Tips for Safe Snow Shoveling
Snow shoveling makes up a shocking number of injuries that end up in doctor’s offices for treatment during the winter. It’s not surprising when you think of how many inactive people pick up a snow shovel out of necessity and head outside but haven’t trained their muscles, tendons, and ligaments beforehand.
Here are a few tips and tricks to help reduce the likelihood that shoveling snow will result in injury.
Here are five tips for shoveling snow this winter:
Warm up your heart and muscles. This can mean something different for each fitness level. If you’re not engaging in cardio activity regularly, this might look like a step-touch side to side, light march, or brisk walk around your house. If you have a consistent cardio regimen, take it a bit further by adding some jumping jacks, high knees, or jump squats. Your goal is to warm up your heart and muscles and get blood flowing throughout the body. Aim for 5-10 minutes.
Warm up your tendons and ligaments. Let your tendons and ligaments know that you’re about to ask them to work by warming them up with some dynamic stretches. After you warm up your body, do some specific functional movements like those you’re about to ask your body to engage in. Maybe that means pointing and flexing your feet, bending the knees up and down like a squat, leg swings forward and back, hip hinges, standing quad stretches, light upper body twists, shoulder swings, and neck side stretches… to name a few! Do anything that warms up the body for the work you are about to do.
Move with mindfulness. The last thing you want to do when shoveling is move too quickly. You always want to be mindful about how you’re using your body. Here are just a few examples of how you can move mindfully during the actual shoveling action:
Bend your knees, drive your. feet into the ground, and lift with your legs, not your arms.
As you lift the shovel, keep the weight close to your body so you stay in your core.
When letting go of the snow, twist from the core mindfully and then ‘throw’ it, but keep your arms close to body and your shoulders in their home.
Switch the hand you have in front so you’re using different arms and twisting a different way. This will spread out the wear and tear on each muscle group you’re using from your shoulders, forearms, trapezius, and lats in the upper body and down into your hips too. Switch your hand’s hold on the shovel from palm up to palm down as well.
Try to move small amounts of snow at a time, particularly until you’re really warmed up
When you feel fatigued, stop! You can always go back to do more later. Don’t push your body to injury. Always listen to your body, let your ego go, and don’t be stubborn!
Take care of your body afterward. Shoveling IS a real workout and deserves recovery time just like a visit to the gym. Do some static stretches when you get back inside and warm up. Maybe add in an epsom salt bath. You worked hard… you deserve it!
A fun snow day should never end with an injury that will keep you sidelined for months, so warm up, be mindful, and take care of your body afterward. Snow shoveling is no joke!