Stair Climbing vs. Running and Walking

• Article By: William Sukala, MS, CSCS

Stair climbing v. running and walking

In our weekly fitness Q&A series, William Sukala, MS, CSCS, answers questions about fitness, from whether to eat before exercising to how to treat sore muscles. Q: How does stair climbing compare to running and walking?

A: The vertical movement associated with stair climbing is what separates it from running and walking. You place higher demands on your lower body muscles by virtue of lifting your body weight upward against gravity. Furthermore, your muscles must balance and stabilize during both the climbing and lowering phase.

Running and walking, on the other hand, are also very effective for burning calories, toning your muscles, and activating your cardiovascular system. But unlike stair climbing, you minimize or eliminate the vertical component. Running has a small upward movement and so burns slightly more calories than walking (which has no upward movement).

Even though the calorie burning associated with stair climbing is slightly higher, it really depends on how long you do it and at what intensity. If you're new to exercise, I suggest you ease into stair climbing. Start off with 10 minutes at a slow to moderate pace three times per week and see how your body responds. Then build up from there. Be sure to pay attention to any hip, knee, or ankle pain.

That said, let me add that no single exercise is "better" than another. The best exercise is the one you enjoy and to which you will remain loyal. After all, long-lasting weight loss is a result of consistency!

The Wise Curve

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Stair climbing as an alternative to jogging / running by Relax on February 9, 2009

Stair climbing as an alternative to jogging / running

Running can make us fit, but it has its own disadvantages. It’s inconvenient, if not impossible, to run in cold winter, where thick snow covers your running path and chilly wind makes you shiver non stop. Running is a high impact aerobic exercise that can wear off your shoes pretty quickly and might cause injury and blisters to your legs. Sometimes you don’t even have a proper place to run properly. If you are facing these problems, you might want to consider stair climbing as alternative to running.

Stair climbing is great if you live in or near a tall building with staircase and it’s hard to find a running path nearby. It’s relatively warm compare to jogging in snow during winter. It is low impact, which means your expensive sport shoes won’t wear away quickly, and it builds leg muscles for you to cope with difficult terrains. It burns fat too, just like jogging!

When you climb up the stairs, you are actually working against the gravity. Your body’s energy source (fat and carbohydrate) is converted into heat and potential energy according to E = Mgh (energy burnt is proportional to body mass and height climbed). That’s one great advantage over jogging on level ground, especially for heavy people because the energy converted is proportional to your body mass!

It is less effective to go down the stairs because you are not working against gravity. So it is best to take a lift down the building for the next lap, which is faster and easier than running down the staircase.

You can add weight to make your stair climbing more beneficial by putting heavy stuff (filled water bottles or heavy dumbbells) into your backpack, wear it, and walk your way up the staircase. Stair climbing with weight is good to train your muscle and it burns more energy than without weight.

Studies show that stair climbing is effective for achieving health benefits like burning extra calories and boosting your health and confidence. Find other benefits of stair climbing and the techniques to start safe and effectively, in the article below.

Regular physical activity is important for leading a healthier life. This is true because a moving and agile body helps fight vulnerabilities to diseases and suffering. Stair climbing can be as effective as any other aerobic exercise. Researchers claim that incorporating two minutes of stair climbing in between serious workout sessions can help achieve the similar health benefits.

Stair Climbing Machines vs. Actual Stair Climbing

Stair climbing machines are not regarded as effective as the actual climbing of stairs. This arises because machines are designed to perform a particular leg stroke with a set pattern of motions. On the other hand, actual stair climbing can help your legs to pound and workout more.

How should you Stair Climb on a Machine?

Experts claim that stair climbing machines can help achieve effective results if they are done in the right way. For example, one should always place each foot flat on the platform and should not lean forward while climbing. Avoiding the use of side railings can also exercise the legs and hip better. One could only profit by moving or pumping the arms while climbing on the machine.

Benefits of Stair Climbing

The benefits of stair climbing are listed here below:

• It requires no specific equipment to climb. • Stair climbing is effective for cross training in between workouts. • 30 minutes of stair climbing can be incorporated anytime during the day. • Stair climbing programs help develop stair climbing as a healthy habit in people. • Studies show that the risks of mortality are reduced for people who climbed 55 flights per

week. • One’s aerobic capacity increases which is indicative of a healthier and effective heart,

lungs and blood vessels. • Reduces weight. Studies prove that 2 flights of stairs climbed per day can cause 2.7 kg of

weight loss per year. • Reduces the cholesterol levels and maintains a good level of it in the body. • It can reduce the risk of osteoarthritis that primarily affects the knees and the hip. • Boosts your attitude, mood and confidence. • Increases your stamina and energy to perform activities. • Helps you lead an active and independent life by strengthening your muscle and heart

capacities. • Helps tone the muscles. • Puts less pressure on the joints than running or jogging on concrete surfaces would do.

