your abdominals to pull, it will take much longer to fatigue. Keep the spine straight and rotate your rib cage using your obliques.
Use your glutes
This is good advice no matter what activity you’re doing. Any time you go from a lowered position to standing, press your heels into the ground and engage your glutes as you stand. As we age, “Gluteal Amnesia” can set in where our glutes no longer fire when they should. This often leads to back and hip pain and creates tight hamstrings. You will have more power and less pain by activating your glutes when you are digging holes, pulling out larger plants, or simply rising from crouching to standing.
Yoga poses to prepare you for gardening
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. ~Benjamin Franklin
When you warm up your body and prepare yourself for the activity that’s coming, you’ll need less recovery support. I love foam rolling before doing anything, as it gets the blood flowing through your muscles.
Yoga is another way to warm up the body and prepare it for physical activities. This sequence will take about 10 minutes, and you can follow along with the video below. The second half of the video is for afterward as you cool down. For best results, after you garden, stretch to cool down before you shower. This will only take another 10 minutes.
The rule of thumb is movement/foam rolling before the activity (never do static stretches cold), then do the activity, the static stretching after, once the body is warm. As we age, it becomes more important to warm up and cool down to prevent injury.
Warm up poses:
Notice these all involve movement to warm up the muscles and get the blood flowing.
- Cat ←→ Cow
- Thread the needle
- Malasana ← → Standing Forward Bend. You can modify by placing your hips on a block or chair.
- Utkatasana → sit on chair (resist gravity), then Utkatasana to Tadasana
- Low Lunge ←→ Half Split
Cool down poses:
These are static stretches, hold each pose 5-10 breaths.
- Standing Forward Bend with bent knees, straight optional.
- Yoga mudra with head turn
- Reclining Twist
- Side Lying Quad Stretch
- #4 Stretch
This video contains a warm up followed by a cool down. The cool down starts at timestamp 10:30.
Join me online on the mat!
A regular yoga practice keeps your body strong and mobile with less pain. I teach online yoga classes for active adults over 50 who want to stay active for as long as possible. Classes include Beginner Yoga, 30 Min FitFlow, Mindful Core, Head to Toe Stretch, and more.
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