>
Imagine my sadness when, less than three months before my Peruvian trek, I learned from seasoned Inca Trail hikers that the hardest part of the four-day journey is climbing those huge cobbled steps that make up much of the trail and that she wished they focused on stair training before their very first walk.
As a Los Angeleno, I have been an experienced hiker for many years. After all, we are a city of walkers. That’s what we do here. I have hiked the surrounding mountain ranges in Southern California, the Sierra Nevada in the north, the high sand dunes in the Mojave Desert, and the northern and southern coastal areas along the California coast.
But stairs?! More specifically, several miles from them and at over 9,000 feet in elevation…well, they’re a completely different matter and something I knew I wasn’t prepared for. At least with hiking you get some rest in areas where the trail flattens out. Climbing stairs for miles means it’s a perpetual uphill. This is what happens when you commit to something before actually doing research!
With less than two months of prep time, no gym membership to my name, and no budget to spend on my own step machine—all in an effort to get a cheaper workout—I scrambled to find another way to work out. Fortunately, Los Angeles, being a city of hills, has 450 or more steps in the neighborhoods, and one of them just happens to be a quick 10 minute climb up the hill from my apartment.
So I strapped my smartwatch onto my wrist, put on my favorite workout headphones, blasted Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on repeat, and did some stair training. Every day for thirty days, I climbed this hidden 244-step staircase, doing three sets (of the whole thing) first, then ramping it up to five sets. That meant I was climbing a modest total of 1,220 steps (plus walking down 1,220 steps) each day by the end of my first week.
This is what that did to my body.
My glutes and quads are rock hard
Not literally of course. However, I’ve developed stronger quad muscles that I didn’t even know I had, despite all the walking I’ve done and my usual lunge and squat workouts. That, in turn, helped improve my lower body strength and make me a stronger walker, which was my intended goal in the first place.
All that stair training also had an unintended but very welcome consequence: my butt is better than ever. Climbing stairs is known to strengthen your glutes (opens in new tab), which is exactly what happened to mine. And it did it in a shorter amount of time than if I just did my glutes on the mat.
My core is stronger than ever
Women’s health (opens in new tab) reports that a stair workout “tightens your core muscles like crazy,” and I can definitely confirm this claim, based on my experience. Because I was not only going uphill, but also had to steady myself so I didn’t stumble back down, my core was hard at work, even though I didn’t feel like I was working them.
And because I strengthened my core muscles, it also helped me burn all that belly fat I’ve accumulated during the pandemic. Climbing stairs in general is a great way to lose weight, which I’ll get to later, but the fact that it strengthens your core can definitely have a noticeable impact on that muffin top.
I have a healthier heart
A study (opens in new tab) published in the National Library of Medicine states that regular stair climbing “has been shown to positively improve an important component of health-related fitness, namely cardiorespiratory fitness.” A similar study (opens in new tab) has also found that climbing at home can result in “improvements in all serum lipids and body composition, as well as reductions in fasting glucose.”
To be clear, I did not consult a medical professional before and after my 30-day stair workout to determine my cardiovascular health. What I can say is that when I started my journey it was a bit tough. I tracked my activity through my Apple Watch’s stair workout, and during my first week, my heart rate reached 75 beats per minute near the top of the stairs. I also logged an average of 25 minutes to complete three sets because I was slower and had to rest between sets to slow my heart rate.
By my third and fourth week, my rising heart rate hovered around 62 bpm to 66 bpm, according to my smartwatch. I also climbed much faster and no longer needed breaks between sets, so I logged an average of 20 minutes to complete five sets!
No more knee pain
Climbing stairs is no joke. A stair workout offers a surprising wealth of benefits, but for many of us, climbing even just three flights of stairs can give us the wind in our sails. But because it’s a “low-impact” workout, it’s actually kinder to your body — more specifically, your knees, legs, and ankles — than, say, running.
I’ve even noticed that my knees, shins, and ankles, which sometimes hurt when I go for a run, weren’t sore during my 30-day stint on those steps. That also has a lot to do with the fact that my stronger quad muscles help protect my knees.
I lost a lot of weight in the right places
According to the American Council on Exercise (opens in new tab) calorie calculator, a 120-pound person can burn about 215 calories during a 30-minute stair workout. Losing those extra pounds wasn’t my priority, so I wasn’t exactly counting calories during my 30-day stair workout. I did see a huge difference in my body.
In addition to losing my extra belly fat and getting a better shaped butt, my arms got thinner, my legs slimmer and my face much more defined. I also felt a lot lighter, which made me feel good again. And because I used up all that extra energy I normally have, I also slept better, which helped my overall health.