This week I'm going to talk about my personal favorite exercise. It reduces stress, increases your vitamin D, and works all your major muscle groups! Not to mention burns up 250 calories in just 30 minutes! Any guesses?
It’s Gardening! I’m also a master gardener and former Ohio farm girl, so digging in the dirt is one of my favorite pastimes! So let’s “dig in” to this gardening topic! Pun intended!
One of the first benefits of gardening that I love is that it helps increase your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D deficiency has reached epidemic levels in this country in the last several years. I personally believe that is from the “scares” of skin cancer. But that’s a topic for another time. An ideal range for vitamin D in healthy individuals, meaning you are not currently suffering from Vitamin D deficiency, is between 1,000 and 2,000 IU daily. This is the equivalent of about 20 to 30 minutes of sun exposure (without sunscreen) three times a week if you have fair skin. Make sure to expose as much of your skin as possible, say, a tank top and shorts to get the full benefit.
We know that any type of exercise will help us reduce stress. Pushing the lawnmower into those stubborn corners, and shifting wheelbarrows filled with soil and manure, can be great for your upper body strength and your thighs. Regularly getting down on your hands and knees to dig into soil will keep your joints supple and lubricated (as well as strengthening your back) and keep your fingers nimble to prevent the risk of arthritis and associated conditions later in life.
Regular bursts of any kind of garden exercise will also do your heart a world of good as you raise and increase your rate of cardio without the need to jog or pump the pedals of an exercise bike. Older people will also benefit hugely from regular time in the garden as this will increase their inner equilibrium and sense of balance, drastically reducing the risk of falls elsewhere around the home or in public.
Here's some examples of which gardening tasks affect which muscle groups:
For those triceps - planting with hand tools like spades and forks
Forearms - small plant pruning, like rosebushes
Chest - Shrub trimming, or using an ax to split wood
Biceps – heavy pruning like small tree limbs
Legs – Shoveling, digging holes, or using a pitchfork to move compost
Back – Raking or using a pickax
Shoulders – Sawing with a manual hand saw or trimming larger tree branches
Glutes – all that bending and stooping
And for cardio – skip the riding lawnmower and use a push mower. Also, removing debris or moving compost to the garden beds.
As with any exercise program, be sure to stretch before you do any yard work or gardening, especially your first time out! Also, remember to stay hydrated out there! If your gardening chores will take longer than 30 minutes, make sure to put on a hat and cover your arms to avoid overexposure to the sun.
Add to that, a beautiful garden that will be the envy of everyone in the neighborhood and fresh flowers or veggies! I call that a win/win!
This is the last month to get my special Summer Survival Kit, so grab yours before they're gone! Now go out there, play in the dirt, And Let’s Get Better!
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