Proper movements and tools will extend your gardening season. The secret to a healthy garden is a healthy gardener. To get the most of your gardening season, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) recommends the following tips and techniques. A “warm up” before you start your gardening helps to reduce muscle strain, injury and fatigue. Do some shoulder circles, trunk rotations, and heel / toe standing. Take a few minutes to stretch your neck, wrists, shoulders, lower back and legs. Repeat them again at the end of your gardening activity. If you begin to feel a bit stiff while gardening, pause and do more stretches.

RAKING OR HOEING – keep your tools close to your body and your back straight to reduce strain. Use your arms and avoid twisting your trunk. Use long-handled tools suited to your height. 

• If you tend to bend over or reach too far while raking, consider using an ergonomic rake (available at garden centres). It will make the job easier and reduce strain to your back.

WEEDING OR PLANTING – do not bend from the waist. Squat or kneel on a kneeling pad. If you have difficulty getting up, use a kneeling pad / bench with a support handle for assistance. 

• Give your back, legs and knees a break from stooping and kneeling by using tools with long handles to help with the weeding; 
• Squat or sit on the ground to trowel, rather than bending over. 

DIGGING OR SHOVELLING – insert the head of the shovel vertically into the ground and step on the blade. Lift small amounts at a time. Keep your back straight and bend at the knees. Avoid twisting. Use a wheelbarrow to move big or heavy loads. 

• Choose a shovel with a weight and handle length that is appropriate for your size and for the job you are doing; 
• Give your back a break by using a smaller shovel, reducing the temptation to lift large amounts of soil; 
• Spread heavy lifting and digging tasks over a week rather than a weekend, and spread major projects throughout the seasons. Take time to recover between them.

LIFTING OR CARRYING – know your limits and lift properly: bend your knees, not your back. Keep the load close to your body. Don’t lift items that are too heavy for you to handle – get help! Use a wagon or wheelbarrow to transport supplies and / or to move or carry heavy items. 

• A four-wheeled cart is sturdier and easier to use than a wheelbarrow; 
• Lift with your knees slightly bent and your back straight. Avoid twisting or reaching. 

PRUNING OR TRIMMING – get as close to your work as possible. Don’t stretch beyond your reach or past your stable footing.

• Match the size of the gardening tool handle to the size of your hand. Choose tools that you can hold so that your hand remains positioned in line with your forearm; 
• Hold your tools in a loose comfortable grip. Holding too tightly may cause injury; 
• Be creative! Adapt or create your tools for ease and comfort;
• Pad the handles of your gardening tools; 
• Use knee pads or a foam pad for kneeling;
• Wrap a slippery handle with tape to improve your grip (hockey stick tape will do). 

ADDITIONAL TIPS FOR THE GARDENER:

• Tools with larger, padded handles are more comfortable for gardeners with painful or arthritic hands. Enlarge tool handles with grip-tape or foam tubing purchased at a hardware store. 
• Tools with tubular steel rather than wood are more lightweight and may be easier to use.
• Where possible, use a potting bench or a counter top to prevent unnecessary bending. 
• Wear a gardening apron with several pockets for carrying frequently used tools, or keep them close at hand, to avoid reaching or twisting for the tool you need. 
• Wear gardening gloves to protect your hands and joints. 
• Keep tools (such as your pruners) sharp to make cutting easier. 

Talk to a physiotherapist: Most of the aches and pains gardeners experience can be prevented. Enjoy the fruits of your labour. Don’t be limited by the aches and pains!

If you’re like me and many others, you may feel affected as the seasons change throughout the year.  It is not uncommon to notice mild or more severe changes in how you feel and function in the midst of smoky, brown heat domes and cloudy, grey cold snaps.

Some people experience noticeable changes in themselves as fall and winter approach. For me, I feel affected as soon as the time changes in November and we lose an hour of daylight. Other people notice changes when the real first cold and snow comes, or after 6 or 8 weeks of winter have passed. Some common seasonal side effects:

• Anxiety or feeling stressed;
• Less energy, motivation and interest in usual activities;
• Lethargy (sluggishness) and apathy (an emotional numbness)
• Changes in appetite, sexual interest, eating habits and sleeping habits;
• Inflammatory response – resulting in pain, stiffness and/or exacerbation of other health conditions.

Some people experience enough of the above that they can be diagnosed with, or may identify with, Seasonal Affective Disorder. We can understand this to be like an episodical seasonal depression and/or anxiety. Some people experience this every year. People can also experience seasonal side effects from ongoing rain and persistent summertime forest fire smoke, droughts, and heat domes.

