The total garden workout
As the year unfolds before us, our gardens bring many different firsts. The first snowdrop pokes its head through the grass, the first crocus emerges, the first pruning is undertaken, the first digging of the vegetable patch is made, and straight after that – the first back spasm.
Whenever I go out to the garden in spring I immediately think that there ought to be an exercise book for gardeners. Because you can’t go out there and launch into a series of strenuous activities you’ve given up for the last four months without suffering the consequences.
It’s so easy to overdo it. The first sign of a mild sunny day and to hell with catching up on programmes on the i-Player you need to get out in the garden. It’s straight outside, straight into the wellies, and ‘hmm, what was that job list I made for myself’…
Four hours later, after you’ve dug, carted, pruned, lopped, snipped and mowed and you’re back inside with a nice cup of Earl Grey and a cheeky bourbon, then the muscles start to seize up solid and you realise you should have eased yourself into that task list.
And I’m not talking as an old duffer, here. At the moment I’m getting to the gym three times a week. But it seems the moment I pick up a spade I engage a set of muscles that are entirely neglected - a strange set of gardening muscles that like most of the garden lie dormant from November to February.
Perhaps there is a gap in the holiday market for pre-season gardening trips to get limbered up for the onslaught of chores in March. We have friends who like to go off ‘training’* in Lanzarote at this time of year for a variety of hardcore sports such as triathlons, biathlons and cycle races. Maybe the Canary Islands tourist trade should get punters out there digging and chopping and twisting and stretching in their lovely temperate climate to be ready for the first day of Spring. This would still be preferable to strapping yourself into tight-fitting lycra and sweating up a mountain.
Reaching up high with loppers puts a lot of stress on neck and arm muscles, digging taxes back strength, but the one task that can jar vertebrae out of place is the mower that stubbornly refuses to start. You have to bend down low to pull the starter chord and jerk it back with speed and strength in one swift action. It’s an activity perfectly designed to get your Lumbar L4 and L5 misaligned, and men cannot be seen to fail at starting the mower.
What kind of man are you to let a 4hp Mountfield get the better of you, eh...? No, you've GOT to get it started.
Physiotherapists must love sunny Sundays in March. Because come Monday morning…
*in other words cardiovascular hell
