3 Easy Tips to Avoid Pain with Shoveling Snow

Old man winter has finally made an appearance and now we have to deal with it by clearing driveways and sidewalks to make daily activities a little less hazardous. Depending on the mood old man winter was in when he was delivering snow, it’s not out of the norm that you might be spending at least a couple of hours shoveling snow. This is two hours your body is doing a repetitive motion it might only do once or twice a year depending on the amount of snow we get that winter. Looking at it that way, it becomes easy to see how you might end up with some pain before the driveway is cleared. To make sure the thought of how much snow you have to shovel is the only pain you feel, here are 3 easy tips to prevent you from having pain while you are shoveling! 

• Tip #1: Warm Up

  • The winter coat, stocking cap, and snow boots shouldn’t be the only way you are trying to warm up before you begin to shovel. Creating a stretch and/or dynamic warm up for your muscles and joints before performing activity has proven to be effective in prevention of injury. If you were about to run for the same amount of time you are about to shovel snow, you would likely do a warm up. So, why not take care of your body for both activities? If you are struggling with coming up with a warm up, here is a link that will help with that! → WARM UP

• Tip #2: Form with Shoveling

  • It’s easy to want to bend at the low back over and over again to get the job done, but if your low back isn’t trained for the repetitive loading then soreness or pain might come about. Try these quick pointers with your form to help prevent low back pain:

    • Hinge at the hips - bending at your hips while keeping your low back flat or “neutral” can help prevent the low back from taking the repetitive load

    • Create intra-abdominal pressure or brace your core before lifting a loaded shovel

    • Widen your hand grip on the shovel 

• Tip #3: Shovel Ergonomics 

  • If you are wanting all the help you can get while you are shoveling snow, use this last tip to go the extra mile. Research has shown that a bent-shaft shovel reduces the amount of load you put on your low back while shoveling and can be beneficial in the prevention of injury. So if the first two tips aren’t giving you much of an improvement, it might be worth looking into getting a new shovel! 

If these tips didn’t reach you in time and you’ve already injured yourself while dealing with the snow, come in to see us at Focus On Health so we can get you back to more sledding and less shoveling! 

Citations: 

Lewinson, R. T., Rouhi, G., & Robertson, D. G. (2014). Influence of snow shovel shaft configuration on lumbosacral biomechanics during a load-lifting task. Applied ergonomics, 45(2), 234–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2013.04.004