FITNESS FABLES: Stair climbing right up there as top form of exercise – BDlive

AS WITH the best-laid plans of mice and men, the most determined efforts to keep up an exercise routine while travelling can quickly unravel.

Being an exercise addict, my anxiety levels tend to spiral quickly into the stratosphere when I’m away from home for lengthy periods. I worry about whether I’ll find time and space for daily exercise fixes.

My first holiday in Croatia in July was no exception. I was up the stone stairs on the walls of Dubrovnik’s beautiful Old City. I went up them in a flash and came down slowly, giving myself time to take in the exquisite views.

Stair climbing is a perfectly normal, everyday activity many of us do daily without giving it a second thought. It deserves much more thought. It also deserves its reputation as a cheap, accessible, unique form of exercise, one of the best there is.

Doctors, physical therapists, and personal trainers regularly recommend stair climbing, not least because it can be a form of high-intensity, interval training. That’s if you do it right.

…

US physician Ted Naiman is a big fan of brief bursts of high-intensity exercise, such as sprinting. He’s also in excellent shape, with a sculpted six-pack and toned pectoral, thigh, calf, and all-over muscles that make him the best advert for what he preaches about — the benefits of time-efficient short, sharp bursts of exercise.

Naiman says sprinting up stairs is “fantastic, probably one of the greatest sprint-type forms of exercise we have”. It forces you to work against gravity, he says. It boosts cardiovascular fitness, which reduces your risk of dying prematurely from a heart attack or stroke. It’s also weight-bearing, which helps to build and maintain strong bones.

“That’s only if you get the intensity up high enough,” Naiman says.

Stair climbing is officially classified as “vigorous” exercise. Some experts sell it as exercise that “burns more calories per minute than jogging”.

I have a very well-developed antipathy towards the so-called calories-in, calories-out model of weight gain and obesity. It’s unscientific, but that’s for another time. Suffice to say I don’t set much store by calorie-burning as any sort of plus for stair climbing.

…

ALTHOUGH I raced up the stairs in Dubrovnik and got my heart pounding nicely, I balanced it by going down the stairs slowly and wandering off along the walls to catch my breath and take in the magnificent scenery.

I woke the next morning feeling unusual stiffness in my thighs. I hadn’t felt that stiff after a physical workout for years. It came as a surprise, since the stairs weren’t the first I had run up recently.

I travelled to Croatia from London, where I’ve been for the past few months. In London I stay in an old Victorian terraced house with three flights of stairs. I bound up and down them at the slightest provocation.

The Croatian steps were longer and bigger. London personal trainer Lucian Acaru would say there was good reason for my heavy thighs the next day: I didn’t stretch before and after.

Acaru is more muted in praise of stair climbing. He says there’s no one-size-fits-all best form of exercise for humans, because we are diverse beings and simply “the most complex movers on the planet”.

Stair training can be a beneficial adjunct to your conditioning programme, he says. It has potential to improve your power, balance, acceleration, and hip stability. However, you need to consider the enjoyment factor to stay motivated and stick with the programme.

“When stair running, you are doing a balancing act against and activate the whole leg muscles,” Acaru says.

In particular when going up, stair running activates calf and gluteus medius muscles in ways that don’t normally happen when you run on flat or hilly courses.

The best way to do stair climbing, Acaru says, is to “stay on your toes and perform springy movements using arm swing to drive your body upwards”. Stepping down places “eccentric loads on hamstrings, as they activate to decelerate knee extension”.

As with any workout, you should start off with a warm-up and what Acaru calls “dynamic stretching”. Not doing that would likely have accounted for the stiffness of my thighs the morning after.

Dynamic stretching can be done simply by climbing or lunging slowly up two to three stairs at a time while lowering the back knee as much as possible, he says.

…

YOU also need to activate your trunk stabiliser muscles by doing 30 seconds of “mountain climbers” — on your wrists, as in a press-up plank, while bringing knees alternatively towards chest, toes touching at the back only.

“After a five to 10-minute warm-up, run hard up stairs for 20 to 30 seconds, then walk back down and repeat for 10 to 30 minutes. This taps into your anaerobic threshold, as your body struggles to keep up with the high energy demands,” Acaru says.

You should cool down and finish off by walking and performing thorough “static stretches”. Like all forms of exercise, stair climbing has its sets of in-built perils.

“Pain is the body’s signal that something is wrong,” Acaru says. “A burning sensation in muscles due to exertion is perfectly normal. You should stop if you experience sharp pain in the joints, and seek medical advice. You should also be mindful of grip and slippery surfaces.”

And, of course, you should not overdo things. “Start with short intervals and allow for recovery to adapt. Adjust the intensity and duration, according to how your body responds to this stimulus.”

