Back Pain After Gardening or Spring Cleaning

Spring cleaning before Chinese New Year, a Saturday morning repotting plants, a day scrubbing the bathroom.

Nothing heavy, nothing dramatic, and by evening your back has tightened and stiffened painfully, sometimes it’s locked and you cant really move it much.

People are often embarrassed by this, because it wasn’t a proper injury. It’s one of the most common ways backs go, and the mechanism explains why.

It’s the position, not the weight

Gardening and housework put you in sustained bent-forward positions: weeding, wiping skirting boards, mopping, leaning into a low cupboard.

Held for hours, that loads the lower back steadily even with nothing in your hands. It’s the same not-moving problem as hours in a chair, just bent forward instead.

Add two more factors.

• These jobs involve a lot of twisting while bent, which is the position the back tolerates least.
• And they’re occasional, so you go from a week at a desk to four hours of unfamiliar movement with no build-up.

Then the pain often arrives that evening or the next morning rather than during the task, which is why the connection gets missed. Muscle soreness works the same way: DOMS, heat or ice?

What to do that evening

1. Don’t go straight to bed to rest it. Bed rest slows recovery from back pain. Potter about, change position often. ie move around is best to solve the pain.
2. Heat, 15–20 minutes. There’s no swelling here, just muscle guarding, so heat suits it from day one. Lie on your side, pad on top, cover on, lowest setting. See heating pad for lower back pain.
3. Then move gently: knee rocks, pelvic tilts, a short walk. Heat first, then the movement.
4. Sleep on your side with a pillow between your knees if it’s grumbling. If it grips hardest overnight, see back spasm at night.

Most of these settle within a few days to a couple of weeks. The full plan is in a physio’s plan for the first two weeks.

Next time

• Break the job up. Twenty minutes on one task, then twenty on something upright. The whole garden in one go is the problem, not the gardening.
• Get lower rather than bending over. Kneel on a mat or sit on a low stool for weeding and low cupboards. Kneeling protects the back far better than stooping.
• Move your feet instead of twisting. Turn your whole body to put something down.
• Use long-handled tools so you’re not bent double to reach. Gripping secateurs and trowels for hours also tells on the hands: hand arthritis and elbow pain.
• Split heavy loads. Two half-buckets of water, two trips with the shopping.
• Stand up and stretch backwards a few times an hour, which reverses the position you’ve been holding.
• Warm up. A few minutes of walking before you start, and heat first if your back is already stiff.

The wider point

If four hours of housework puts your back out, the housework isn’t really the problem. A back that’s used to only sitting doesn’t tolerate sudden bursts of physical work.

Regular activity through the week is what builds that tolerance, and it’s the difference between a Saturday that costs you nothing and one that costs you a week. See heat and weight training and muscle pain relief at home.

See a doctor if…

• You have numbness around the groin or buttocks, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Go to A&E.
• Pain, numbness or weakness runs down a leg. See sciatica and heat.
• You fell during the task, particularly if you’re older or have thin bones. See back pain in older people.
• You have fever, unexplained weight loss, or a cancer history
• It isn’t improving after two weeks. More on the limits: when a heating pad helps back pain, and when it won’t.
• This happens every time you do anything physical, which is worth a proper assessment rather than another fortnight of recovery

Clinically reviewed by: Nigel Chua (Hand Occupational Therapist) & Louise Yow (Physiotherapist). This article is general information, not a diagnosis. electricheatpad.com sells electric heat pads.