Guidelines for Stair Climbing

Stair climbing may sound easy but it is certainly not. Moreover, you can derive health benefits from climbing stairs only when you use the right technique to climb. For example, experts recommend that you should not take the support of the railings situated on the sides of the stairs. This will put a pressure on the body to support itself.

Next, you should not bend forward while climbing as it can strain your lower back. Maintaining a straight posture and attitude, therefore, is very important for climbing stairs. In addition, grasping for support can lead to wrist or elbow strain or injury.

The frequency, intensity and time are also very important for taking stair climbing as a serious aerobic exercise. Ensure that you start slowly and steadily and increase the intensity and time to 30 minutes at a very advanced stage.

What is the Ideal Way to Start Stair Climbing?

Any aerobic exercise should be started very slowly and gradually. The ideal form of any exercise or stair climbing should take care of the following:

• 5-15 minutes of warm up exercises are absolutely essential for starting any workout session

• Start climbing with gradual slow steps. • You can alternate between quicker and low step routines and slower and deep step

routines. • Finally, relax and cool yourself down.

Control the intensity of your exercise and do not over-exert yourself in your first and initial attempt. Set a goal for yourself like increasing the pace by one flight of stairs per week.

Safety tips for Stair Climbing

Safety and effective climbing should be your goal for stair climbing. The following safety tips can help you start an effective stair climbing regime:

• Keep people informed about stair climbing whether at office or home. • Always carry water or fluids with you. • Be aware of your knee alignment as it can cause a knee or ankle sprain. • Inspect the stairs before climbing them as an exercise. • Watch out for opening doors at the end of the stairway.

Stair climbing can be fun and effective if you learn to do it with patience and safety. Do not be hasty about achieving the results. Be sincere and practice stair climbing like any other habit you cannot get rid off.

Stair climbing is an excellent exercise to burn calories. Stair climbing alone can burn nearly 500 calories every hour. This also depends upon weight. If you increase the speed and start running the stairs, you would burn around 1000 calories every hour. This is equivalent to running almost

6.5 minute smile. Not only this, you can replace stair climbing with hill climbing during your running program. Besides taking care of the above mentioned tips, one should start the stair climbing with a warm up session. Always remain hydrated. Don’t forget to wear well-fitted shoes which will provide you support. Similarly, at the end of the stair climbing session always cool down. Follow a systematic breathing to derive maximum benefit out of the fitness regime.

Great Workout, Forget the View

Left: Brendan McDermid/Reuters. Right: Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

THE 1,576 STEPS Competitors in the 2009 Empire State Building Run-Up on Feb. 3. The winner climbed 86 floors in 10 minutes 7 seconds

By LIZ ROBBINS Published: February 18, 2009 EIGHTEEN years ago, Ronnie Guie considered buying a treadmill or a stair-climbing machine to stay in shape. Then one day on his lunch hour at Con Edison in Astoria, Queens, two co-workers invited Mr. Guie to take a walk to the top of the 10-floor building. He was breathing heavily by the time he got there, but was hooked: he had found his workout for free.

“For me, it’s a quick fix,” he said.

At 59, Mr. Guie says he still has the same waist size (30 inches) and weight range (150 to 155 pounds) that he did when he was 17, thanks to his five-day-a-week regimen. He climbs the concrete stairs usually 10 times or so in an hour, depending how much time he has. “I get the results out of it — and it’s not easy,” he said. “But I always feel great.”

Stairs are everywhere, of course, but they are rarely embraced as an option for getting into shape. They wait in the stale air wells of high-rises (especially in dense urban centers like New York City), or on stationary machines in the corners of health clubs now inundated by the more popular, but less strenuous, elliptical machines. Many stairwells aren’t even accessible, often because of post-9/11 security concerns. But when they are, or are opened especially for runners going up, they provide a workout that returns maximum value in minimum time, with low impact. And going up is much better for your knees than going down.

“Stair climbing will give you a little more bang for your buck because of the vertical component,” said Cedric Bryant, chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise. Compared to jogging or cycling at a moderate pace without much of an incline, stair climbing, Dr. Bryant said, “will be a bit more challenging and therefore allow you to burn more calories for that same amount of time.”

Once a year, Mr. Guie goes for the ultimate burn. On Feb. 3, he and 318 other climbers competed in the 32nd annual Empire State Building Run-Up, racing up 86 floors and 1,576 stairs. Taking two at a time, Mr. Guie reached the observation deck in 19 minutes 34 seconds. The winner of the invitational race, Thomas Dold, 24, of Germany, finished in 10:07.

The New York Road Runners organizes the invitation-only event to satisfy stir-crazy runners seeking to vary their winter workout on the one day the Empire State Building stairwell is open to foot traffic. A gimmick, perhaps, but also part of an extreme sport trend.

Tower running events, many of which benefit charities, are held in world skyscrapers, from Taipei, Taiwan, to Milan, that open stairwells just for the occasion. This weekend, races will be held in Chicago (“Hustle up the Hancock”) and Las Vegas (“Scale the Strat”), Denver, Des Moines, Grand Rapids, Mich., Omaha and Philadelphia.

