Using Gardening to Get in Shape

While gardening is usually thought of as a productive way to grow beautiful plants and obtain tasty fruits and vegetables, few gardeners have ever considered the immense amounts of exercise one can get in the process of gardening. While you can get almost as much muscle (if not more) exercise as you do working out, it is very productive at the same time.

A recent study found that gardening and maintenance activities may increase fitness level and muscle strength because they require some form of physical exertion such as carrying equipment for repair works, lawn mowing, shovelling, digging holes and carrying soil. Previous studies have also stressed the health benefits of gardening for older adults; such benefits include physical health, psychological health, cognitive ability, and low risk of depression. The study recently reported that gardening has a positive effect on the blood lipid profiles, blood pressure and level of inflammatory markers in blood.

You may wonder how gardening could possibly give as much exercise as working out. Just think about all the various facets of preparing a garden. There are holes to be dug, bags and pots to be carried, and weeds to be pulled. Doing all of these things help to work out almost every group of muscles in your body.

My best friend is a fanatic about working out. Almost every time I call his house, I end up interrupting some muscle toning activity. I’ve never really enjoyed working out, though, as it seems that the constant lifting of heavy things just puts a strain on my body with no immediate positive results. But while he is into working out, I am almost equally enthusiastic about gardening. I work outside improving my garden almost every day. I think I definitely surprised my friend when he realized that I am almost as muscular as he is, but I have never lifted a single dumbbell!

Before you go out into your garden, you should always stretch out. Even if your goal isn’t to work out and get exercise, it’s still a good idea. Often gardeners spend long periods of time hunched over or bent over. This can be bad for your back. So not only should you stretch out beforehand, but you should always take frequent breaks if you’re spending long amounts of time in these positions.

Weeding and pruning are some of the best workouts a gardener can get. With the constant crouching and standing, the legs get a great workout. If your weeds are particularly resistant, your arms will become particularly toned just from the effort required to remove them from the ground. If you plan on taking the whole workout think very seriously, you should always be switching arms and positions to spread out the work between different areas of your body.

One of the most obvious ways to get exercise is in the transporting and lifting of bags and pots. Between the nursery and your house, you will have to move the bags multiple times (to the checkout, to your car, to your garden, and then spreading them out accordingly). As long as you remember to lift with your legs and not your back, transporting bags and pots can give you a fairly big workout, even though you probably don’t make those purchases very often.

Mowing your grass can also be a great exercise. If you’ve got an older mower that isn’t self-propelled, just the act of pushing it through the grass will give you more of a workout than going to the gym for a few hours. During the course of mowing the grass, you use your chest, arms, back, and shoulder to keep the mower ahead of you. Your thighs and butt also get worked a lot to propel the mower. Not only do you get an all-around muscle work out, but it can improve your heart’s health. It’s good for you as a cardiovascular activity, as well as a great way to lose weight due to the increased heart rate and heavy breathing.

If you plan on using gardening as a way to get in shape or lose some weight, you can hardly go wrong. Just be sure to stretch out, drink plenty of water, and apply sunscreen. As long as you take steps to prevent the few negative effects such as pulled muscles, dehydration, and sunburn, I think you’ll have a great time and end up being a healthier person because of it.

The Psychology Behind Gardening

I don’t know what it is about a garden that has always drawn humans to them. But they’ve always been very popular, and an integral part of peoples’ lifestyles. Most religions feature gardens as the settings for some of the biggest events According to Christianity, humanity was started in a garden and the son of God was resurrected in a garden. The Buddhist build gardens to allow nature to permeate their surroundings. Almost every major palace and government building has a garden. But what’s so great about them? They’re just a bunch of plants, after all.

Of course, the reasoning is fairly obvious behind why people grow food in gardens. It’s to eat! If you live off the land and actually survive on stuff from your garden, it’s easy to understand the reasoning.

But I’m thinking about those people who plant flower gardens just for the sake of looking nice. There’s no immediate benefit that I can see; you just have a bunch of flowers in your yard! However, after thinking extensively about the motivation behind planting decorative gardens, I’ve conceived several possible theories and please take them with a pinch of salt.

I think one of the reasons people love gardens so much is that while we have a natural desire to progress and industrialize, deep within all of us is a primal love for nature. While this desire might not be as strong as the desire for modernism, it is still strong enough to compel us to create gardens, small outlets of nature, in the midst of all our hustle and bustle. Since being in nature is like regressing to an earlier stage of humanity, we too can regress to a time of comfort and utter happiness.

This is why gardens are so relaxing and calming to be in. This is why gardens are a good place to meditate and do tai chi exercises. A garden is a way to quickly escape from the busy world.

I’ve thought at times that perhaps we as humans feel a sort of guilt driving us to restore nature and care for it. This guilt could stem from the knowledge that we, not personally but as a race, have destroyed so much of nature to get where we are today. It’s the least we can do to build a small garden in remembrance of all the trees we kill every day. It’s my theory that this is the underlying reason for most people to take up gardening as a hobby.

Gardening is definitely a healthy habit though, don’t get me wrong. Any hobby that provides physical exercise, helps the environment, and improve your diet can’t be a negative thing. So, no matter what the underlying psychological cause for gardening is, I think that everyone should continue to do so. In the USA especially, which is dealing with obesity and pollution as its two major problems, I think gardening can only serve to improve the state of the world.

