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By Judith Cline Dip P&OT, MCPA
Ergonomic Tools and Tricks Ergonomics has finally found the gardener. Ergonomics is a nice word that roots from Greek. Erg or ergon is a unit of work or energy; therefore ergonomics should be the science of work. It has come to mean the science of providing good tools and good work places for workers. That’s what keeps English so interesting. Ergonomic
tools or work places now mean good, body friendly design.
Those good designs started in the commercial horticultural field and are
now available for the home or hobby gardener. One of my personal favorites is the pruner (bypass) with a rolling handle for the finger part of the grip. They have good padding on the finger portion, a pleasant and comfortable angle to both handles and need only a gentle grip to cut smoothly. They can also be sharpened. Avoid any cutting tool that cannot be properly honed. Dull blades make for very hard work. Side handles that attach to the long handles of shovels, rakes and hoes are now available in a variety of designs. They all change the way that the handle can be gripped, allowing the wrists to stay in a close to neutral position and decreasing the need for a heavy grip during use.
A simple way of making all our gardening tools more ergonomically correct is to sharpen the cutting edges and lubricate the moving parts. Both of these maintenance chores will decrease the work and incidentally do a better job of whatever garden task we take on. Judy Cline is a registered physiotherapist who is also an avid gardener. She is the proprietor of Cline Physiotherapy Associates, a clinical treatment facility and of Health Unlimited, an ergonomic consulting business. Both are located in St. Catharines, Ontario.
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Current Issue
Most
of these add on handles can be moved easily from one tool to another, although I
suspect most of us would rather have one on each of our commonly used tools.