Stair sprinting boosts cardiovascular fitness, which reduces your risk of dying prematurely from a heart attack or stroke. Picture: ISTOCK

AS WITH the best-laid plans of mice and men, the most determined efforts to keep up an exercise routine while travelling can quickly unravel.

Being an exercise addict, my anxiety levels tend to spiral quickly into the stratosphere when I’m away from home for lengthy periods. I worry about whether I’ll find time and space for daily exercise fixes.

My first holiday in Croatia in July was no exception. I was up the stone stairs on the walls of Dubrovnik’s beautiful Old City. I went up them in a flash and came down slowly, giving myself time to take in the exquisite views.

Stair climbing is a perfectly normal, everyday activity many of us do daily without giving it a second thought. It deserves much more thought. It also deserves its reputation as a cheap, accessible, unique form of exercise, one of the best there is.

Doctors, physical therapists, and personal trainers regularly recommend stair climbing, not least because it can be a form of high-intensity, interval training. That’s if you do it right.

…

US physician Ted Naiman is a big fan of brief bursts of high-intensity exercise, such as sprinting. He’s also in excellent shape, with a sculpted six-pack and toned pectoral, thigh, calf, and all-over muscles that make him the best advert for what he preaches about — the benefits of time-efficient short, sharp bursts of exercise.

Naiman says sprinting up stairs is “fantastic, probably one of the greatest sprint-type forms of exercise we have”. It forces you to work against gravity, he says. It boosts cardiovascular fitness, which reduces your risk of dying prematurely from a heart attack or stroke. It’s also weight-bearing, which helps to build and maintain strong bones.

“That’s only if you get the intensity up high enough,” Naiman says.

Stair climbing is officially classified as “vigorous” exercise. Some experts sell it as exercise that “burns more calories per minute than jogging”.

I have a very well-developed antipathy towards the so-called calories-in, calories-out model of weight gain and obesity. It’s unscientific, but that’s for another time. Suffice to say I don’t set much store by calorie-burning as any sort of plus for stair climbing.

…

ALTHOUGH I raced up the stairs in Dubrovnik and got my heart pounding nicely, I balanced it by going down the stairs slowly and wandering off along the walls to catch my breath and take in the magnificent scenery.

I woke the next morning feeling unusual stiffness in my thighs. I hadn’t felt that stiff after a physical workout for years. It came as a surprise, since the stairs weren’t the first I had run up recently.

I travelled to Croatia from London, where I’ve been for the past few months. In London I stay in an old Victorian terraced house with three flights of stairs. I bound up and down them at the slightest provocation.

The Croatian steps were longer and bigger. London personal trainer Lucian Acaru would say there was good reason for my heavy thighs the next day: I didn’t stretch before and after.

Acaru is more muted in praise of stair climbing. He says there’s no one-size-fits-all best form of exercise for humans, because we are diverse beings and simply “the most complex movers on the planet”.

Stair training can be a beneficial adjunct to your conditioning programme, he says. It has potential to improve your power, balance, acceleration, and hip stability. However, you need to consider the enjoyment factor to stay motivated and stick with the programme.

“When stair running, you are doing a balancing act against and activate the whole leg muscles,” Acaru says.

In particular when going up, stair running activates calf and gluteus medius muscles in ways that don’t normally happen when you run on flat or hilly courses.

The best way to do stair climbing, Acaru says, is to “stay on your toes and perform springy movements using arm swing to drive your body upwards”. Stepping down places “eccentric loads on hamstrings, as they activate to decelerate knee extension”.

As with any workout, you should start off with a warm-up and what Acaru calls “dynamic stretching”. Not doing that would likely have accounted for the stiffness of my thighs the morning after.

Dynamic stretching can be done simply by climbing or lunging slowly up two to three stairs at a time while lowering the back knee as much as possible, he says.

…

YOU also need to activate your trunk stabiliser muscles by doing 30 seconds of “mountain climbers” — on your wrists, as in a press-up plank, while bringing knees alternatively towards chest, toes touching at the back only.

“After a five to 10-minute warm-up, run hard up stairs for 20 to 30 seconds, then walk back down and repeat for 10 to 30 minutes. This taps into your anaerobic threshold, as your body struggles to keep up with the high energy demands,” Acaru says.

You should cool down and finish off by walking and performing thorough “static stretches”. Like all forms of exercise, stair climbing has its sets of in-built perils.

“Pain is the body’s signal that something is wrong,” Acaru says. “A burning sensation in muscles due to exertion is perfectly normal. You should stop if you experience sharp pain in the joints, and seek medical advice. You should also be mindful of grip and slippery surfaces.”

And, of course, you should not overdo things. “Start with short intervals and allow for recovery to adapt. Adjust the intensity and duration, according to how your body responds to this stimulus.”

from myhealtyze http://www.myhealtyze.tk/fitness-fables-stair-climbing-right-up-there-as-top-form-of-exercise-bdlive/