Fall in the Flathead Valley means one thing for homeowners: clean-up season. Between raking leaves, pulling the last of the garden, and prepping flower beds for winter, it’s easy to spend a weekend hunched over and twisting in ways your body isn’t used to. As a chiropractor, I see a predictable spike in back and shoulder strains every October — and almost all of them are preventable. Here are three tips to help you get your yard ready for winter without ending up on my treatment table.
1. Warm Up Before You Start
Yard work is a workout, even if it doesn’t feel like one at first. Cold, stiff muscles are far more likely to strain than muscles that have had a few minutes to loosen up. Before you grab a rake or a shovel, spend five minutes walking briskly, doing a few gentle trunk rotations, and loosening your shoulders and hips. This is especially important on cool fall mornings, when muscles take longer to warm up and injuries are more common.
2. Rake With Your Whole Body, Not Just Your Back
Raking leaves looks harmless, but the repetitive twisting and bending motion is one of the most common causes of low back strain this time of year. Instead of standing in one spot and twisting to pull leaves toward you, use a scissor stance — one foot slightly in front of the other — and shift your weight from your back leg to your front leg with each stroke. Switch which hand leads every few minutes so you’re not overloading one side of your body and take breaks before your back starts to fatigue.
3. Harvest Your Garden With Your Legs, Not Your Spine
Pulling up spent tomato plants, digging potatoes, or clearing squash vines all involve a lot of bending and kneeling — a setup for low back and knee strain if you’re not careful. Instead of bending from the waist, squat down using your legs, keeping your back straight and the object close to your body as you lift. A foam kneeling pad can also take pressure off your knees during longer stretches of garden clean-up.
A few small adjustments to how you move can save you weeks of recovery time. If you do end up sore after a big clean-up day, ice for the first 24 hours, gentle stretching after that, and don’t ignore pain that lingers for more than a few days.
Dr. Ryan Wigness is a chiropractor and owner of Whitefish Chiropractic Center, with locations in Whitefish, Kalispell, and Columbia Falls.
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