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Stair climbing lowers blood pressure in postmenopausal women with hypertension and estrogen deficiency. Thus, the unique value of stair climbing as a cardio exercise is once again demonstrated.
Stair Climbing as Cardio
I love stair climbing. Besides rowing, it’s the only form of cardio you might catch me doing. Perhaps because it’s the least ‘cardio-like’ form of cardio.
Traditional cardio primarily focuses on working in the oxygen system by training for long periods at low intensity. This trains various aspects such as your oxygen uptake and consumption. You train for endurance but not for strength. In fact, prolonged cardio at low intensity can actually lead to muscle breakdown.
With stair climbing, each step requires more muscle strength than, for example, running. You have to resist gravity more. The movement is more upward-focused. (Hard) running is also called ‘controlled falling’ because you can partly use gravity to your advantage.
Because the movement itself requires more energy (aside from duration and pace), you also use two other energy systems. The ATP-CP system and the lactic acid system. These energy systems are designed to provide more energy but for shorter durations. It’s the fast (and super-fast) muscle fibers that are mainly powered this way. By training these muscle fibers and energy systems, you train more for muscle strength and mass.
Stair climbing offers a nice balance between working in these three different energy systems. This makes it a very complete form of cardio that serves multiple purposes. In a previous article, we showed, for example, the health effects of stair climbing on the cardiovascular system. However, there, short and very fast stair climbing was done. Not always safe to consider. Recent research from The North American Menopause Society looks at the effects of stair climbing at a more normal pace. The results were published last week [1].
Training and Blood Pressure
The research shows that stair climbing lowers blood pressure and increases leg strength, especially in postmenopausal women.
This group of women more often has estrogen deficiencies and is more susceptible to problems with blood vessels and muscles. This means that not every form of physical activity is suitable or without risks. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) also differs from more traditional cardio due to its high intensity. This also makes much more use of the ATP-CP system and lactic acid system. However, it can also cause a temporary increase in blood pressure. Not entirely desirable in people who already have high blood pressure.
This is prevented in practice by combining strength training with traditional cardio. However, this brings other challenges and obstacles. Think of lack of available time and access to and costs for a gym. Traditional cardio already takes more time than HIIT. Since you’re not training for muscle strength with that, you also have to supplement it with strength training. That takes more time and organization and raises the bar.
Stair Climbing and Blood Pressure
The researchers therefore point out that stair climbing offers a nice combination of aerobic training and resistance training. In the research among postmenopausal women, this led to improvements in both the cardiovascular system and more leg strength. It resulted in the expected effect on body weight and improvements in the fatty acid profile. Before this research, the effect of stair climbing on blood pressure and arterial stiffness had not been investigated. Arterial stiffness is a thickening and stiffening of the walls of arteries. The results of the research were published in the article titled: “The effects of stair climbing on arterial stiffness, blood pressure, and leg strength in postmenopausal women with stage 2 hypertension”.
The data for the article came from a Korean study. In it, women who had passed menopause trained four days a week. On those days, they ascended 192 steps two to five times a day. The data showed that stair climbing led to a decrease in arterial stiffness, a lowering of blood pressure, and more leg strength.
Especially in this risk group, the reduced risk of osteoporosis, bone loss, was a significant gain.
This
study demonstrates how simple lifestyle interventions such as stair climbing can be effective in preventing or reducing the negative effects of menopause and age on the vascular system and leg muscles of postmenopausal women with hypertension
JoAnn Pinkerton, NAMS executive director
References
- The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). menopause.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/stair-climbing-reduces-blood-pressure-2-14-18.pdf
