Is Gardening Good Exercise?

Is Gardening Good Exercise? Did you know that April is the National Garden Month? Through gardening, you get to connect to nature and enjoy self-satisfaction from growing your plants, food or plants. You can even have large patio umbrellas in your garden where you can enjoy quality time relaxing. Gardening has astonishing benefits to our health.

Some need convincing on how mowing a lawn or planting in your garden, is as good as going to the gym. For this reason, we will begin with various research results which showed how gardening is a good exercise.

Research done on gardening and exercising. Is Gardening Good Exercise?

CDC- Centers for Disease Control compared gardening to moderate cardiovascular exercise. If you garden for between 30 and 45 minutes each day, you are likely to burn between 150 and 300 calories. Therefore, gardening is good exercise.

A study conducted in 2006 by University of Scranton, Pennsylvania showed that by gardening, you burn more calories, than you would have in a gym session. While gardening, it may feel light, but the key is the duration of gardening.

A report from International Journal of Environmental Health Research showed that exercise alone helps lower blood pressure, improve one’s mood as well as self-esteem. Gardening helps you exercise, as you view nature.

As a result, gardening has a synergistic effect. Subjects of the study showed better mental well-being after gardening, compared to their mental well-being after exercising.

Benefits of gardening for exercise

Yard care and tending to your garden is a unique form of exercise. Through these activities, you get to do something calm, creative and fun, as you work on different muscle groups. Hence, you engage an inadequate level of exercise.

The best thing about gardening is that it involves your entire boy. As you garden, you involve different exercises, which target different muscles in your body. You will need to stretch, engage in weightlifting, and even cardiovascular workout.

Distinct from other ways of exercising, gardening comes in handy to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Consequently, it reduces chances of getting heart disease, diabetes, and other lifestyle diseases.

You can also rely on gardening to shed off extra pounds. Usually, garden activities ate suitable for people of different age groups. Gardening involves light tasks, which are beneficial, unlike strenuous exercises such as jogging.

There are benefits that senior gardeners, especially women, enjoy. Gardening has proven to be an effective way to reduce osteoporosis. However, you should always consult with your doctor; if you are older, or if you haven’t been gardening for some time.

Why gardening is a good exercise

Garden activities seem to be low intensity, but you engage in them for long. In fact, while in the garden, you are likely to spend thrice as much time as you would have spent in the gym.

As you garden, you expose yourself to more stimuli, than you would have under the treadmill monitor. The garden involves seeing, listening, and making decisions. Thus, you get distracted from the intensity of the exercise you are performing.

Also, gardens provide a rewarding motivation you get to watch the seeds grow. After weeding, you get to enjoy how the garden looks better without weeds, thus, the imaged and recordings of the change, minimize the pain and anxiety you feel. Therefore, you will have little need for anesthetics.

Gardening is a good physical activity because;

1. It keeps you moving

To stay healthy, you need to be active, to be in motion gardening ensure you move about. Unlike people in white collar jobs, gardening makes you get outside, dig, weed, water, which will greatly benefit your body.

2. Aerobic gardening

When gardening, you enjoy all different types of exercise; strength, flexibility, and endurance. You can substitute your normal exercise routine with gardening. When you do this, you should frequently alternate between light and heavy activities.

For example, you can start by raking, and then go to digging, after which you can prune. For best results garden for between 30 and 60 minutes

3. Gardening as a form of therapy

When a friend or relative is in a hospital bed, you bring flowers. Maybe it is because a study conducted showed that patients recovered faster when looking at a garden, rather than remaining indoors starring at a wall.

Final Words

The best thing about gardening is that some think of it as a hobby. If you enjoy what you do, and look forward to gardening, there are better chances of you sticking to your routine.

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