Reel Upper Body Yard Workout

[Yogadad]

Yes, Spring is here, but this isn't about fishing

Actually, I was doing my yardwork today. I do most of my yard w/ a lawntractor, but being in hilly TN I have a culvert that runs around one side of my property for water drainage for when it rains a lot.

When my last push mower died I decided to go "old school" and get a non motorized reel mower (which sometimes I love and sometimes,when I'm tired, I kick myself ). Well, I was doing the culverts today, and I have a pretty decent size yard so it's a really long culvert. I found that if I did the culvert by going strait down into it and then up the little hill part I was able to get a good clean cut. Well, not only did I get the grass cut in that area but I'll tell you what, I got one heck of a good chest and back workout as well!

I had to push forward to cut, then pull back down through the culvert to prepare for the next section!

So that is my "reel" upper body yard workout!

Best,

Scott

[Judith L]

Just a good chest and back workout? Oh, come to rocky Connecticut and dig 2' x2' deep holes for roses, lifting out all the boulders from hard clay 'soil', enough for a stone wall, and you will certainly get a workout for your arms and lower body as well.

This week I transplanted eight rosebushes using an old-fashioned non-motorized shovel. Uprooting stuff and levering out boulders with your foot on the shovel works out the whole body, not just the upper part. And you will discover muscles in your forearms you never felt before. Gardening can be darn tough.

[Yogadad]

Originally Posted by Judith L

Just a good chest and back workout? Oh, come to rocky Connecticut and dig 2' x2' deep holes for roses, lifting out all the boulders from hard clay 'soil', enough for a stone wall, and you will certainly get a workout for your arms and lower body as well.

This week I transplanted eight rosebushes and am in the process of moving about a dozen butterfly bushes and some other perennials using an old-fashioned non-motorized shovel. I had planned to finish up this weekend but my body said "savasana" yesterday. Uprooting stuff and levering out boulders with your foot on the shovel works out the whole body, not just the upper part. And you will discover muscles in your forearms you never felt before. Gardening can be darn tough.

Hi Judith,

I agree, planting is a full body workout, much more physical than what I did today. I was trying to be somewhat tongue in cheek in my initial post even though there was a lot of truth to it of course.

Anyway, speaking of digging. A couple of years ago we bought some trees for our yard and I dug the holes which had to be quite wide to handle the root system and fairly deep. In Tennessee we are also blessed with a serious amount of rock in the ground. I had to use a hand tiller a lot to work around the rocks to loosen them us and then dig them out. I definitely felt that all over my body. I was so grateful for my yoga practice after that because it really helped me recover from all that.

Another tough yard workout was using a motorized tiller that we rented. It looks easy, like the machine does all the work.... definitely not ! We added a huge corner garden (we are on a corner lot) and I did the tilling through the existing grass. Even thought the machine does the turning, you have to really stablize your whole body so that the machine doesn't drag you forward (and it's a reasonably heavy machine), then by stabilizing, it digs down instead of going forward.

That was another project in which my body seriously benefitted from my Yoga practice, I was sore after that one!

Best,

Scott

[Gardengirl]

I invite you both to come and dig in the rocky clay soil of Georgia! So I agree, gardening can be quite a workout.

I got a small Troybilt tiller a few years ago for my birthday (had to specify that I ONLY wanted the small one or DH would have bought one more his size and I'd be dead now)! The commercials show that thing working in a wonderful loamy soil and it looks like a piece of cake! Not true, it turned out to be quite a workout too.

Then somehow we wound up not ferzilizing our 8 acres last fall and things were pretty brown around here last month! DH got something like 19-19-19 fertilizer! Well, it certainly is green now but I think I will be cutting the grass about once a week now! Funny thing about fertilizer, the grass seemed to really like it but so did the chickweed that is now in every one of my flower gardens. So I will be going much functional fitness probably until Memorial Day!

[Yogadad]

Originally Posted by gardengirl

I invite you both to come and dig in the rocky clay soil of Georgia! So I agree, gardening can be quite a workout.

I got a small Troybilt tiller a few years ago for my birthday (had to specify that I ONLY wanted the small one or DH would have bought one more his size and I'd be dead now)! The commercials show that thing working in a wonderful loamy soil and it looks like a piece of cake! Not true, it turned out to be quite a workout too.

