Growing pains? : how to avoid injury while gardening - essential exercises for perfect posture

One ​​of the reasons gardening is such a good exercise is that the sheer pleasure it provides masks how hard you work, so you end up you expend more than you would at the gym. Scientific studies prove it – not that I need proof. When I manage to steal a moment to carve a tangle of triffids, I find it hard to stop. Before I knew it, I had been wielding a chainsaw on a pole for four hours.

The only downside is that pulling, pushing, lifting and bending endless can lead to, or exacerbate, aches and pains. NHS Digital figures for 2020-21 (AKA the big gardening and DIY boom in lockdown) record 12,355 hospital admissions in England with injuries related to “overuse and intense or repetitive movement”. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Madeline Hooper, a retired public relations executive who lives in the Hudson Valley north of from New York, reached a point where she couldn't ignore her sore neck any longer. "I love gardening," she says, "and no matter how long it takes to weed the bed - I weed the whole bed. But I had terrible pain in my neck and upper shoulder. Being of the dynamic type, she enlisted the help of personal trainer Jeff Hughes, whose simple, no-nonsense approach worked.The couple have now teamed up with an American television show called GardenFit, in which they travel across America, admiring gardens while helping educate the world on how to garden without pain.

The first thing to know is that posture is "If your head is back and your chest is puffed out and your shoulders are back and down, you feel big and powerful,” says Hughes. “Whatever you do, you'll incorporate the right muscle, whereas when you bend you incorporate muscles that are not designed to do this work. what we do when we're tired."

Hooper's technique was a perfect example. “Your shoulder lifts your arm,” says Hughes, “and your trapezius lifts your shoulder. If you're doing something all day and your shoulder is tired from lifting your arm, your body is smart. It's okay: what else can raise their arm? All of a sudden your trapezius is doing something it wasn't designed to do and, of course, your neck is going to hurt. The solution is simple: "When your shoulder gets tired of raising your arm, stop raising your fucking arm!

"As soon as you start recognizing that you can't hold your stance correctly, do something on the ground or grab the shovel and dig in. Now you go in the opposite direction with your shoulders."