It’s that time of year, the weather and day light hours are both improving and the grass starts growing.  Our activity levels often start to increase now, especially for the gardeners among us.  Watch out!  Several months of relative hibernation can leave us out of shape and rather than getting stuck into the garden we get stuck IN the garden.  The first sunny days encourage us to do more but don’t over do things to start with.

Think about…

Warming up before you start.  Don’t dive into heavy tasks straight away, start gently, spend some time stretching your legs, back, shoulders and neck.  Its important we prepare the body before physical activity.

Repeat some of the stretches during the day to help limit a build up of muscle tightness and definitely spend some time at the end of the day stretching to ease the muscles that you have been using.

Divide the tasks up.  Don’t spend hours doing one job, repeatedly using the same muscle groups in the same way.  Chop and change so your body gets some variation.

It is normal to have some aches and pains after more strenuous physical work and this should ease over a day or two.  If pain is more persistent then it is advisable to get advice.  With the right treatment and management plan in place you can get back to your normal activities and get rid of the pain.