SPORT WALK

One of the most frequent questions we’re asked in relation to training or fitness work is whether climbing steps is a good option. It’s not always a question posed with a desire to increase the intensity of climbing (which steps or stairs actually do) but perhaps because of a lack of hills in the area. Some people also like the focused nature of step climbing – it adds a certain rhythm to your movement that can feel very satisfying.

Whatever the motivation, there’s no doubt step climbs can be a very useful and effective way of both training for hills and performing strength sessions by using climbs instead of weights.

So let’s look at the role they can play, what they’re good for and, perhaps, what their limitations are.

Why steps are good

Firstly, what steps add, is that nine times out of ten they’re found on steeper ground than most inclines we might encounter and that means that you’re immediately facing a harder effort than if you took on the average hill climb.

Perhaps you’re on a trail that’s rising gradually and then, suddenly, it steepens significantly. Chances are at this point, steps have been added, simply because it makes walking up such a steep gradient easier in terms of your foot placement.

This steeper gradient means you’re stressing your legs more, which is good for muscle growth and the steps themselves act more like resistance moves that you might do in the gym. So the act of walking up steps gives you strength benefits, especially if you take them slow and really focus on using your glutes and quads effectively as you move.

Of course the other thing that steps add is intensity, for the very same reason. The steep gradient means your work rate will be increased and this is good for your cardiovascular development. The faster you go, the greater the impact but of course that makes it much harder to maintain your effort for very long, so steps can be good for a short sharp high intensity effort, if an increase in intensity is what you’re seeking.

Downsides?

So what about the negatives, if there are any? Well, probably the first and most obvious thing to point out is that steps don’t normally just appear when you’re out on the trail or if you’re in a park or on a pavement, you have to go somewhere that has steps to provide you with a suitable workout location and that place needs to have enough steps to be worthwhile. Hills and inclines on the other hand, that are going to add intensity to your workout, are generally found almost everywhere (except the flattest of flatlands).

Another factor is that steps make you conform your stride length to their depth, so they’re not so great for holding your natural climbing technique. Let’s imagine that you’ve invested yourself in perfecting a good, efficient climbing technique, where you hold a high cadence to stay efficient, steps, depending on their construction, could disrupt this.

Steps, generally, will be configured to fit the steepness of the incline and this can mean that they’re quite deep or necessarily cut well into the ground giving a long step before the next one (see top image of St Catherine’s Hill). This means that your natural cadence and, most importantly, stride length has to adapt to each step and that can mean that you’re unable to maintain a good easy movement. You’re instead continually changing your stride length and you’re unable to hold your cadence because of that.

On some steps on trails, where there’s been a wooden front created to each step, the ground behind can wear away and then you’re left with a narrow lip of wood, so you end up placing your toes on the lip of the step because of the uneven ground behind and this can give you pain in your calves because you’re supporting your whole weight on your toes.

Lastly, steps rarely come in long enough flights to really help you use them for serious hill work. Steps are normally in relatively short flights, so by the time you’ve settled into a good rhythm, you’re at the top and need to descend down again to repeat the process if you’re looking for a longer climbing session. Now this approach is fine for doing hill repeats but ideally you’d still want something that’s 500 metres to 1 kilometre in length for that, so in the majority of cases you’ll be having to perform many more repeats than on a hillside.

Get in step

The key to using steps then, is to harness their strengths – use them to add intensity or as a leg strength workout. Because most of the time, you’re likely to only find short flights of steps, use them to build strength or as a component part of a high intensity workout.

For strength, treat them almost like a squat machine, so focus on your technique, using your glutes and driving your legs down and back. Speed isn’t critical, it’s all about making your glutes fire so they get stronger. You will need to make several ascents to give your legs the level of stress that will be really beneficial in building strength but if that’s the outcome you’re seeking from them, that’s not a problem.

For adding intensity, a good idea is to build steps into a short circuit, as a component part of a looped route. This does mean you’ll need to do laps if you only have one flight of steps in one location but if adding them in is your objective, then that’s what you do. Each lap, when you reach them, attack the steps fast, giving them everything you’ve got. At the top, don’t stop but keep going and recover on the move.

The more times you want to go up the steps, the more laps you’ll need to do and this will influence the length of the lap. The key is to be flexible and so if you have some suitable steps that you can include in a route, just adapt it each time to give you the number of ascents you want.

Of course, if you can find a flight of steps long enough, perhaps in a large multi-storey car park or in an accessible tall public building, you could perform step hill repeats. This won’t be as good as normal hill repeats on an incline but it’s better than nothing if that’s all you have. You might even find that the length of the staircase is enough to give you a high intensity workout on it’s own and that’s all you need, so you only need to make one ascent.

Steps then, aren’t the most useful tool a Sport Walker has but they can be really valuable in the absence of hill climbs and they can also play a part in building leg strength or climbing resilience through high intensity ascents. If you have some good flights of steps in your area, do build them into your walking sessions but if you have good hill climbs where you are, chances are using these instead of steps will give you more overall.

As with so many things, steps have their place and their benefit is quite specific so unless they’re your only option for getting some climbing done, treat them as a potential training tool to go into your armoury but don’t prioritise them over normal inclines.