No one likes to take the stairs and for good reason, it’s hard work! If you are a frequent passenger of lifts where stairs are also an alternative you are in the right place to get fitter and healthier. Namely, this would include, office workers or those that work in a large building, however, you don’t need to work in an office. Steps are everywhere. And we do our very best to avoid them. Whether on the subway, airport, or local park. You’ll find steps everywhere. Use them.
Office workers by nature have a very sedentary job, and although a small minority might cycle to work it’s likely the majority arrive via public transport or by car and when you calculate actual physical activity during a workday it’s going to be quite low. Office jobs are also a cause of back pain due to long periods of sitting and it’s therefore very important that muscle tone and strength are maintained and balanced together with a suitable amount of cardiovascular exercise.
There have been surveys conducted on office workers which suggested after the testing period in which subjects took the stairs at work instead of the elevator they actually increased their VO2 Max. The concern however was announced by professor Bruce Lynn who discussed this in a lecture at the University College London that the people who volunteered for this type of survey were normally fit and healthy to start with and a more accurate test would be testing subjects who were normally not active.
How you can include stairs in your daily routine
1. Take the stairs – nothing else!
Assuming you do not have your lunch in the office you will go up and down from your office 4 times a day, twice up and trice down: Therefore, quite simply the first way to increase your health and become fitter is to “take the stairs” Exclude the elevator from your daily routine, burn extra calories while training your heart as you climb to your floor (obviously the higher the floor the better)
2. Take the stairs and go past your floor!
Instead of taking the stairs to the floor, you walk on, go one further or even two floors past your office floor and come back down (not a good idea if you are already late for work)
3. Step up the pace
Taking hold of one of the ideas above you can also increase the intensity by stepping up the pace, instead of walking to your floor, increase the pace and jog up to your floor.
It’s that simple
Taking the stairs is not just limited to the office or your place of work, next time you are at the shopping centre or park your car in a multi-story you can employ this mentality anywhere with stairs. Becoming fit and healthy can be easily achieved by making small but significant changes to your lifestyle and daily routine, every little help! Taking the stairs is only a small yet highly effective adjustment to your lifestyle, it will burn calories, increase your VO2 Max and give you a basis to archiving the ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) guidelines on activity levels of around 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week and this does not have to be in one go.
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