We can understand these seasonal side effects to be contributed to by the following:

Changes in our routine/schedules: self-care like sleep, rituals, exercise, diet, activities, socializing and work are all affected by the seasons and their weather. They can be thrown off balance. And we have to adapt – or try to! This can cause stress and less than hoped for outcomes in our wellness.

• Daylight: there is a direct connection between daylight – or better yet, sunlight – and mood.
• Weather, temperature and moisture: having our bodies and minds manage extreme temperatures and weather events takes a toll. It can be exhausting, and even scary! Additionally, moisture, humidity, and pressure can all affect inflammation.

So what can we do to mitigate the impact or even prevent, these seasonal side effects?

• As much as possible, maintain your wellness or self-care routine: continue your exercise, sleep hygiene, hobbies and other activities, and get creative and resourceful in finding ways to adapt while still pursuing a semblance of structure or stability. You may have to let go of some rigidity – which is great for our mental health in the long run, as we will have to respond to other adversities in the future.
• Seek out support or connection: you are not the only one facing the current season/weather!
• Talk to your doctor and/or other health care providers who may have suggestions within the context of your unique health situation.
• Practice mindfulness: this can help us take our experiences one day at a time, and manage dwelling or worry.

I look forward to supporting you in further understanding how seasonal or other life changes or factors may impact your mental health, and finding ways towards meaningful experiencing and functioning amidst them.

Happy New Years! Thinking of going on a diet in 2024? Read this, and think again:

At this time of year, many folks are considering assessing their nutrition and looking to improve their eating habits or relationship with food. If you are looking to improve your energy levels and develop or reinforce healthy nutrition habits for the new year, this article is for you!

My top 3 recommendations to clients are as follows (and these may be surprising): 

1) Get adequate sleep! 

How many hours are you sleeping each night? Is it a good quality sleep or are you tossing and turning throughout the night, waking up feeling sluggish or not well rested? A good sleep hygiene routine (along with managing your stress levels) is paramount to a good quality sleep, which impacts our digestion and metabolism. It may seem odd that I talk about sleep with clients when they are seeing me for nutrition support, but it is very much related! Try removing electronics/screens for 30 minutes before bed. Dim the lights, read a book or do a skin care routine- whatever it is that helps you be mindful and present before falling asleep. Your quality of sleep will set the tone for your nutrition choices and cravings the next day. 

2) Stay hydrated throughout the day. 

Again, this one sounds simple, but the effects of dehydration directly affect our energy levels, concentration, and performance in activities throughout the day. Ensure you are drinking enough. Consider walking around with a water bottle, carrying one to work, keeping one in your car, even bringing one into the grocery store while you’re shopping. This can be helpful in increasing your fluid intake and meeting your hydration needs. 

3) Eat enough throughout the day to meet your nutritional needs. 

This is my big recommendation. A lot of us are focused on losing weight in the New Year, and everyday throughout the year for that matter. This makes sense considering how engulfed we are by diet culture, and the media is telling us that a smaller body is more valuable than a larger body – which is extremely disheartening and untrue. 

With the focus being on weight loss, a lot of people start over-restricting their intake to cut calories and consequently under-eat throughout the day. This may look like skipping breakfast and just having a coffee, or having a small lunch to stave off the hunger so you can “save up” your calories and have a more indulgent dinner and evening snack with wine. This is disordered eating, and if you do it, or have done it in the past, you are not alone. It is extremely common and rooted in diet culture. The great news is you do NOT need to do this in order to achieve your health goals or feel good in your body. The funny (or not so funny) thing is, if we under-eat and over-restrict for too long, our bodies will adapt by lowering our resting metabolic rate so we actually burn fewer calories at rest. This can also cause hormone imbalances, resulting in water retention and fat storage. 

So instead of going on a diet this New Years, ‘cutting carbs’ or under-eating, I suggest seeing a Registered Dietitian. A dietitian can help you achieve your goals in a healthy, sustainable way, where you actually get to eat what you want when you want without having to worry about it. It’s called “Food Freedom” – and I want everyone to have this! 

Feel free to email me: mwood@suncityphysiotherapy.com or call Sun City Physiotherapy to book an appointment so we can get started on making 2024 your best year yet!

There are many reasons to exercise including improved health, fitness and aesthetics.  For most people who begin an exercise program they will likely see improvements in all of these areas if their programs are of adequate intensity, duration, frequency; and if their exercise selection is appropriate. 

