How many calories you burn depends on your weight, but you can expect to blast through 530 to 835 per hour going upstairs (so around 90-140 calories for a 10-minute stair session).
Stair climbing engages your largest muscle groups step after step, maximising the calorie burn. In fact, stair climbing burns 23 per cent more calories than running, 250 per cent more than swimming, 63 per cent more than cycling and 400 per cent more than walking at 3.22km/h.
“The steeper the stairs are, the more energy you’ll burn,” says Anthony Fletcher, biomechanics coach and co-founder of running app Onetrack.
You can take the steps as fast – or slow – as you like and still see benefits.
“Climbing stairs is great because you can take each step slowly but still burn lots of calories,” says Fletcher. “That’s because the muscles are contracting and shortening under tension as they push the floor away. This automatically burns more energy than eccentric contractions when the muscles lengthen, such as when you’re running.
“It means that the effort can be quite high even though we don’t feel like we’re going very fast.”
You’ll burn around three times as many calories going upstairs as you will going down, but you could burn more fat on the descent. Interestingly, the Birmingham University study found that those who were assigned descending stairs, rather than ascending, lost more abdominal fat.
While climbing stairs or hills burns more calories while you are doing it, going down burns more calories after the event.
Easy on the knees
Unlike jogging, you don’t need to go to the gym or the park to climb stairs. The University of Birmingham researchers, who split their group into those who did stair climbing at the gym and those who did it at home, concluded that “home-based climbing was at least as effective as an equivalent gym-based routine”.
It’s also good news for those with joint issues: climbing stairs is easier on the knees and hips than running. “There’s less shock through the body,” Fletcher says. “This means that you can recover quicker and therefore we can either push a little harder or do it more regularly.”
It’s also something we can do in older age: a Harvard Health Alumni study followed men aged 60-70 who were climbing at least 10 flights of stairs a week (and up to 35 flights) and found that stair climbing was associated with a lower risk of mortality from any causes.
Extreme stair climbing
I put this to the test in a serious way by taking part in the annual Empire State Building Run Up event earlier this month – literally running up 86 flights of stairs to the top of the fourth-tallest building in New York (anyone can do it and places are assigned by ballot). Unlike training for the London Marathon in April – I like to throw in big fitness challenges to keep me motivated – my training was less structured. I just made sure to run up any stairs that I saw, be it the ones in my house or those at Tube stations or in department stores.
Frankly, I was nervous that I hadn’t done enough, but my ad-hoc training approach paid off: I noticed that my cardio fitness increased very rapidly, and I completed the event – all 1576 stairs – in 20 minutes. My Apple Watch recorded that I’d burnt 356 calories and, pleasingly, my jeans feel a bit looser after training for the challenge.
How to avoid injuries
There are some people with significant joint pain who will find stair climbing a struggle. But, Fletcher says, don’t let a small amount of discomfort put you off: “impact shouldn’t be avoided unless something is painful on impact”. Seek a doctor’s advice if you’re unsure.
Anyone doing a vigorous stair session needs to cool down properly to avoid injury. Yoga stretches are good to cool down and increase your flexibility, according to Naomi Annand, founder of Yoga on the Lane, which runs online and in-person classes.
“Step climbing involves using hip flexion, so I’d recommend low lunges and also a moon salute, where you move from mountain pose, with your arms above your head, before slowly bending down and coming into downward dog [where you have your feet at the back of your mat, your hands at the front of your mat and your hips raised in the air]”, Annand says. “That helps to bring some stretch to the backs of the legs.”
