A Healthy Pastime – Gardening
When most people think of exercise, they think of things like jogging, aerobic dancing, weight lifting, or stationery cycling. Gardening is not usually even considered when it comes to exercise – but it should be. Gardening is a great form of healthy exercise, and it has the extra added bonus of being a productive undertaking. Instead of sitting on an exercise bike, pedaling and going nowhere, you are growing things!
When you garden, you are working several different muscle groups. In addition, you do repetitive tasks, such as hoeing or weeding, which if done consistently fully qualify as aerobic activity.
You may not be using some of the muscles in your daily work but they are exercised while gardening. You might have heard an old adage “muscles hurt that I didn’t even know I had”. This is true when you do gardening. It is important to exercise all the muscles of the body to keep fit and you can achieve this by gardening.
There is a way of making it more effective. Concentrate on the muscle you are using and make an effort to emphasize on the movement. For example if you are bending and making holes to put in seeds you can do it with more effort and keep down for a longer time. Keep doing the actions for some time.
If you are hoeing, lift the hoe higher than you normally would, and even swing it around each time you go to put it into the ground. Try to feel each muscle that you are using to accomplish different tasks, and try to vary what you do each day. Also, do some stretches before you begin any gardening, as this will help prevent muscle injury. After gardening for a while, you’ll start to notice a difference in the way you feel and the way you look.
