Coach's Corner: The Stairway to Health

By James Scott

One pound per month doesn’t seem like much, does it? Well ask yourself this. When is the last time you lost 12 pounds in a year? Or even better, when was the last year that you didn’t put on a pound or two over the course of a year? I am here to tell you that 12 pounds (or 5.45 kilograms for my metric friends) is a substantial amount of weight especially considering that all it takes is 12 minutes a day to do this. Add in the fact that it is free, and you don’t have to change anything you are already doing, and I would say that this is borderline brilliant.

How do you figure?

First of all, there are about 3,500 calories in one pound of fat. Therefore, in order to lose one pound of fat you have to find a way to either burn this many calories, eat less calories, or, ideally, do both. When trying to lose weight, the name of the game is caloric deficit. There are many ways to play, but when it all adds up you must be in some sort of caloric recession. (If our economy can do it, why can’t we?)

The average person burns about 10 calories per minute when walking a flight of stairs. So, 12 minutes will get you about 120 calories a day. Multiply this by 30 days per month, and you have your caloric deficit of 3,600 calories, which is just over a pound of fat lost for the month.

Is it really that simple?

Yup! No fancy workouts, journals, or gizmos needed. Just get off the elevator a couple of floors early and begin. If you can walk up a flight of stairs you can lose a pound of fat per month. Walking stairs is a great cardiovascular workout that strengthens the lower body and is low impact. Just be safe. Make sure the stairs have enough light, are free of debris and somebody knows where you are. And start out slow!

 Too Easy?

Try some stair lunges. These are done by taking a big step (one or two stairs at a time) all the way up the flight. You can also do these moving to the left and the right to target different muscle groups in your legs. Feel free to change the width of your stance to add an extra challenge. If all of this is still too easy, then you could of course jog, skip, hop, or run the stairs!!

James Scott is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Shanghai Sharks. If you have a fitness question you’d like him to answer in a future column, please email him at [email protected].