Ergonomic Tips for Gardening & Farming
We focus a lot on eating healthy around here, and all of the wonderful, nutritious vegetables that we grow, cook, eat, and share with family and friends. But what we often don’t talk about is the physical toll gardening, and especially farming, has on our bodies. What more, how can we keep, not just our plants healthy, but also our bodies?
Last year, I had my first baby. Upon returning to work, I began seeing a physical therapist. My work at Garden City Harvest includes writing blog posts like this and lots of emailing, but it also includes days of physical effort gardening and maintaining the community gardens across Missoula. After a couple months of working with my physical therapist, I realized my postpartum exercises were all just training for gardening!
So I asked my physical therapist if she could share some general tips for anyone who gardens or farms. Below are ergonomic tips from several physical therapists at Alpine Physical Therapy for gardening or farming. I’ve also summarized some anecdotal tips from the farmers and gardeners of Garden City Harvest. I hope this helps you keep your back and body healthy this season. Because let’s face it, we all have growing aches and pains - pun intended!
Weeding, planting, weeding, harvesting, checking the soil, watering, weeding, checking for pests, weeding, watering, weeding…
Growing and tending plants, as most of you know, requires a lot of bending over. I think it’s safe to generalize that all of us notice at some point during the growing season how it strains our backs and bodies.
tips from a physical therapist
Below are some gardening tips I gathered from some of the physical therapists at Alpine Physical Therapy.
Take frequent breaks
Bending down in prolonged back flexion is one of the main causes of back aches while gardening. Get up every 20 minutes for a movement break. Stand up, stretch and hydrate! A good way to counteract all of that bending forward is to stand up, put your hands on hips and lean backwards.
The best position is your next position!
Avoid spending too much time in one position while gardening. Consider three to four different ways to access your plants besides squatting and bending down, such as a high kneel, half kneeling, hands and knees (all fours), or sitting on a stool.
Rotate between tasks
Repetitive lifting and gripping tasks can set us up for stubborn overuse injuries. Rather than focusing on one big project, rotate between tasks and use different garden tools to give your muscles and tendons a change of pace.
Grab a gardening bench
The padding on a gardening bench can make for a low seat as well as a comfortable way to kneel if your knees get sore easily. A gardening bench also works well for people who have trouble getting up off the ground as it's got two handles to push up on.
Garden City Harvest Staff tips
As farmers and gardeners ourselves who manage the 21 Garden City Harvest sites, we’ve developed our own unofficial tips for keeping aches at bay and making our work feel manageable day after day.
You are never too young to take advantage of a knee pad
Stretch or do a yoga flow for at least 30 minutes, once a week
Engage your inner core when bending or lifting
Remind yourself to relax your shoulders
Hinge at your hips (here’s a helpful article to teach you how)
Hot tub and Ibuprofen