Many individuals avoid having a home with stairs as they age, but a staircase can actually be your best friend when it comes to staying active and building lower-body strength. Not everyone is able to take advantage of this at-home exercise, but climbing stairs is an excellent form of fitness that can help improve leg strength, support bone health, and boost cardiovascular fitness. Muscle mass naturally declines with age, and adding stair climbing to your routine can be an excellent way to challenge your legs while training your balance.
If you’re curious about how strong your legs are, check out this exercise we learned from Steven Pungello, Chiropractor at Full Stride Spine & Sport. Pungello explains that, if you can climb stairs this fast after 60, your leg power may rival someone a decade younger.
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How To Measure Leg Power After 60
According to Pungello, there are several ways to assess strength in adults aged 60 and older using a set of stairs.
A solid test would be to climb four flights of stairs in less than a minute. That would signify “elite power” for those 60 and up.
The At-Home Stair Test
If you don’t have access to four flights of stairs in your home, then timing yourself to determine the duration it takes to climb the stairs in your space—up and down once—and then try to beat that as time passes.
If your home doesn’t have stairs, then finding one step and going up and down for a total of two minutes can still serve as a great benchmark to hit.
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Useful Tips
When testing at home, you should go up and down the stairs as normally as possible.
“Start the timer with both feet on the ground at the bottom of the stairs. Climb all the way up and down. Stop the timer when both feet are flat on the ground at the bottom of the stairs again. It is totally fine to keep one hand on a railing for safety during the test,” Pungello instructs.
The Benefits of Stair Climbing
Stair climbing is an excellent test for your calves, quads, glutes, and balance.
“Power is a measurement of strength and time so seeing how fast you can go up stairs is a great way to make sure you both have strength and can use the strength. It also makes sure that as you age you can still navigate safely around your environment without risk of falls,” Pungello tells us. “As we age we lose muscle mass and power. The power is actually lost much earlier than the muscle mass but we do not realize it because as we age we don’t do as many explosive activities. Stair climbing is an accessible way to test this and you may be able to slow that power loss before you begin to rapidly lose muscle mass.”
The post If You Can Climb Stairs This Fast After 60, Your Leg Power Rivals Someone a Decade Younger appeared first on Eat This Not That.
