Gardening: Grow Plants and Grow Muscle
Can gardening build muscle? It’s commonly said that gardening is a healthy way to do low intensity activity. But there may be further, more muscular benefits too. If you’re more into fitness, gardening is a great activity to add into your routine. If you’re more into gardening, you’re building an amazing base to dive farther into fitness.
If you’re like me and into both gardening and fitness, your search engine or social media algorithm might have shown you this picture. I first saw it on a yoga teacher’s Instagram. The image shows gardening tools juxtaposed against muscle groups. The implication is that yard n’ garden work is a way to strengthen muscles. Further, it seems to imply that you can do a bodybuilder’s muscle-targeting split by focusing on the muscles that each tool hits.
I was struck by the possibility of building muscle via gardening. I’ve felt muscle pumps from increased blood flow while working in the garden. If you’ve ever used hand tools, you’ve felt the muscle fatigue that comes with hard work. But, what does this really mean for fitness?
Gardening brings two main benefits for your muscles: muscular endurance and muscle hyperplasia.
Let’s look at muscular endurance first. Training muscles depends on a few critical factors. For the purposes of this post, the important ones are intensity (heaviness of the weight compared to your maximum strength), volume (how much total work you do), and frequency (how often you work).
For example, a weightlifter will train for strength. They’ll do a specific competition lift like jerk at a high intensity but relatively low volume so they can recover. They’ll lift in sets of 1-5 repetitions. They’ll also use a high frequency, just because weightlifting is a skill that needs practice. Having a regimen like this will lead to increased strength as the body adapts to high intensity.
A bodybuilder will train for muscle hypertrophy, which is increased muscle fiber size. Achieving Hypertrophy is a function of high volume at a medium intensity. The frequency matters much less than the other two factors. That’s why body builders do many sets of 5-30 on given muscle groups to grow their physique.
What about gardening? It seems like an outlier compared to weightlifting and bodybuilding because it is. It affects muscles entirely differently. Gardening work tends to be low intensity but, as is often the case with large jobs, higher on volume and frequency. The repetitions for movements like using shears or raking are usually far above 30.
Training high repetitions like in gardening means that the exercise is not in the strength range of 1-5 like the weightlifter or the hypertrophy range of 5-30 like the bodybuilder. This range is instead the muscular endurance range. Rather than increasing maximal strength or muscle size, the muscles improve their ability to take in oxygen and increase their work capacity. Having more work capacity is always a good thing.
The second and more unique benefit of gardening for muscle is Muscle hyperplasia. Muscle hyperplasia is adding more muscle fibers to the muscle rather than growing the specific fibers like in hypertrophy. The result still means more toned looking and more capable muscles.
Muscle hyperplasia is achieved by a style of training called Nucleus overload, where trainees lift light weights (low intensity) for a high volume on a regular basis. Sound familiar? Gardening is nucleus overload training outside of the gym.
Gardening isn’t a replacement for a fitness routine. But aside from the many other benefits, gardening can directly improve your fitness. It is good as light cardio and while it won’t make your muscles bigger, it’ll give you more muscle that can work harder. Who doesn’t want that?
Muscle Groups for each gardening tool:
Just in case you want to use gardening to target specific muscles for endurance abs hyperplasia benefits, here’s a better list of muscles targeted by common gardening activities. I included many muscles for each tool because gardening uses compound movements and not much that isolates a single muscle group.
Shovel and pitchfork:
Glutes and hamstrings, lower back, abs, obliques, shoulders
Rake:
Biceps, forearms, lats, rhomboids
Hoe:
Biceps, forearms, serratus anterior, lats, lower back, glutes
Pickaxe/splitting wood:
Shoulders, lats, biceps, triceps, lower back, glutes
Lopping shears, pruning shears:
Chest
Saw:
Forearms, biceps, triceps, serratus anterior
Pruning shears:
Forearms
Wheelbarrow:
Upper back and traps, lower back, glutes, hamstrings, quads
Lawn mower:
Quads, calves, triceps, chest
Axe and machete chopping:
Chest, obliques, hips, glutes, upper back, triceps, forearms
Farmers carry:
Traps, forearms
