Gardening, Back Pain & the Myth of “Perfect Lifting”
How planting bulbs, pulling weeds, and lifting awkward compost bags might be the best thing you can do for your spine.
“You’re going to hurt your back lifting like that.”
We posted a reel about gardening last week, a celebration of all the creative, varied ways we move in the garden. The comments rolled in. Plenty of encouragement. But also warnings like that one above.
It’s a common belief: that if you don’t lift with a “perfect” straight back, knees bent, chest up, you’re asking for injury.
But the reality is far more complex, and hopeful.
Back injuries are frustrating. They can be sudden and painful. But most aren’t caused by a single “bad lift.”
Andrew knows this from experience, he lived through a stage III disc herniation at L4/5 that shut his body down.
So what really causes back pain? Often, it’s one (or more) of these:
Lifting too heavy, too soon, without building capacity over time
Repeating the same movement pattern over and over without variety
Moving into a position your body isn’t familiar or practiced with
Gardening often gets blamed, but ironically, it can also be one of the best tools for building resilience if we approach it with awareness and intention.
“Lift With a Straight Back” or Lift for Real Life?
You’ve probably heard the classic advice: “Lift with your legs, not your back.”
But that assumes you’re lifting something symmetrical, with handles, from a clean gym floor.
That’s not the garden.
You’re twisting, crouching, reaching under shrubs, or hauling compost bags with one hand while balancing a trowel in the other.
The problem isn’t these real-life positions. The problem is that we often haven’t trained them.
There is no one safe way to lift. In reality, there are many ways to lift, and many ways to build strength.
Katy Bowman often compares modern bodies to houseplants. Take a potted plant sitting in a warm, still windowsill. It looks fine, but move it outside into its native ecosystem, and it struggles because it grew without challenge.
Our bodies, like plants, need a variety of forces to grow strong. Not just predictable, repeated movements. But awkward, sometimes messy ones.
If we look at Andrew’s back recovery by way of example, he didn’t recover from lying flat and avoiding awkward movements. In his article, Lessons from My Back Injury: The Professionals Who Got It Right (and Wrong), he shares how outdated physio advice, like “no twisting, lifting, or bending,” kept him stuck and scared.
What helped in the end was:
A GP who took his pain seriously but encouraged gentle, graded movement
A physio who adapted exercises to how Andrew’s body actually felt
Slowly regaining confidence through curiosity, not fear
So, What Can You Take From This?
If you love gardening, you’re already engaging in a fantastically diverse form of movement training. Here are some things to think about:
Notice your patterns, are you always kneeling on one side?
Vary your approach, carry your watering can in the non-dominant hand sometimes
Shift your positions regularly, crouch, kneel, stand, twist
Train awkward movements before they catch you off guard
Don’t fear discomfort, explore it, gently, with support
Strength isn’t about perfect form, it’s about being prepared for all the weird, wonderful, real-life ways we do move.
Gardening isn’t dangerous. Repetition, lack of variety, and fear of movement are.
So next time you haul a bag of compost with a twist, or pull weeds in a crouch, know this: you’re building the kind of strength and adaptability that houseplants can only dream of.
Be the wild plant. Not the windowsill one.
You can find more about Andrew’s journey with back pain and a list of resources. Read more…
