Why a Staircase in the House Doesn’t Mean Built-in Exercise
You do not have a built-in exercise regimen just because you use your home’s staircase to get from one floor to another.
This is transportation, not real exercise in the true sense.
Before I proceed with this surprise, since many people do believe that casual use of their home’s staircase counts as exercise, I must point out that this article is about just that: casual or transportation use of the stairs, as in going up the staircase to answer the call of your tween.
It is NOT about what would indeed count as real exercise:
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- Running up and down the steps nonstop for at least five minutes
- Climbing the steps two at a time and trotting down nonstop for at least five minutes
- Bunny hopping up the steps and trotting down nonstop for at least five minutes
- Walking up and down the steps while holding dumbbells for at least five minutes.
These four examples are deliberate, continuous actions that will tax the body.
That’s a whole new article. What I’m discussing here is the intermittent, incidental use of your staircase to get from one floor to another in your house.
Do not count that as exercise, as it lasts only about eight seconds. In other articles of mine, I praise the virtues of burst training: one-minute bursts of intense movement scattered throughout the day.
Burst training can definitely include deliberate, willful use of a staircase for the bursts: bounding up the steps as fast as possible, up and down, up and down, up and down, then up — to retrieve your purse.
But there is no comparison to eight seconds of casual walking up a flight of stairs to 60 seconds of any of the following: squat jumps, lunge jumps, pike jumps, burpees, pushups, side-to-side jumps, ball-wall squats, stool jumps, kicking, medicine ball movements, etc.
Burpee. Taco Fleur/CreativeCommons
And few people are “up and down the stairs a hundred times a day.” Take a tally and you’ll likely see the total by nightfall is far less than what you’ve always thought.
The staircase is a great tool in the house for exercise sessions, as described above.
At the conclusion of this article is a video of an actual staircase workout (using a short staircase). The exercises begin at 1:45.
Again, casual use of your staircase does not excuse you from setting aside specific time slots for exercise that makes you pant.
If you’re panting at the end of a casual eight or 10 second climb, you’re in poor shape.
You need time slots for continuous exercise that taxes the body, that forces your body to adapt, that forces your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal system to become more efficient.
Eight or 10 seconds here and there throughout the day won’t cut it.
However, if you’re in poor shape or “out of shape” and commit to dashing, as fast as safely possible, up the staircase whenever you casually use it, this will have a training effect.
But this training effect, because it lasts only several seconds, and because it has mechanical limitations, will go only so far.
You’ll reach a point where you’ll stop progressing, because it’s all over in only seconds, and again, there are mechanical limitations — you can only go so fast up the staircase, even if you have the potential to sprint down the street very fast.
You can progress to dashing up two steps at a time, but this, too, has its limits, and can also put you at risk for stumbling sooner or later.
I encourage you to safely dash up the steps for all casual use, but you still must set aside a time slot reserved for continuous exercise.
“Continuous” includes sessions of high intensity interval training. HIIT is continuous in the sense that the time slot is solely committed to this, even though the actual exertional time may be only four minutes out of a 30 minute time allotment.
Millions of people have a staircase in their home. Many of these women and men are totally out of shape.
The presence of a staircase in your house does not automatically make you physically fit.
It does not subtract from the daily (or at least, almost daily) exertional exercise that you should be getting.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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Can a Dance Class Really Get Rid of Thunder Thigh Fat?
If you have the classic thunder thighs, don’t count on mere dance classes to slash off this unsightly fat; there are much better ways to accomplish this!
Unfortunately, the dancing approach is one that many people take for stripping off fat, and one that may even be suggested by some fitness professionals.
I’m not one of them if the goal is to “get rid of” big thighs. Dance classes are not at the top of the list for this goal.
Dance fitness classes don’t focus on working thighs.
There are some muscles that may get worked hard during dance fitness classes, but the thighs simply don’t.
The upper body might get a decent workout, the midsection might be worked some as well, and the cardiovascular system can definitely benefit, but all these areas of the body are actively engaged and the thighs aren’t.
There might be a few dance aerobics moves that work the thighs for a bit, but that’s just not enough exercise to slash the fat in thunder thighs.
Getting rid of thunder thighs requires more than dance fitness.
Getting rid of thunder thighs requires working the quads and the hamstrings.
For effectiveness, this should be done using weighted exercises, like the leg press, dumbbell squat, barbell squat and deadlift.
Back squat. Shutterstock/Jasminko Ibrakovic
Deadlift. Freepik.com
Walking lunges, while you hold medium to heavy weights, are also valuable — as long as the weight isn’t so heavy that it interferes with proper form and full range of motion.
These exercises target the thighs specifically, toning the muscle and increasing the blood flow so that the fat is burned.
Weighted walking lunge. Shutterstock/Undrey
But these exercises also, when done intensely, incite a hormonal response that causes your body to suck the fat out any big fat cells all throughout your body, so that you get leaner overall.
Dance Classes Will Not Cure Thunder Thighs
Using dance fitness classes as the cure to thunder thighs is simply not a good suggestion.
These classes are better reserved for an aerobic workout to benefit heart health. You’ll get a training effect for your cardiovascular system. But this doesn’t translate to blasting out the fat in your hefty thighs.
So if you enjoy dance classes for the aerobic component, keep taking them. But to get rid of the thunder in your legs, you need to do more.
Those who have thunder thighs should do exercises specifically for the lower body in addition to their dance classes: intense compound weightlifting routines.
This includes sled pushing as well. This will force your entire lower body (and some upper body) to work like it has never worked before.
To maximize the fat-burn all throughout your body, include upper body strength training that targets the back and chest.
Lat pull-down for the back.
These large muscles will burn fat for recovery energy — which will partially come from your “thunder” thighs.
Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health.
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