Summer is just around the corner, which means shorts, swimsuit and dress season is, too. With the beautiful weather outside, don’t stay stuck inside the sweaty gym. Find a staircase to prepare yourself for one of the most intense stair workouts. Fair warning, if you hate stairs already, you will really hate them after this workout.
Start by jogging up and down the stairs to get your muscles warmed up and your blood flowing and then spend a few minutes stretching your legs before you begin your workout.
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1. Sprints
Up the stairs one at a time and jog back down to help bring down your heart rate. Repeat this five to seven times.
2. More intense sprints
Up the stairs two at a time and job back down to help bring down your heart rate. Repeat this five to seven times.
3. Lunges
You can do these one of two ways. You can lunge horizontally on each stair until you reach the top or you can lunge vertically skipping a stair in between. Either way, be sure that your back knee drops down low, creating a 90-degree angle. Repeat four to six times.
4. Calf Raises
Stand on the edge of each step, lower your heels toward the step beneath you and then extend on to your tiptoes. You can either walk up to the next step or jump to the next one. Aim for 50-100 calf raises.
5. Squat Jumps
Start by squatting on the first step and then jumping onto the next step and immediately going into a squat. Be sure to squat all the way down and continue until you reach the top of the stairs. Repeat five to seven times.
6. Jumps
Try to jump up as many steps as you can (two, three, four) at a time until you reach the top. Repeat three to four times.
7. Pyramid Stairs
If your staircase has flights, you can easily divide it that way. If your staircase has no flights you can divide them by numbers. Say you have 30 stairs; you could divide them into six flights of five stairs each. For this part of the workout, you will sprint up the first flight of stairs and then jog down. Then, sprint up to the second flight and down to the bottom and so on until you reach the top flight. Repeat this two to three times.
If you would like this to be a leg workout, then focus on the above exercises. However, you can turn this into a full body workout with the exercises below.
8. Tricep dips
You can do tricep dips off of the bottom step and stay on that step until you complete your set, or you can sprint up a flight of stairs after you finish a set.
9. Planks
Hold a plank position for 30 seconds and repeat as many times as you would like.
10. Pushups
Start at the bottom of the stairs and do a set of pushups off of that stair. After you finish your set, move your hands up to the next stair and legs up the next step and complete another set. Repeat until you reach the top of the staircase.
You can make this workout even more challenging by wearing ankle weights or holding light dumbbells while running up the stairs. Additionally, you can add sit-ups, crunches, side planks, scissors and other ab exercises throughout your stairs work out.
Happy stair climbing!
