Training

Stairs versus elevator

April 15, 2010
By Alex Hutchinson

This weekend, about 7,000 people will tackle the 1,776 steps of the CN Tower in support of the World Wildlife Fund. Meanwhile, in Calgary, people will be climbing the Calgary Tower in support of the Alberta Wilderness Association. Also this weekend in Germany, there’s the Mt. Everest Stair Marathon, in which competitors go up and down a 397-step staircase 100 times, climbing the equivalent of sea level to the top of Everest and covering the distance of two marathons along the way.

Seriously.

So, all in all, it seemed like a good time to take a look at research into the health benefits of stair climbing for this week’s Jockology column. If you choose the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator a few times a day, does it really make any difference to your health?

Researchers in Ireland have been studying the benefits of dashing up the stairs periodically over the course of a workday, and they’ve observed surprising fitness gains.

“I think the key thing here,” says Colin Boreham, a professor at the University College Dublin Institute for Sport and Health, “is that stair-climbing is one of the few everyday activities at a moderate to high intensity that one can do surreptitiously without having to change, use special equipment or look foolish.” [read the rest of the column...]

As an aside, that’s the Colin Boreham who once held the British high-jump record and represented Britain in the 1984 Olympics as a decathlete alongside Daley Thompson.