The gym to maintain your health is not essential if it is difficult to do. A study shows that a few minutes of climbing stairs, several times a day, has a positive effect on cardiovascular health.
Not everyone has the availability or the means to spend long hours at the gym, yet with the sedentary lifestyle that is often the rule during office work, this could be necessary for our health and our well-being.
A study by kinesiologists at McMaster University and UBC Okanagan, Canada, however, shows that walking up a flight of stairs for a few minutes, but regularly throughout the day, may be enough to solve this problem. So everyone could improve their physical condition anywhere and at any time.
A light exercise
Researchers already knew from previous studies that exercises, such as sprinting, performed over a very short period of time, but intensively, were effective, and required only ten minutes of investment per day. This time, therefore, it was a question of determining whether the same type of exercise, but carried out on stairs, could be effective and sufficient to improve the cardiorespiratory condition of sedentary workers.
A group of sedentary young adults therefore served as guinea pigs and climbed a 3-storey staircase at high speed, 3 times a day, spacing these moments of exercise from 1 to 4 hours of rest. Everything was repeated 3 times a week for 6 weeks. The shape of the group was then compared by the researchers with that of a control group that had not practiced.
“We know that interval sprint training is interesting, but we were a little surprised that the ‘stair-break’ approach is also effective.” Says Jonathan Little, assistant professor at the campus of the University of British Columbia in Okanagan and co-author of the study. Not only were the stair climbers in better shape than the control group at the end of the study, they were also stronger and more resilient in a stress test on a bicycle.
Accessible to everyone
It would therefore be a question of inserting regularly in his working day, small “staircase breaks”, really beneficial for the body. “Those who work in office towers or live in apartment buildings can vigorously climb a few steps in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening, knowing they are training effectively,” says Martin Gibala. , professor of kinesiology at McMaster and lead author of the study. Almost anyone can therefore improve their health, as long as they have a flight of stairs.
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