Most people’s exercise journey takes them to a local gym or their basement ‘fitness centre’ equipped with a few bands, some light dumbbells, maybe a bench and some rather old and dusty cardiovascular equipment such as rickety stationary bike/laundry drying rack.  A local public gym is usually much more impressive and typically presents with countless options of equipment including a variety of resistance and cardiovascular machines, free weights, plus other things such as sleds, battle ropes, bands, balls, weird looking half balls, balance devices, etc. To figure out what equipment to use and then how to use it, you may tag along with a friend (or invite them to your basement), who seems to know what they are doing, or be tempted to hire a certified guide. But personal training sessions tend to cost over $100 per hour – a little steep for most people these days – and in other days too! Here’s some quick suggestions regarding exercise selection when starting out an exercise program, should you being doing it solo or worry that your friend might not be the best person to get tips and directions from.

Lift weights! Resistance training builds bigger and stronger muscles if performed right; but not necessarily huge ugly veiny muscles that stretch your pants and shirts and make you look like some sort of hulk.  Your muscles and lean mass can change and likely  improve the shape of your body and improve your capacity to lift and perform work outside of the gym.  It also can improve your stamina, and cardiovascular fitness! What? Yes, have you ever noticed how when you lift heavy things and especially if it’s repeatedly or over an extended period of time that your heart rate and breathing rate picks up – such as moving furniture or doing some sort of landscaping? Well that’s your cardiac muscle (your heart) and your vascular system (blood vessels such as arteries and capillaries) working together to essentially transport energy to the working areas of your body and also removing the cellular waste products of that energy production away from those tissues to be converted or expelled elsewhere.  If you have been rather sedentary, especially, or if you have little time to perform exercises, try combining resistance training movement in pairs (called supersets) or larger circuits of exercises (called circuit training) and try to keep moving. If your heart rate and breathing rate doesn’t pick up and if you don’t see a noticeable improvement in your stamina and energy levels within a few weeks – you probably aren’t lifting heavy enough or vigorously enough. 

When it comes to resistance exercises, choose free weights over machines.  It tends to lead to better strength and fitness gains that carries over into other functional daily activities where as machines tend to make muscle bigger but do not teach a person how to lift and stabilize a real world object. Even with a simple task such as putting a weight (let’s start with a soup can) in your hand and bending your elbow, it isn’t so simple as simply telling your bicep muscles to contract. Different fibres in your elbow have different angles of pull on the elbow joint and yank on different parts of the bicep tendon.  

In  addition to this, different fibres in your bicep are recruited depending on the weight, speed of motion, and how tired you are. Also, when you lift the weight upward tension needs to develop around the shoulder and trunk to keep the shoulder from flexing and the trunk from pulling forward. In fact, if standing, your whole posterior chain of muscles needs to engage when doing this to keep you from falling forward – including your glutes, hamstrings and calves. This being said, standing free weight exercises tend to work pretty much every muscle of your body, though lifting soup cans in the kitchen is not going to be the best way to develop a bigger rounder bum if that is what you’re after.

To be clear, a machine is something that follows a fixed pattern of movement whereas free weights have an open path that you have to control yourself in order to perform a movement in a certain way. Even with what are technically called free weight exercises, we can use benches and supports that minimize the involvement of other muscle groups and in effect isolate an area but also eliminate the other areas the need to get involved with functional strength development.  With the example above, if you take your soup can to a gym and lean over what called a preacher curl bench where your torso is really slumped over a support and the back of your arms is supported by the same, it becomes an exercise almost entirely for your biceps which might help to make them get huge, but does little to nothing to increase the functional strength or fitness of your arms.

This article could get very long, so I’ll try to start wrapping it up here leaving you with some some suggestions for simple exercises and hopefully leave only a few loose ends to tie up at some point in the future. When lifting weights for general strength and fitness gains, I encourage people to include a pushing forward movement, a pulling back movement, a pushing up ward movement, and a squat – or preferably a deadlift motion. This will challenge every major muscle of your body and help your develop functional strength, especially if they are done on your feet, too.

Here are some examples of exercises for each of these patterns with a free-weight option, and machine option side by side:

Forward Push: good for chest, shoulders and triceps in particular

Horizontal pull: good for upper back, biceps and forearms in particular

Vertical push: good for shoulders, upper traps and triceps in particular.

Deadlift: good for legs, glutes and low back in particular.

If you have particular areas of weakness or orthopaedic concern, some additional supplementary core, hip, or shoulder exercises may be incorporated. Or if pain is present in any area of the body, I would recommend getting clearance with your doctor and getting an evaluation by a physiotherapist or a qualified kinesiologist such as myself to help address the other issues that need to be dealt with first. I hope this provides help for some of you out there. Let me help you resolve or manage your particular concerns and help you to become a better, stronger, more capable version of yourself.

Chris Burton is a registered Kinesiologist and CHEK Practitioner.