How Gardening Gives You a Full-Body Workout (Without the Gym!)

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At first glance, gardening doesn’t seem like that much of a workout. You just plant your seeds and water them every once in a while, right?

Well, you know what they say: Looks can be deceiving. If you delve deep into gardening, you’ll know it’s more physically demanding than it looks.

How physically demanding? That’s what I’m here to answer.

In this post, I’ll show you how gardening gives a full-body workout to give you a better appreciation of that endeavor.

1 – Provides Good Cardio Workout

Cardio is an excellent way to start your workout. It helps your body warm up, increases blood flow to your muscles, and improves your endurance.

How much cardio workout can you get from gardening, though? As simple as the activity may seem, it involves heavy shoveling, trimming shrubs, bagging grass, weeding, mowing the lawn, and raking.

Does that sound like enough cardio training for you? If not, you can always grow more plants to increase the workload.

Fun fact: As strenuous as these gardening activities might seem, they won’t be as exhausting as gym workouts.

The greenery and fresh air make for a nice change of scenery that relieves the strain of exercising. So, you won’t be as reluctant to put in an effort in your garden as you would at the gym.

2 – Builds Your Muscles and strength

As you can see, gardening includes various tasks that target different muscles in your body. Have you ever tried digging soil?

I know movies make it look easy, but bending and pushing/lifting soil is a full-body workout that stimulates your back, arm, and foot muscles.

Do you know how heavy mulch and topsoil bags are? They can get as heavy as 40-50 pounds.

Forget about dumbbells. Carrying these bags around the garden is enough to build arm muscles.

Don’t get me started on pulling stubborn weeds. It looks like a breeze, but it’s a sweat-inducing workout.

Of course, gardening will only show results if you give your muscles time to rest. So, don’t overwork yourself.

3 – Improves Your Balance

As an activity that requires you to cautiously move around delicate plants, carry objects of various weights, and kneel to sow seeds, gardening can improve your balance.

You don’t believe me? Then, let’s take it from the top.

Balance is all about distributing your weight evenly, no matter what position you’re in. Well, gardening teaches you to use your muscles properly so you can hold your weight in different positions without losing your balance.

For example, squatting to handle small plants improves leg strength and tones your core, helping you maintain better balance.

Pushing and pulling objects, whether it’s soil or weeds, is an excellent way to learn to stabilize your muscles while exerting effort. Do you still not see the correlation?

4 – Helps You Become More Flexible

I know many of you have a desk job where you sit in front of a screen for eight hours a day, maybe even more. That prompts your muscles to lose their flexibility.

Can you guess what you can do about it? Yes! Pick up your shovel and start gardening.

Moving around the garden and holding different positions for a long time pushes your muscles to their limit, preventing them from stiffening up.

5 – Burns a Decent Number of Calories

Like with any physical activity in the world, gardening helps you burn calories. How many calories? The number depends on the intensity of your tasks and the size of your garden.

That said, standard gardening practices can help you burn 200-600 calories an hour. Raking and bagging leaves alone can burn 300-400 calories, and those aren’t even the most strenuous activities.

If you indulge in the more physically demanding aspects of gardening, like spading, lifting, and digging, you’ll burn more calories.

How to Make the Most of Gardening?

You’re probably heading for the door to start working on your garden and reaping all these physical benefits right now. Let me give you a few tips to make the most of your gardening workout first.

Stretch Before You Start

I know you may not think stretching is necessary, but you’d be surprised. After all, gardening can be a bit risky.

If your muscles are too stiff, you can throw your back out, strain your arms, or hurt your wrists/hands. Stretching before you start gardening will loosen your muscles, increasing your flexibility and reducing the risk of injuries.

Add Cardio Exercises Between Your Tasks

As beneficial as it is, gardening won’t provide the same physical value for everyone. For example, gymaholics may not find the cardio workout it offers that challenging.

To these people, I recommend exercising between tasks to get your heart pumping. If you’re digging holes in your garden, you can take a break and do a few jump squats or run around the garden for a bit.

Final Thoughts

Now you know how gardening gives you a full-body workout. While it’s not as effective as a regular workout, it’s a viable option if you don’t have the time to hit the gym.

So, if you’ve been contemplating taking gardening as a hobby, now you have one more reason to add to the pros list.

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