Shoveling Preparation

Shoveling Preparation

Why do you feel sore after shoveling?

Often times with the first time you shovel in the winter season, you will feel pain and discomfort over the next couple of days from overusing muscles that hardly ever get paid any attention. It is important to prepare your body for what winter has to offer. By exercising the muscles that you would use for shoveling even slightly throughout the year, it will prepare you better for the movements that you will do when the first snow fall occurs. Make sure that you are aware of your body mechanics and strengthen your core, back, arm and shoulder muscles. Functional training where you train your muscles to work with weight and in the same movement patterns as you would when you shovel snow will be extremely beneficial to prevent injuries.

Educating our clients

At PhysioMax Wellness, educating the individuals we work with is extremely important to us. Ensuring they understand how their day-to-day movements affect their body mechanics and what can contribute to injuries, gives them the understanding to continue treatment at home and maintain proper body posture habits after recovering from an injury. Walking them through their movements so they can feel the difference between their daily movements and what they feel like with proper body mechanics helps them ensure they uphold correct postures and prevent re-injury in the future.

What happened in this video?

Nils took her through a repetition of how her body moved when she was shoveling snow. Her main purpose for the visit was that her shoulder was sore and her previous rotator cuff injury had been reaggravated. As Nils took her through a recap of her movements, she noticed right away that the way she was shoveling put a lot of stress on her shoulder and Nils continued to educate her on what had happened. He explained to her that since shoveling is not a regular activity that she undertakes, her muscles are not specifically trained to move in that manner. After this conversation she had a deeper understanding of the importance in exercising and strengthening her bones and muscles regularly to keep up with the daily demands of winter and everyday life.

Julia de Reijke RKin, CSEP-CPT, BASc Kinesiology (Hons), DipFTHP