Grow fit in garden 'workout'

Normal chores often equate with activity you'd perform in gym

Maureen Gilmer, Scripps Howard News Service

Saturday, September 2, 2006

Do you go to a yoga class? It's a question repeated every day in America as our aging population seeks to improve coordination and flexibility. I thought about yoga for a while, but after a weekend working in my garden I'd had all the flex and extend I could handle.

A recent study has proved that gardening activities can parallel many of our most popular exercise routines. Pruning trees and shrubs takes the same amount of effort as walking. Raking and gathering leaves equals riding a bicycle at 10 mph. Digging, laying sod and stacking wood is as strenuous as playing softball. Mowing the lawn may be as good as aerobics for keeping fit.

While there are a lot of variables in those examples, they illustrate how doing real work in your yard can substitute for a trip to the gym. A typical day working in my garden has me on my knees, stretching into shrubs and trees, digging, pulling weeds, hauling garbage cans filled with refuse and carrying big bags of amendments. It makes me strong in ways that are practical, if not ways governed by a gym exercise machine.

There's also solid evidence that working in your garden can save you the cost of a therapist. It's considered an ideal way to free the mind from the complexities of work, family life and social issues. It's also the antithesis of the sedentary high-tech world of computers. Gardening puts you back in touch with the earth and natural things that rekindle your connection to your environment.

Taking care of plants also satisfies the human instinct to nurture. There's a big pay-off for these efforts when a plant grows and blooms spectacularly.

There is no question that we gain a far greater personal reward from a home-grown plant brought up from slip or seed than from one we purchased all grown up.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension Service has put together a really great collection of informative articles on the benefits of working in your garden.

You'll find them online at www.ext.vt.edu. For those with disabilities or anyone in their mature years, the site's gardening and health section also features excellent articles on how to garden wisely.

Learn how to avoid problems with repetitive-motion injuries in a piece discussing carpal tunnel syndrome. Another section details helpful tips for those with arthritis. And a piece titled "Protecting Your Knees and Back" will help everyone avoid common stress and strain to these sensitive weight-bearing joints.

Despite all these caveats, gardening remains one of the most productive roads to good fitness with a minimal risk of injury.

Many old-timers scoff at the idea of going to a gym. They believe that good old-fashioned work in the home garden or vegetable patch is a much better road to health and fitness.

Maureen Gilmer is a horticulturist and host of "Weekend Gardening" on DIY Network.