Of course, I’m no psychologist; I’m just a gardener. I often stay up for hours wondering what makes me garden. What is it that makes me go outside for a few hours every day with my gardening tools, and facilitate the small-time growth of plants that would grow naturally on their own? I may never know, but in this case, ignorance truly is bliss.

The Joys of Gardening

If you are not a gardener, you may wonder why this hobby has become so popular even with people who have the resources to go to the grocery and get food with much less effort. Perhaps much of the joy that comes from gardening originated in the baby boomer values that came from those golden days of the 1960s.  Part of the ethical and moral system of that time in our cultural history was the “back to the land” movement to get back to our roots and away from the alleged sins of modern society.

From this same movement, we got the increased interest in vegetarianism, yoga, natural eating and the environmental movement. So, while we may look back with a bit of chagrin on the idealism and sometimes radical values for the time, that baby boomer history represents, there are some very good lifestyle choices that came from that era of our shared lives. And the love of gardening is one of the good things that many of us kept from that time.

Gardening is a hobby that is unique among pastimes because virtually nothing bad can come of it. Even if you are a total failure at gardening and don’t produce a single morsel of food from your garden, just the act of working with the earth and making something grow is so therapeutic that it’s worth the effort even if you only grow weeds☹.

Some reasons gardening is a wonderful hobby is that it’s simple, inexpensive, and joyful. With gardening, you can keep it simple or you can get as sophisticated and scientific at it as you please. Gardening is like fishing in the way that even if you are terrible at it, it’s entirely worth doing just for the joy of the time you are in your garden. There really is nothing comparable in therapy for going out in the garden in the evening after a stressful day. Working with the soil and spending sometime nurturing and pouring your tender loving care into the garden can make those worries and anxieties of the office melt away. Then when you come in after an hour of gardening, those cares take on their proper perspective so you can deal with them.

Gardening in creativity for the uncreative. When you till your garden and prepare your soil, that is like a master painter preparing his paints to produce that masterpiece. But when you finally open the packages of seeds or take the small plant from its container and you place them just so in that carefully prepared soil, there is a sensation of making something happen that is new life. This feeling happens because you are creating life by the act of planting. This feeling, I believe, refreshes even the most cynical boomer and puts them in touch with themselves and with nature in a way that is hard to match in any other pastime.

Even the simple act of watering has almost a mystical power for you and the time it takes to water your garden can become the best part of your day. But when that day comes that you rush out to your garden and see those young sprouts come up that you so carefully planted and cared for, it’s a little moment of parenting that can bring real joy to your heart.

We understand that we did not create the seed and that we are no more than caregivers that helps the plant sprout and then grow into a plant. By becoming part of the cycle of nature when we care for the plants in our garden, it gives us a feeling of completion. That connection to the eternal cycle of life will lift our spirit.

So, don’t be afraid to put together a small plot of land and begin planning your little garden. Even if you are an apartment dweller, you can organize a garden with planter boxes and grow lights and get many of the same joys from your little garden that the master garden with acres of crops can get.

Gardening Tips for Beginners

It is the middle of winter, but it is never too early to think about your garden, March will be here in less than two weeks and Spring is not far behind. Over the next few posts I am going to focus on gardening.

If you are just beginning with gardening, don't be afraid for it is not meant to be difficult. In fact, it can be so much fun much more than what you think. If you don't know how to start, there is always an avenue of knowledge for you: your parents to assist you, informational books and magazines to read, and the internet to browse more information.

It used to be that gardening appealed only to the older generation. But nowadays, people of all ages, children, young adults, adults, and old folks alike, they see gardening as a refreshing and rewarding hobby to take. Why not? With all the benefits that you get, being a busy, career person should never be used as a hindrance to starting growing your own plants indoor or outdoor. You will see the big difference when you get to harvest your own fruits of labors.

It doesn't matter what you prefer. Would you like to have a bed of beautiful and colorful flowers, country garden full of wildflowers and shrubs, manicured lawn strategically placed with shrubs and little trees, or just a simple backyard with lots of pots and containers planted with grown plants? It isn't a problem to start one because you can find lots of information on how you can start doing them. You can also ask questions and assistance from the experts.

For a starter, you will need these basic tools: trowel, spade, lawnmower, rake, and plants of your choice to grow. It would help a lot if you have some sort of garden plan based on the space that is available. In this way, it won't be difficult for you to arrange some things like flower beds, lawns, paths, and on your garden bed or space. 

The kinds of plants that you will grow will depend on what you want, the availability, and the climate that your location has. There are plants that grow only for the season but there are others too that can be cultivated to grow year after year. If you consider yourself a hobby gardener like me, then you would want to have plants that do not grow more than two seasons. These are perennial plants that allow you to tend to other things other than mere gardening.

If you don't know what plants to start growing, you can always ask assistance from the local nursery available in your location. The experts from there should know what types would thrive specifically considering the climate in your area. And speaking of the local nursery, it is one avenue to buy plants you want in your garden. It is usually available with packets of seeds or small young plants for the beginners to grow. I prefer the young plants as I find it too much trouble to grow from seed. My brother, however, has a greenhouse and he swears that growing from seed is the only way to garden. You can obtain them whether via online or mail order.

The small young plants are great choice if you want to have an automatic decorative display in your garden. Otherwise, as my brother does, choosing seeds to grow and watching them grow will provide great satisfaction from the accomplishment of having to cultivate and care for them. You can have the seeds planted in pots or containers, or you can plant them onto the pre-designed bed of soil. Gardening is fun and exciting, and of course, rewarding.