Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning and welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. My name is Joe King. I'm the owner of Physical Therapy Advantage in North Aurora, and we are here for our second part of a three-part series on Gardening tips. We talked last week about kneeling and using a bench or pads or using some sort of pull cart that can turn into a bench, whatever it is to take a little stress off your low back and be in a better position, and maybe take stress off your hips and knees as well. This week, we are going to talk about bending over. A lot of people like to just bend over and weed. I'm just going to get one weed or pick up one thing or do one thing, but I just kind of always are bending over and it's a lot of strain on your low back.

If you are going to stand and do some gardening or you're doing some minimal little work in that standing position, there's a much better way to do it. We call it a Golfer's Reach as if you're getting the ball out of the cup, and you hit all in one. Fantastic! So you put your feet in a stagger type stance and now you're going to bend over and you're going to put that back leg down on the ground and you're just going to reach forward and bend that knee and you can keep your back fairly straight and do this. So you're going to bend over, support yourself on your hand on your thigh, and you'll reach down and pull or do whatever you need to do. If you happen to have a utensil, stick, a cane, a fork, or a pitchfork or a shovel, you can use that as well in that opposite hand to give you a little more balance. Still put that leg back and now you have a free hand and you can pick that weed, do whatever you need to do. We don't recommend you do that for this kind of position for a very long period of time, this can be very straining straight in on your back and your knees and your hips if you're doing it for too long a period of time. Or another option would be to get yourself into a staggered stance where one foot is slightly in front of the other and now you're bending down and you have to get into a little bit of squat as long as your knees and hips are okay with that. And now you go down and then you can rest your forearm on and kind of do a little bit of weeding. But once again, we don't recommend you being in that position for very long. You can also think about engaging your abdominals as you do that activity to give you a little bit more support.

All right, hopefully, that helps. Next week where we are doing our third-part series, hopefully, come back for that. If you have questions about today's session, the bending over, golfer's reach, staggered stance or if you have other questions about gardening in certain situations that you're in, definitely give us a call at (630) 892-8003. We look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly of Cup Joe! Bye.