“I find it a good cross-training event because it gets the heart and lungs pumping fairly hard,” said Andrew Femia, a New York triathlete who competes with his wife, Jeanette Baer, every other week in one running race or another.

“It’s 14 minutes of pain,” Mr. Femia, 35, said before the Run-Up. Or worse: he finished in 16:49, Ms. Baer in 21:33.

The couple trained by climbing the 13 floors to the top of their Manhattan building and then taking the elevator down — repeating 12 times.

Mr. Femia, a lawyer, said he tried to train in his 54-floor office building in lower Manhattan, but ran into a common obstacle in post-9/11 Manhattan office buildings: some stairwells are inaccessible except in an emergency.

Mr. Femia wrote two letters requesting permission, even offering to waive the building’s liability, but was told stair running was “completely impermissible.”

(A New York Department of State spokesman said no uniform state building code existed to close stairwells, but added that companies make independent decisions based on security.)

Debbie Blankfort and Suzanne Iovino, real estate agents, trained in the 21-story Blue Hill Plaza, Rockland County’s tallest building. Ben Oliner, 27, received permission to run the 22 floors of the Yale Club in Midtown because he teaches squash there.

As the No. 5-ranked United States squash player, Mr. Oliner said the exercise helped him develop strength in his gluteus, quadriceps and calf muscles, which he uses on court lunging and backpedaling for the ball. He won the preliminary division of the Run-Up in 13:15.

Dr. Bryant said that walking up stairs at a moderate intensity should burn 5 calories a minute for a 120-pound person, 7 for a 150-pound person, and 9 for a 180-pound person. Running stairs multiplies the caloric burn and the cardiovascular benefit.

Steven Loy, professor of kinesiology at California State University, Northridge, and a consultant for StairMaster in 1993, said stair climbing could appeal to those who were not competitive. “For people who are overweight and not as well conditioned, they may not be able to run, but they could climb stairs,” Mr. Loy said.

The impact on knees and feet is relatively low, with the pressure equivalent to two times one’s body weight walking up stairs (compared with three to four times when running), Dr. Bryant said. The pounding on the body going downstairs, however, equals six or seven times one’s body weight, he cautioned.

Sheri Harkness, 40, of East Stroudsburg, Pa., took the stairs to jump-start her final chapter in a dramatic weight-loss story. Weighing 282 pounds in 2007, Ms. Harkness devoted herself to a fitness routine and cut her food intake by half. She started working out on a treadmill (at first only able to go 3.1 miles an hour for 15 minutes) and worked up to an hour on the elliptical machine as she lost half her body weight.

Until three months ago, though, she had stayed away from the StairMaster. “I had always seen it in the gym as a little devil,” Ms. Harkness said.

She decided to tackle it to “shock off” the final 40 pounds she wanted to lose. She augmented stair workouts by running the stadium at East Stroudsburg University, and now weighs 140 pounds, with a goal of 15 more pounds in her sights. She ran up the Empire State Building in 23:10 last week — but thought the StairMaster remained the hardest exercise she’s ever done.

Mr. Loy described some drawbacks to tower running. “The lactic acid production is high,” he said. “And the higher you go, the worse you feel.”

“Personally,” he added, “It doesn’t appeal.”

Ronnie Guie has heard that before when recruiting others to take the stairs for a workout. “Believe me, I have tried,” he said. “They don’t have the discipline.”

Stair climbing Exercise- High calorie & fat burn Running is a great exercise, but many people who don’t like to run for multiple reasons: its too hot, its boring, don’t have a good place to run, too polluted to run outside, running is not for me (even though they haven’t tried it after they turned 8).. and our favourite, ‘I do not like to sweat’.

So, try stair climbing as an exercise. Stairs are easy to access. Most of us live in cities with plenty of high rises around us. Even a 5-6 story building is a good place to start, or a stadium. Our homes, offices, malls all have stairs. So, there are plenty of opportunity to use them.

NY Empire State Building Run Up (Rich Burgunder @ flickr)

Stair Climbing as an exercise: Walk up the stairs briskly. Take the elevator down and repeat. If you’re in good physical shape, try running them. When you can’t run anymore, keep a brisk pace walking up those stairs. Its one of the best cardio exercises and its a great muscle builder. Running stairs or even climbing them briskly is a serious workout. Gets your heart pumping and builds those ignored leg muscles- the calves, quads, hamstrings and even the glutes. Stair climbing gives you great calves to show off your hot legs in shorts or a skirt and gives you a great butt. We all love a good butt

Stair Climbing a complete fat scorching exercise and calorie burning exercise. Its short and intense- burns fat, builds muscle.

Even if you enjoy running, try stair climbing for cross training. Since it really pushes you leg muscles, it helps to build them and improve speed.

Stair climbing sounds daunting- try going up a couple of floors. Its not easy to start, but keep at it. When you see yourself getting hotter, you won’t need motivation from anyone else!