Exercise Intensities of Gardening Tasks As a Physical Activity in Children and Adults by using Mets

For health benefits, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine suggested physical activity recommendation based on many research evidences. In adults, at least 30 min of moderate intensity physical activity and at least 60 min of moderate to high intensity physical activity for children on the most days of the week are recommended. To utilize gardening as a physical activity for health benefits, there is limited information regarding metabolic equivalents for various gardening tasks especially in children and adults. Therefore, this study was to investigate the metabolic costs of 10 gardening tasks in children and adults. Fifteen Korean children aged 13 to 14 years and 15 Korean adults in the twenties in the community of Cheongju, South Korea were volunteered in this study. All participants were conducted a total of 10 gardening tasks such as digging, raking, hand weeding, mulching, transplanting plants, harvesting, watering, etc. in a community garden, Cheongju, South Korea that was previously prepared for this study. A 5-min for each gardening task and a 5-min for resting time between each activity were provided. The participants wore a portable calorimetric monitoring system (Cosmed K4b²) with radiotelemetry (Polar T 31) to measure oxygen uptake and heart rate. As the results, the gardening tasks performed by the children and adults in this study were moderate to high intensity physical activities. Gardening program with moderate to high intensity can be expected to lead the same health benefits from other types of typical physical activities in children and adults.