Avid gardeners are eager to make the most of good weather and prime gardening season. In doing so, they tend to ignore back pain and soreness until it gets bad enough to interfere with their range of motion and ability to garden. While gardeners can expect a bit of post-activity soreness, pushing through pain can sometimes spell trouble. Here’s why:
Red Flags That Your Back Pain Requires More Than Rest to Resolve
While the occasional aches and pains are common after long days of kneeling, planting, weeding, moving pots and plant boxes, and turning over soil, here a few red flags that indicate it’s time to have your back pain checked out and treated:
- If the pain and tension seems to be worsening
- If the pain doesn’t resolve after a day or two of rest
- If the pain returns as soon as you resume activity
- If the pain is sudden and acute, in which case, immediately stop what you’re doing and apply a towel-wrapped ice pack to the area
- If you experience numbness, tingling, or shooting pain in your lower back above the buttocks and down your buttocks and upper legs, indicating possible lumbar compression or nerve pain with sciatica
Common Causes of Back Pain From Gardening
While gardening, it’s easy to be hyper-focused on the task at hand that you forget to be mindful of your posture, contributing to suboptimal movement patterns and bad habits that cause undue strain to the muscles you’re using.
The most common causes of back pain from gardening are chronic muscle and fascia tension resulting from repetitive strain and overuse of your back muscles. Improper lifting, gait and hips issues, or other musculoskeletal imbalances can also contribute to chronic and sometimes debilitating pain.
Examples of Movement Patterns That Contribute to Gardening-Related Pain
Bending, Twisting, and Lateral Flexion
Bending at the waist causes a lot of stress on the back muscles and spine, which is why you should never bend at your waist when lifting heaving objects or when reaching for something. Twisting and lateral flexion also place a lot of tension on the spine. Lateral flexion occurs when bending sideways at the waist, as you would when picking up a bucket from the ground by its handle. If your core muscles are weak, twisting and lateral flexion of the lower back muscles can lead to pulled muscles and, in worst-case scenarios, herniated discs. Twisting can also occur while raking and when lifting heavy and hard-to-grip objects, such as heavy bags of soil and bundles of plant refuge.
Compensatory Movements
Have you ever caught yourself bending at the waist to avoid kneeling due to knee pain? Compensatory movements aren’t always detrimental. Sometimes they’re your body’s way of protecting itself, but if done improperly, you’re trading one pain and potential injury for another. Common compensatory movements during gardening include:
- Twisting at the waist when kneeling and sitting
- Overextending the arms and straining the shoulders and neck muscles when reaching to prune branches, rake leaves, and use small handled gardening tools
Overuse
Repetition and duration of movements fatigue muscles and can lead to strain and overuse injuries. Common signs and symptoms of pain caused by overuse include:
- Knee pain from kneeling on hard surfaces (a typical gardener’s woe)
- Joint pain and stiffness from maintaining a seated position for long periods without rest breaks and stretching
- Wrist strain from using small hand-held gardening tools and hand-pulling weeds
Ambitious gardeners are also apt to exhaust their back muscles when attempting feats that are either forceful, such as pulling a tree root, or repetitive, such as overturning hard soil with a shovel.
It’s Not Always Easy to Tell When You’re Overdoing It Until You’ve Overdone It
We’ve all been there! That pain and soreness you feel after a day of increased activity. It’s easy to get carried away when you love what you’re doing, not realizing how much you’re taxing your back muscles until exhaustion forces you to rest. Taking rest breaks at 15 to 30-minute intervals is a great way to refresh and take stock of how you’re feeling and whether your body needs more rest.
Prevent Dehydration
When the weather warms up, dehydration can make muscle exhaustion significantly worse (not to mention the dangers of heatstroke). Long-duration gardeners must ensure they take adequate breaks to rest their body, rehydrate and refuel.
Effective Relief From Gardening Aches & Pains
When back pain starts interfering with your daily life and favourite activities, it’s time to get help. At Diversified Health Clinic, effective treatment of activity-induced aches and pains has a three-pronged approach, including:
Assessment
Performed during your initial appointment to identify the movements and postures responsible for your back pain. Your practitioner will use the information collected in your initial assessment to determine which treatments will be best suited to your specific condition and will devise a treatment plan with you that quickly relieves pain and encourages healing.
Treatment
For some back pain sufferers, a series of registered massage therapy treatments are all that’s needed to work out the tightness and tenderness of strained muscles and fascia. For more complex pain or pain compounded by aggravating factors such as sciatica, lumbar compression, and arthritis, an effective treatment plan may include a combination of registered massage therapy, chiropractic therapy, and physiotherapy.
Prevention
Your practitioner will suggest various postures, movements, exercises, and stretches you can perform at home and while gardening to maintain the results of your treatment and reduce future pain flare-ups and injuries.
Take the Next Step
Don’t let back pain keep you from the activities you enjoy. Take the first step on your road to recovery by booking an appointment with one of our practitioners today. Call (250) 382-0018 or book an appointment online. We offer direct billing and weekday and weekend appointments. Please view our hours of operation and location details here.
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