Then somehow we wound up not ferzilizing our 8 acres last fall and things were pretty brown around here last month! DH got something like 19-19-19 fertilizer! Well, it certainly is green now but I think I will be cutting the grass about once a week now! Funny thing about fertilizer, the grass seemed to really like it but so did the chickweed that is now in every one of my flower gardens. So I will be going much functional fitness probably until Memorial Day!

Hi Gardengirl,

Isn't it funny how easy that tilling looks in the commercials It looks as easy as walking behind a Lawnmower that has a power drive. It's a totally physical thing to work with. It kicked my butt when I had to do it!

You have a lot more land than I do, I only have a little over an acre (about an acre and a third), most of the actual property is relatively flat, but because so much of this area is hilly they have to design all the neighborhoods with culverts to divert rain water as not to flood the folks who live down at the bottom of the grades.

I'm glad that I stay in shape, especially for that reel mower The Lawn tractor is easy, lots of sitting (not as much as you have to do w/ 8 acres though, I hope you have a bush hog or a monster of a tractor). One thing though, having good core strength does help for the hours it takes sitting on that thing, so even on the rider functional fitness even has it's applications

It's interesting to me how all the working out really carries over into doing everything!

Best,

Scott

[vdub]

We have one of those mowers, too! I agree; what a workout! Can you imagine mowing your whole yard that way!

Shari

Originally Posted by Yogadad

When my last push mower died I decided to go "old school" and get a non motorized reel mower (which sometimes I love and sometimes,when I'm tired, I kick myself ). Well, I was doing the culverts today, and I have a pretty decent size yard so it's a really long culvert. I found that if I did the culvert by going strait down into it and then up the little hill part I was able to get a good clean cut. Well, not only did I get the grass cut in that area but I'll tell you what, I got one heck of a good chest and back workout as well!

[Gardengirl]

All right, I confess ! We have one of those zero radius turn mowers and that isn't much of a workout! In fact, it's kind of fun! So cutting the grass isn't my workout, it's the flower gardens and moving mulch, and tilling that wears me out!

Scott, I didn't know that reel mowers were even still around! I thought they were replaced by weed eaters! LOL!

[Yogadad]

Originally Posted by vdub

We have one of those mowers, too! I agree; what a workout! Can you imagine mowing your whole yard that way!

Shari

No way would I want to mow the whole thing w/ that reel mower. It already takes at least 2 hours to cut my yard w/ a 42 inch cutting deck on the lawn tractor and it moves at a nice clip

In fact, when we bought this house we didn't have the lawn tractor and used our old self propelled mower. It took over 6 hours to do between the speed that I could go plus the small cutting deck. At first I was stubborn and was going to just do it that way, but then I realized, once that humid TN summer started that there was no way I'd be able to continue on that path and so we got the Craftsman Lawn Tractor. I'll never forget the first time I used it and saw that nice wide path it left behind (compared to my old mower), I had a huge smile on my face.... I LOVE that lawn tractor!!!!!

Best,

Scott

[Yogadad]

Originally Posted by gardengirl

All right, I confess ! We have one of those zero radius turn mowers and that isn't much of a workout! In fact, it's kind of fun! So cutting the grass isn't my workout, it's the flower gardens and moving mulch, and tilling that wears me out!

Scott, I didn't know that reel mowers were even still around! I thought they were replaced by weed eaters! LOL!

I know what you mean. I was surprised that they still made them myself. I was just so fed up with the motorized mowers after the last one broke. I figured that the majority of the property is done w/ the rider so I figured I'd be able to handle the culvert plus a fenced area we have in the back (I can't fit my rider through the fence because the gate is too narrow, but that's not a hard area to mow).

I think we only paid like $80 for the reel mower and I would imagine it should last a long time as long as it doesn't rust out or something. I'm assuming (hopefully) that it's rust proofed.

The strangest thing is how relatively quite it is to cut the grass with the reel mower, it's almost surreal, it just makes a clackety clackey noise and yet it really does the job as long as the grass doesn't get too high. If it does get high then I have to do tiny sections at a time, back and forth, or weed whack it first which is very tedious

Best,

Scott

[KarenJo]

There is a lot of functional fitness in gardening and it needs to be done over and over. Whenever someone comments that low weight high rep work is useless because they never use tht kind of strength I think about how many hours of the spring and summer I spend crouched on a slope inside of a large shrub with a 1/2 pound pair of pruners held over my head clipping out dead twigs. I can end up doing that for an hour or two at a time. Once I get in there I have an incentive to get it all done before I crawl out.

My solution for grass is to get rid of all of it.