Spring time brings new outdoor activities, golfing, biking, hiking, rollerblading, walking, running and so much more. Balanced Health would like to remind you that keeping your body in alignment is important for proper form and to help keep injuries away. I’m not exaggerating. Repetitive motions like pruning and weeding can injure muscles, tendons and nerves, turning what is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby into a pain-filled nightmare. Even if you have never held a racket, you can end up with tennis elbow from carrying heavy buckets or pruning shrubs.
Gardening, although it is a great activity sometimes it can cause unwanted aches and pains. Here are a few tips to keep your body healthy during gardening and landscaping:
- Warm Up – walking and dynamic stretches/exercises
- Wear Gloves
- Stay Hydrated
- Take Breaks Often
- Don’t Overdo it. Spread out your tasks and do a little bit each day. AKA do not wait to do all of the work in one day!
- Good Posture while gardening and doing outside work.
- Change your position often and vary your tasks to avoid straining the same muscle groups over and over.
- Try not to overreach for things that are just out of range to lessen the chance of back strain.
- Don’t twist especially when carrying something heavy.
- Lift correctly, using your legs and not your back. Once you have picked them up keep heavy loads close to your body.
- Padded kneelers can help lessen the pressure on your knees.
If you hurt your back during spring clean up work around the home: Call me right away! And Avoid positions and stretches below!!!
Exercises to Avoid/Positions that The Spine is Weak:
What NOT to do:
- Rounding of the Back
- Not using legs to squat down to pick up something heavy
- Twisting while lifting heavy – shoveling, putting in bags of mulch, digging actions etc.
What to do:
- Keep spine strong/straight as possible
- Use your legs and strong core to bend over to pick something up or while weeding
- Picking weeds with one knee on the ground and one leg at 90 degrees is a great position and keep your spine straight as you reach forward to pick weeds to keep your knees and spine happy.
BBQ Chicken Bacon Pizza
We LOVE Homemade Pizza!! Trader Joes has the BEST already made pizza dough!
Ways to make pizza “healthier”:
- Homemade or organic sauce
- Add more vegetables
- Go easy on the Cheese
- Thin Crust/Gluten Free Crust Mix
Ingredients
- 1 refrigerated pizza crust or homemade dough recipe
- KC Masterpiece® Original Barbecue Sauce
- 1 TBSP butter melted
- 1 C cooked chicken chopped
- 6 slices bacon chopped (approx 3/4 C)
- 2 C mozzarella cheese
- 1/2 C parmesan cheese
- 1/2 small red onion thinly sliced
- *Optional: Parsley for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425
- Unroll dough onto a greased baking pan. Spread out to fit pan and poke fork throughout the dough. Brush with melted butter and bake for 7-8 minutes.
- While dough bakes, prepare toppings (cook/chop bacon, chop cooked chicken, slice onion).
- Remove pizza crust from oven, spread a thin layer of barbecue sauce evenly over the warm crust.
- Top with mozzarella cheese. Add chicken, bacon, and onion on top of cheese.
- Drizzle a bit more barbecue sauce over the pizza and sprinkle with parmesan.
- Bake 7-10 more minutes, until cheese is melted and crust turns golden brown.
- Remove from oven and garnish with parsley if desired.
- Slice and enjoy!
Happy Mother’s Day to All the Mom’s!!!
