Snow was piled high around Ken Fleit’s Silver Spring, Md., home during the 2010 storm that came to be known as Snowmageddon. Banks of it towered on either side of his driveway. He had run out of places to put it as he shoveled hour after hour. He started flinging the stuff over his shoulders when he felt a sharp pain in his neck.

“It felt like a dagger,” Fleit said, “then an electric pain down my arm. I am sure it was from overall fatigue and a breakdown of (of my shoveling) technique.”

Turns out that a small section of disk in his neck had torn off and lodged itself on a nerve. Fleit, a 55-year-old physical therapist, underwent surgery to remove the wayward piece.

He said that what happened to him shoveling is unusual and could also have occurred while doing something else. But his is a cautionary tale, a reminder that shoveling snow – or shoveling anything else, for that matter – should not be approached casually.

“The analogy I like to give people is that of the weekend warrior,” said Mehul J. Desai, director of pain medicine and non-operative spine services at George Washington University Hospital’s outpatient rehabilitation center in the District of Columbia.

About 11,500 Americans a year check into emergency rooms for injuries suffered while shoveling snow, according to a 17-year study by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Two-thirds of them are men. Injuries range from minor strained muscles to hits on the head with a shovel to life-threatening heart problems.

If you do feel a twinge in your back or shoulder, it could be as “innocent as a strain,” Desai said. “Injuries run the gambit, from that to a slipped disk.”

Lower backs are the most vulnerable, said David Levin, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Rockville, Md. The muscles that span the spine and help with balance and support often are the soft tissue strained as people lift and twist shovels full of snow, Levin explained. The strain is much like a sprained ankle and heals relatively easily.

A herniated, or slipped, disk is more serious and could be caused by twisting while hoisting snow, Levin said. A damaged disk can press on a nerve, causing pain or tingling from your buttocks to your legs.

“If you have burning pain, tingling in your feet and buttocks, those could be warning signs that there are more major problems,” Desai said. “Or if you have numbness and weakness in your legs, a disk may be injured. That situation needs to be formally evaluated by a physician.”

The key to avoiding any of this, medical experts say, is to pace yourself and tackle shoveling as you would any rigorous exercise: Don’t overdo it the first time out the door. And as with any sport or exercise routine, there are best practices; in the case of shoveling, they include what to wear, how to stand, how to grip the shovel, how to move the snow and what equipment to use. These all can make a difference.

The proper warm-up

•Before you even step outside, warm up your muscles by stretching and performing such simple exercises as heel lifts, leg lifts and leg circles.

The proper stance

•Keep your feet as wide apart as your shoulders “for a good base of support,” Fleit said.

•Grip the shovel with one hand on the top at the handle and the other halfway down the shaft. And do not lean out over your shovel, which puts too much pressure on your back, Levin said.

•Bend your knees, not your back, to scoop up the snow.

The art of shoveling

•Take small loads and walk it to where you want the snow to go. Don’t throw it. When you start bending and twisting with your back, you risk injury, Desai said.

•Don’t wait until the snow stops and try to clear it all at once.

•Take breaks. Shovel for no more than 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

When you start perspiring, that is a good time to rest, Desai said. “When you get tired, you start losing your form.”

•Hire strong neighborhood teenagers to help.

When to stop

•If you feel a twinge in your back or shoulder, Desai said, stop shoveling.

•About 7 percent of patients treated at hospital emergency rooms for shoveling-related incidents had cardiac problems, according to a 2011 study.

The American Heart Association offers these tips to protect your heart while shoveling:

•Take breaks so as not to overstress your heart.

•Eat lightly before and after shoveling. A large meal may strain your heart.

•Refrain from alcohol before and after shoveling. Alcohol may make you feel warm when you are not, and it may dull your attention to how your body feels.

•If you have a medical condition or don’t exercise regularly, ask your doctor beforehand whether it’s OK to shovel this winter.

•Don’t underestimate the chance of getting hypothermia. Heart failure causes most deaths in hypothermia. When the body loses heat more quickly than it can generate it, your circulation, respiratory and nervous systems become sluggish, and that can cause irregular heartbeats, which can be fatal in these circumstances.