What Landscape Care & Tennis Have In Common

Both landscape care and tennis are strenuously physical. Whether mowing your lawn with a walk-behind mower, spreading mulch or compost, weeding planting beds, or playing a game of tennis, you use muscles that you don’t normally use. To prepare for such activities, experts recommend doing warm up exercises before starting and cool down exercises at the end.Experts in both gardening and physical fitness urge exercise before and after starting your main activity. They point to Olympians and athletes in other televised sports going through an exercise routine before taking to the field, ice or court? They must be on to something.When working on your landscape, you use muscles that you may not use in any other activity, especially if you’re sedentary in your day job. That’s why it’s good to stretch those muscles and limber them up with light exercise before starting the real exertion. It’s the same reason why athletes warm up before their performances. Often, you’ll see our professionals, especially our tree climbers, go through an exercise routine before starting a job.Some of the exercises need to stretch shoulder, arm, neck and leg muscles. Others should help your breathing, especially if you have shortness of breath when mowing, stooping or even kneeling.If you belong to a gym or have a personal trainer, you may have warm up and cool down exercises that are part of your routine. Ask if they are right for your landscape activities, too. If not, the gym or trainer may be able to give you a routine. Or, you can always check the internet.I Googled “Exercises before gardening” and got more than 42 million results, including some YouTube videos. If you want to go even further and make gardening part of your fitness program, Google “Gardening exercise” and get even more results. As always, we can’t vouch for the accuracy of all that information on the internet. But, if you find exercises that interest you, discuss them with a trusted professional to see if they are right for you.Researching and developing a pre and post landscape or gardening exercise routine is a good winter activity. Use your downtime to do your research and practice the exercises in the warm comfort of your home before the season starts and you’ll be all ready for a fit start to the 2020 growing season.