Hello, my name is Mark Tedson. I’m a physical therapist for Tahoe Forest Health System, and I’m here to give you some shoveling techniques for this upcoming winter.
So the most important thing to realize and understand about shoveling snow is what we can hurt, and the most common thing that gets hurt is your lower back. The lower back gets hurt because of bad body mechanics, bad shoveling techniques, using the wrong shovel, trying to remove too much snow at one time.
First of all, I’m going to go with the big shovel because I want to be able to stay tall when I shovel. First thing is, I want to get low, shovel, and bring the shovel back to me, close to my body, and then get rid of the snow. I also want to be pushing snow as far as I can to the place where I’m going to remove the snow, I don’t want to pick and carry it. I also want to switch sides, you know, work this side for a while and then I’ll shovel and switch to the other side and shovel this way. Try not to twist too much, but the most important thing is to stay tall with your body when you shovel the snow.
So another important thing is to make sure you take breaks. Don’t go out there and shovel for an hour, shovel for 15 minutes, take breaks. Important to stretch, think about, we’re always working forward, we’re bending forward, so we want to stretch the opposite way, extend. What you’re doing is promoting and facilitating forward actions, so we want to stretch in the opposite direction.
My last tip is, make sure you pick up yourself some shovel wax that you put all over the face of your shovel, so all that wet, heavy snow will just slip right off, and it’ll be a piece of cake to shovel your snow.
Thanks for joining me today. My name is Mark Tedson, physical therapist. For more information, please visit our website.
