We are in the process of upgrading our website. Some links may not working right now.

Expert shovelling tips

This tips were extracted from Ottawa Citizen .

Tips on how to do it right — and injury-free.

At the University of Western Ontario, Rob Werstine studies bad things that happen to people who shovel snow the wrong way, and teaches about it at the School of Physiotherapy. He also treats patients in a sports injury clinic. And he has tips.

  • "The Number One thing," he says: "We don’t advocate tossing the stuff." Instead, we should just push snow on a wide scooper.

    Yes, well, that’s a problem in Ottawa, where the piles just go straight up.

  • "Geez," he says. "Okay, then some other things we can talk about are the ergonomic shovels with the bent shaft.

    "It allows you to keep the snow closer to your centre of gravity. Some initial studies have shown it puts less strain on the back."

  • Beyond that, he suggests positioning your hands about 30 to 45 centimetres apart. Gripping too close to the end of the handle allows the heavy snow to exert a lot of leverage against you. And hands reaching too far down the shaft don’t allow the person to exert enough leverage when throwing snow. "You don’t have a chance to create a lot of momentum if your hand is right down near the end of the shovel."

    Now, lifting and throwing is where bad things happen.

  • Bend the knees to lift, he says. That way, it’s the glute and quad muscles — the biggest in the body — that are lifting. "You can move significantly more load using those muscles than any of your arm muscles."
  • The next trick is a matter of angles. Mr. Werstine wants you to stand so the snow is 45 degrees away from a point right in front of you. In other words, it’s ahead of you and to the left or right.

    Lift that, he says, and throw it in that same direction, so the shovel points always the same direction.

    "We know from biomechanical studies in the lab that when you flex — bend forward with your back — and you rotate or twist, that is the most common cause for a back injury: bending and rotating. If you can get rid of the rotation and just bend, you reduce your chance of injury."

    Do this the wrong way, he cautions, "and it’s probably a matter of when, not if, you will injure it."

    Backs give little warning before an injury, which usually happens to a disc near one of the bottom two vertebrae in people 35 to 55 years old. That’s usually around belt level, depending on your fashion preference.

    "It’s like a paper clip. You bend the paper clip back and forth, back and forth … and one day you do the same thing you’ve always done, and it goes on you. About 70 per cent of back injuries are just this repetitive strain."

    Many people don’t feel pain until the next morning.

  • Warm up by walking, he suggests — NOT by bending forward.

    "Warming up by bending will just pre-irritate your back before you go out and shovel. If you have to do a lot of work by bending, then we suggest you warm up by bending over backwards.

    "Walking is an excellent warmup for just about any activity. It helps with nutrition and lubrication of the back. It increases blood flow to the muscles, which also makes them a little more pliable — more likely to stretch, less likely to tear."

  • He still suggests pushing snow wherever possible. "As soon as you stop lifting the snow off the ground, you decrease your chance of injury significantly."