When Tonny Van Loij was 17, he rode in the Tour de France. In his 20s, he was a professional soccer player in Belgium. At ages 42 and 44, he ran in the Boston Marathon.
Now that he’s 65, Van Loij has pared his fitness routine to two activities: biking and gardening.
Gardening? Is this elite athlete finally slowing down?
Not at all, says Van Loij, who estimates he gardens about 30 hours a week in the spring, summer and fall — 15 to 20 hours as a volunteer at the Denver Botanic Gardens and the rest of the time at his Lakewood home. That activity, combined with 160 to 200 miles of biking a week, is all he needs to maintain his strenuous strength and conditioning requirements.
“There are very few things as good physically and mentally for you as gardening,” says Van Loij, who owned Lakewood Flowerland from 1985 to 2003. “You’re always doing something different — your whole body moves. You have to bend over, dig up stuff, plant stuff, rake. Even dragging the hose out and watering is a physical job.”
Van Loij believes one to two hours of gardening a day is enough to stay fit. He’s seconded by Jeffrey Restuccio, author of “Get Fit Through Gardening” (Hatherleigh Press, 2008, $15.95).
“I think gardening compares favorably to resistance training and aerobic exercise,” Restuccio says but adds a caveat: “99.9 percent of people garden incorrectly, so they don’t really get the fitness benefits.”
Most gardeners don’t warm up their muscles before picking up a hoe or shovel, don’t vary their activities enough and rely too much on the small muscles of their arms and shoulders rather than the large muscles of their lower body, Restuccio says. The result? Stiffness, soreness and wimpy fitness levels, he says.
If you do it right, gardening is mainly an endurance exercise that increases overall fitness, according to Bunny Guinness and Jacqueline Knox, authors of “Garden Your Way to Health and Fitness,” (Timber Press, publishes in May, $19.95).
Resistance work like toting bags of mulch will typically bring your heart rate up to 85 percent of its maximum, and aerobic tasks like raking or shoveling will make your heart work at upper training levels, they say.
But you’re not going to look like Gabby’s buff-boy landscaper on “Desperate Housewives” through gardening alone. “Even the most strenuous gardening activities such as double-digging, hoeing and turning compost will only increase the size of your muscles so much,” Restuccio says.
If you want to look like the Terminator rather than the germinator, you’ll have better luck lifting weights in the gym.
However, if your goal is simply to turn weeding into a workout, experts offer the following tips:
Train your brain. “Once you make the decision to use gardening to stay fit, your mind-set shifts,” says Bruce Kasanoff, co-founder of Multiverse Labs, a Connecticut- based company that specializes in mind/body conditioning. What was once a chore suddenly seems like a good workout idea.
For instance, Kasanoff says, while puttering about his yard, “When faced with a choice, I choose the more physically challenging approach. I put a bit more dirt or mulch on each shovel than necessary. I push the wheelbarrow up the steep part of the hill instead of across the slope. And spreading 10 cubic yards of mulch becomes stronger biceps rather than a job to be avoided at all costs.”
Vary your routine. “Most people garden in a monotonous position, hunched over, doing the same thing for hours,” Restuccio says. Not only can this lead to aching, overused muscles, it does almost nothing for your fitness levels. Just as you need to vary your workouts in the gym, you also need to vary your activities in the yard.
“Plan out your gardening exercise session to include a variety of movements such as raking, mowing, weeding, pruning and digging,” Restuccio says. Try to mix aerobic chores like hoeing or mowing with strength work, like turning compost or hauling rocks.
Ideally, you should switch activities every eight to 10 minutes, but if that makes you feel as jumpy as Peter Cottontail, Restuccio suggests changing positions instead. If you’re weeding, for instance, move from a kneel to a lunge to a squat every three to five minutes.
Garden shorter, not longer. Instead of devoting your entire Saturday to yard work, Restuccio advocates gardening at least three times a week for one to two hours. This not only lessens the chance of injury, it offers optimal aerobic benefits, he says.
Change positions. If you always hold the rake or shovel in your right hand, try switching. “Tasks like turning compost and raking leaves tend to involve favoring one side of the body, so that some muscles are built up while others become weak,” Guinness and Knox say.
They also recommend weeding with your nondominant hand. “Once you get past the initial strangeness of this temporary ambidexterity, it is a clever way of maximizing fitness benefits while protecting yourself from strain and injury.”
And if you’re accustomed to always pulling hand tools toward you, try a pushing-pulling motion instead, Restuccio says. You’ll use different muscles and minimize soreness. When you’re shoveling, he recommends squatting and using your legs to help you lift the soil, not your arms. This not only minimizes arm and back strain, it exercises more muscles and burns more calories.
