For every shovel of dirt you lift, every weed you reach over to pull and every barrow of compost you transfer, you could be doing your future self a huge favour.
Not just because you’re having a lovely time in the garden and growing nutritious food and beautiful flowers, but because, as a bonus, you may also be doing the hard yards required to prevent injury as you get older.
Gardening is a brilliant form of moderate exercise for any ability, and works to strengthen a huge range of major muscle groups, says Churchill specialist, Andy Meighan.
“When you break down the tasks people regularly do in the garden – lifting, squatting, carrying, lunging, walking and more – you are engaging most, if not all, the major muscle groups and joints. Keeping your body strong and flexible in this way means you will be more able to stop injuries before they get a chance to happen,” Andy says.
Moderate cardiovascular exercise improves overall fitness
Even just half an hour of digging over the compost heap or vegetable patch in time for spring planting, raking the autumn leaves or weeding can work up a good sweat and is a pretty good workout.
Keeping your fitness levels up in this way can prevent injury when undertaking other activities, and promotes heart health.
Balance and flexibility
Because of all the different movements required to garden, from lifting your arms to carefully walking between your rows of freshly planted lettuces you are helping to maintain the muscles required for balance, which in future can help prevent falls.
Lunging and stepping over your plants, reaching up to prune or pick and other such movements all help to build your physical resistance to injury.
Functional fitness
Training your muscles to work together is known as functional exercise.
Gardening, which uses many muscle groups at one time as you dig, squat, lift, walk, lean and reach, is the perfect form of functional exercise.
This will help to move your body more comfortably overall, taking pressure off areas that may otherwise become susceptible to injury.
Strengthen your core
Gardening’s many tasks are great for strengthening and stabilising your core, which in turn makes it easier and safer to do many other physical activities.
Weak core muscles can lead to less endurance, poor posture, lower back pain and muscle injuries.
Hand strength
So often overlooked in other forms of exercise, hand strength is definitely the centre of attention during most gardening activities.
Regular use in the garden helps to keep your hands strong and nimble so you can more safely complete other tasks in daily life without getting hurt.
