Posted on 06/12/2025 5:09:14 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
News flash: Your ability to climb stairs may be the ultimate health test. This everyday activity demands leg strength, cardiovascular fitness, balance, and coordination, especially when climbing flight after flight without stopping. It’s simple, accessible, and brutally honest about where your fitness stands.
Health professionals and performance coaches often use stair climbing to gauge heart health and endurance. In fact, a 2023 study published in Atherosclerosis found that climbing more than five flights of stairs (approx 50 steps) daily was associated with a lower risk of ASCVD types independent of disease susceptibility..
(Excerpt) Read more at eatthis.com ...
Try Kingdom’s Dome in the Smokey Mountain park in TN.
I’ve seen super fit people come down (which is harder than going up) wheezing and huffing.
High altitude?
Every year, on my birthday, I see if I can go two stairs at a time. I’m 65 and still can do it.
,,, I’m 66 and reading this article is an ask :)
I agree with their theory. The ability to do 50 stair steps a day certainly would improve ones health outlook.
We live in the hills, always up one hill and down the next. We are currently on a fencing project that requires much walking. And I can do it. It’s not stair steps, but it is going up steep inclines.
I never bought into this BS where retired people should just kick back and take it easy.
I’m gonna get one of those condos in an Italian hilltop town. That’ll be lots of steps every day.
There are two sets of stairs to get to and from my office at work and I always use them instead of the elevator.
Or Clingmans Dome.
I’m almost 78. Haven’t been in peak shape in years, but I can walking up three flights of stairs without being out of breath, and can do the same carrying heavy bags. As my father used to say, I’m in good shape for the shape that I’m in. Never smoked, although everyone else in my family did. Three of them died of lung cancer, one of a massive heart attack at 51, and the last a stroke at age 74. I’ve outlived them all. Nobody lived past 74 before me.
I used to run up 5 flights of stairs at work until Work Karens said to stop.
I climb stairs for about 20 minutes six days a week or so. In the second half of the climb. I go forwards and backwards.
“ ,,, I’m 66 and reading this article is an ask :)”
This is why FR needs a like button.
How about falling down fifty steps without stopping and getting up to walk away? That would be impressive fitness also.
Ha
As long as my car can do the work, I’m good. And, needless to say, my car is NOT union-built.
Yeah, except all the awesome linguine would zero out the gains you got from walking up the top of the Italian village on the stairs.
Of course, you’ll be so drunk on Dago red all the time you probably won’t even care.
A typical run of stairs is 10’ per 8’ ceiling for each floors. A typical stair height is 7.5”. That totals 16 stairs per floor, not 10. 10 steps would be 12” high, quite a challenge. Five flights of stairs would total 80 steps, not 50.
Unfair. My knees have been getting bad for over twenty years. I can walk for 45 minutes to an hour a day, I used to exercycle, too, but stairs are painful for me. So I can’t count the exertion level of climbing the steps.
Just back from there. Stopped many times!!
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