Adding stairs to your workout or as part of a quick movement break for 10 minutes is beneficial in so many ways. It can take your walk around the house or workplace from blah to yeah!  You can boost your endurance, heart rate, and do more in less time by adding stairs.  If you are starting or restarting, it can take a 10-minute workout to the next level without adding more time. You can also add stairs to any workout as an interval. For example, you are walking around your home or workplace to get your activity in, and each lap you take, add in 1 flight of stairs, going up and down to a cardio boosting interval into your walk. It can be a great way to increase the calorie burn and heart rate, already having built in cool downs using the regular pace of your walk.

In a March 11th, 2013 article by the Wall Street Journal titled Hard Math: Adding Up Just How Little We Actually Move, Sumathi Reddy the author, quoted a professor in the department of kinesiology, recreation and sport studies at the University of Tennessee as saying that “climbing a flight of stairs—roughly 10 steps—is equivalent to taking 38 steps on level ground.” (other articles I have read list 13-16 steps as a flight). The point is, stairs use more energy that walking on a flat surface, no brainer, your cardiovascular system feels it, you may call it the huff and puff after a few flights.

Compared with walking or running on level ground, walking, or running up a flight of stairs places more load on the muscles in your lower half, namely your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and calves. That’s because as you ascend a staircase, gravity is trying to pull you back down, and your muscles must work extra hard to overcome that resistance. It’s the same reason running, hiking, or biking up a hill feels more intense—and jacks up your heart rate more—than covering the same distance on a flat trail, because it is more taxing on your body. The CDC has a great chart on physical activity by age, click here to download it or read and learn more. You can also learn about physical activity basics in another article from the CDC.

Using a set of steps in your home, apartment building, workplace or an uncrowded public area for a stair workout can be a great way to combine total-body strengthening, cardio, balance, and coordination. You can do it at home if you have access to stairs, you don’t need any additional equipment. All you need is your bodyweight.

Regular stair climbing can lower resting heart rates and improves balance, according to a 2014 study. And each trip up and down the stairs helps shape and tone different muscles in your legs and lower body. Overall, being able to climb stairs is a good marker of general health. Dr. Harvey Simon, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said it well in a column for the New York Times called Stairs as Fitness Tool? By Harvey B. Simon, MD. June 15, 2009 “Short bursts of high-intensity stair climbing are a time-efficient way to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and lipid profile, especially among those unable to achieve the current CDC physical activity requirements and recommendations.  In the study cited below, Lu Qi, MD, PhD, who is a  professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said “The study provides evidence supporting stair climbing as a potential convenient and time-efficient exercise for prevention of cardiovascular disease.” This was from an article by VeryWell Health called Here's How Many Stairs You Should Climb a Day for a Healthy Heart by  Alyssa Hui.  

So, what’s the point? 

While the study above found that regularly climbing five flights of stairs a day was linked to a lower risk of some kinds of heart disease, other factors like lifestyle and diet are also part of the equation.

“This study looked at stair climbing as a singular factor, but when thinking about heart health, you must consider the whole person,” said  Vignesh Raghunath, MD, a cardiologist with Atlantic Medical Group, Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey .  He also stated in the article cited above by VeryWell Health “Though being more active is certainly beneficial, it is important to also take into account other factors like what you are eating, your weight, environment, and genetic predisposition to heart disease.”

I hope this encourages you to take the stairs at least once a day. And if you cannot do stairs safely, stand by a counter and march in place with high knees after a lap around the house.

Sources:

1.      American Heart Association. Cardiovascular diseases affect nearly half of American adults, statistics show.

2.      Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease facts.

3.      Song Z, Wan L, Wang W, et al. Daily stair climbing, disease susceptibility, and risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease: A prospective cohort study. Atherosclerosis. Published online September 16, 2023. doi:10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2023.117300

4.      World Health Organization. The top 10 causes of death.

5.      Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Leading causes of death.

6.      New York Times, Stairs as Fitness Tool? By Harvey B. Simon, M.D. JUNE 15, 2009 2:13 PM

7.      Self, A Sweaty Stair Workout That Takes Just 20 Minutes It might become your new favorite kind of cardio. By Jenny McCoy

July 11, 2020

8.      VeryWell Health, Here’s How Many Stairs You Should Climb a Day For a Healthy Heart.

9.      ApartmentTherapy.com, Is Climbing the Stairs Every Day Actually a Good Workout? By Taryn Willford. Updated May 3, 2019.