Ultimate Stair Exercises

Recently I discovered a whole new way to stay in shape and escape the hotel gym while travelling on business.

For a change I was going to step out of my hotel room and try something different. Something that I had never done before... Stair Climbing.

Now I know it sounds simple, and yes, climbing a flight of stairs at a leisurely pace could be classed as simple, but these workouts I learned from former WNBA Coach Virgil Aponte are on a whole new level.

Instead of seeing hotel stairwells as second rate means to the ground floor, I now see them as the ultimate fat burning machine and I’ll be taking the stairs a little more often from now on I think!

When Virgil first asked me to give his Stair Climbing workouts a go I was happy to oblige, always on the lookout for workouts I can do, away from home, which don’t require much, if any equipment.

Virgil tells me he uses one 7 minute stairs workout that is enough to wipe out elite athletes, so for the likes of you and me we can be assured of a great fat-burning workout!

And we’re not alone. Both Madonna and J Lo have been known to use stair climbing workouts as part of their fitness routines to quite literally get their butts into shape, so what’s good enough for the celebs is definitely good enough for you!

Instead of popping down to the hotel gym, waiting for the treadmill or the bike to be free, and then having to wipe the last guy’s sweat off the handles and the buttons, like the average person does, I decided to get my cardio fix in the hotel’s stairwell.

I have to say, these workouts challenged me, but that’s because I worked as hard as I could. After all, I wanted to test run these workouts for you and put them to their toughest test! I didn’t think there would be much variety to a stairs workout but I was truly wrong. Virgil had me doing jogs, sprints, push ups in between flights, Hops, skips, double steps at a time, and even jumps up the steps.

This was a varied and challenging workout that gave my cardio workouts a whole new spin! And the beauty of using the hotel stairwell was that I knew I wouldn’t bump into anyone on the way. After all, how many people do you know who use the emergency stairs instead of the hotel elevator? I had a 10 storey gym to myself!

Throughout the workouts I could feel my heart pounding, my legs shaking and my abs working. There was no doubt that this style of training would work wonders for fat loss and fitness combined. And if you’re wondering what to do when you can easily run up and down those stairs as you get fitter, don’t worry. Virgil’s thought of that!

He says you can change the number of flights of stairs you use, climb more steps at a time, add extra rounds, reduce your rest intervals, and add in bodyweight exercises between flights, like the exercises we do in our hotel rooms.

Stair Exercises are the future of cardio, and the beauty is, they cost nothing to do – just a set of stairs and Virgil’s imagination to spur you on.

Whatever you want to focus on - aerobic fitness, strength, flexibility, power or speed – these workouts cover it all!