How to Avoid Back Pain when doing yard work!

In our previous blog we gave you three tips to protect your back while gardening, and in this blog we would like to talk about how to avoid back pain while doing yard work.

This time of year, we see a lot of patients in our office with yard work injuries. Whether they are mulching, mowing their grass or even bending over to pull weeds, we see a lot of lower back injuries from doing these simple yard work tasks.

The number one thing to remember to avoid back pain while doing yard work is to keep everything as close to your body as possible. For example when lifting a pile of firewood, you want your body as close as possible to the wood, because the further away from your body that pile of firewood is, the more force it puts on your lower back when bending to lift it up. So we want to make sure that pile is as close to your body as possible when you are lifting.

The next tip is for when you are weeding. When you are bending over to pull weeds, you want to make sure that you are as close to those weeds as possible, almost standing on top of them. That will make sure that you bend appropriately and you make sure you do not hurt your back.

The last tip that I have for you is be mindful when carrying things around the yard. For example if you are carrying a bag of yard waste, you want to make sure that you are carrying it really close to your body. Even though you might get dirty carrying it close to your body, you are going to make sure that you are not putting extra stress on your lower back by holding it out in front of you.

Again, the number one thing to remember is to keep everything as close to your body as possible.

If you've already injured your back during yard work, please check out our website to find out the treatments that we do for lower back pain.

https://www.kauffmanchiropractic.com/article/low-back-pain-and-chiropractic