Gardening as Exercise

I got a comment on a recent post about how much of a workout gardening is for the body. I thought this was a great time to address this since we are coming into warmer weather & people will be tending the yard a lot. I checked online for information and this is what I found for a person that weighs 120 pounds:

General Gardening burns about 216 calories per hour.

Gardening with heavy power tools like tilling, chain saw etc. burns about 324 calories per hour.

Check out the health tools at Diet Detective (in my Fav Sites area) and you can plug in your own weight to get more specific stats based on your weight & activity.

Now, my commenter mentioned they had been doing weeding, raking and trimming. Think of the back, arms, legs and core all that get involved when doing these general gardening activities. Be sure to be aware of your core so you do not end up with back problems. Bend at the knees, not the waist to protect that back. Plus doing this right will work those legs as well. You can also use your tools to do modified exercises that you would normally do in the gym like using a shovel or rake that has some slight weight to it for shoulder presses, bicep curls or overhead triceps extensions. Remember to stretch AFTER too when your muscles are warmed up to work out all the hard work you have just done!

PS: My anonymous commenter reminded me about sun protection so don't forget to wear a hat & put your sunscreen on! Even on cloudy days, you can still get burned so protect yourself!