While it is tempting to take the lift or escalator rather than use the stairs, even scaling just a few flights a day could give your health and mind a boost.
As expeditions go, it was a gruelling one. In just under 23 hours on 3 September 2021, Sean Greasley climbed and descended 8,849 m (29,032ft) – a distance that would have taken him to the top of the highest mountain on Earth. By the end, he was dripping in sweat and could barely walk. And he did it all in the relative comfort of his own home.
Greasley holds the world record for the fastest time to ascend and descend the same height as Mount Everest on stairs, achieving it in 22 hours, 57 minutes and two seconds.
While Greasley achieved this on the staircase at his home in Las Vegas, there are others who take stair climbing to other extremes. Tower running, for example, involves racing up enormous flights of stairs inside iconic buildings and skyscrapers. There is even a Tower Running Association and an official tower running global ranking for the elite athletes dedicated to this unusual sport.
Most of us are unlikely to achieve such giddy heights, yet even climbing a few flights of stairs in our daily lives might be something to aspire to. According to research, climbing stairs can have surprising benefits for both your physical health and your brain without needing to hurtle up two steps at a time or break records.
Climbing stairs has been found to improve balance and reduce the risk of falling for older people and improve their lower body strength. Other studies also find that climbing a couple of flights of stairs can positively affect our cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, memory, and potentially creative thinking.
As a “low impact” form of exercise, even short bursts of stair climbing can help improve cardiorespiratory fitness and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The improvements in aerobic fitness from climbing stairs at home can even be equivalent to those gained using stair machines at the gym.
It’s this everyday simplicity that is stair-climbing’s greatest strength. Stairs are everywhere – we encounter them at home, at work and in public. Choosing to take the stairs instead of hopping on an escalator or riding in a lift provides us with an incidental form of exercise that can have an outsized impact on our health.
“It’s an exercise that nearly everybody can perform because they have access, and they do it on the daily basis,” says Alexis Marcotte-Chenard, a postdoctoral research fellow in heart, lung and vascular health at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada.
Marcotte-Chenard has been researching how to use exercise and nutrition to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, including the effects of “exercise snacks” – brief, spaced-out periods of vigorous activity lasting one minute or less that are performed throughout the day. Stair climbing, he says, is a promising exercise snack as it can be easily adjusted in difficulty by varying pace and requires no complex equipment or cost.
“When you do exercise snacks, you don’t need any fancy equipment, you can just use your own body, you can use stairs,” says Marcotte-Chenard. “And if you’re doing physical activity throughout the day, you don’t have to dedicate an hour for your workout.”
Research into exercise snacks, also nicknamed “snacktivity,” or “VILPA” (vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity), is on the rise as researchers search for the best exercise solution to combat sedentary habits and physical inactivity which currently puts approximately 1.8 billion adults worldwide at risk of disease.
But what makes stairs such an effective physical workout?
First, climbing stairs is an easy way to elevate your heart rate – an important part of getting physiological benefits. But there are unique benefits of stair-climbing compared to other forms of exercise. (BBC)
Why climbing the stairs can be good for your body and brain
