[mihai.diac]

Hi,

I’m a long time lurker and TFNA fan, looking to tap into the collective experience and individual expertise as I’m planning to become more systematic in my training in the following years.

Something I’ve been pondering about is the impact of regular daily activities in overall fitness.

For example, I only use stairs in my office building, never the elevator. Over a 10h day, I routinely get to 50 and even 100 stories, but they are 5-10 at a time, not enough to break a sweat even.

Besides lubricating the joints and being better than sitting at the desk all day, is this useful in any way for improving fitness? Is there a way to make them more beneficial?

Thanks,
Mihai

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on January 27, 2018 at 9:15 pm #7774

Mihai:

Good for you for taking the stairs. This is a healthy life choice. Up to a point will improve a person’s fitness. But unless the exercise load is increased, your body will adapt to that level of stair climbing stress and you will not improve more. A gradual progression in training load is what separates “training” form “exercise”. While climbing 100 flights of stairs is a lot of exercise and will help you develop and maintain a good base level of fitness it will not be the ideal way to maximize your fitness gains.

Scott

[mihai.diac]

mihai.diac on January 29, 2018 at 7:29 am #7796

Thanks Scott.

I think I’ve phrased my initial post incompletely. I also run every couple of days (5-6 years since doing trail marathons, about 40K/week now in th winter), started incorporating strength for ice and multi-pitch classic routes (climbing used to be the only training). So long time active, not so long time systematic about my training.

1. Is there a way to reap more for these “once every hour” or so stairs exercises? More benefit in doing them at high intensity or low intensity?

2. The ideal way would probably be to group them at noon in one continuous push? I could probably go for 500m+. It would make logistics a bit more complicated, but it can be done (aka we have showers :D).

Thanks!
Mihai