If you did not already know, a Stairmaster is more or less a brand name stair climber, which is not a bad thing because stair climbing is an absolutely fantastic form of exercise. The Stairmaster has been around for quite some time now and people have seemed to have fallen in love with it. However, if you are one of those people that don’t appreciate the good old stair climbing machine, we are here to change your mind.
There are many Stairmaster benefits that you really do need to know about. A few Stairmaster routines per week can help you become a fit, healthy, and happy person without a doubt!
Benefit #1: It Helps You Breathe Better
One big benefit that you get from using a Stairmaster on a regular basis is that it helps to improve the function and efficiency of your lungs. It is a simple fact that we need oxygen to function and that is true for all of the parts of our body, yet it is even truer when we are exercising. Your muscles need an adequate supply of oxygen to exercise for a prolonged amount of time, and that means needing strong lungs with an efficient work ethic.
Well, climbing those stairs will get your lungs heaving like no tomorrow, and just like everything else, practice makes perfect. The more you participate in this kind of exercise that forces your lungs to work hard, the more you are training your lungs to become stronger than ever.
Your VO2 max is the amount of oxygen that your lungs can absorb, process, and ship off to the various parts of your body. In the long run, this will dictate how long you can work out for before getting winded and before your muscles tire out.
The Stairmaster will help increase your VO2 max, therefore helping your lungs to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and the rest of your body as time goes on, or in other words, it helps increase your ability to perform physical activities. Getting winded from climbing some stairs is never fun, but it’s a problem that can be easily remedied through the Stairmaster.
Benefit #2: It’s Great Cardio Exercise
Stair climbing is one of those types of exercise that is just fantastic for your cardiovascular health. Of course cardio is any kind of exercise that causes your heart to beat at an increased rate in comparison to your resting heart rate, at least 50 percent harder than it usually would. Well, using a Stairmaster will definitely do that, especially if you work out at a really high intensity and more or less run up the stairs instead of walk.
Getting a good cardiovascular workout on a regular basis is one of the best things that you can do for your health. Just think of it this way, training your heart through cardio exercise is like training your muscles through strength training. The more you do it the stronger and more efficient your heart becomes.
Regular cardio contributes to the control of cholesterol, diabetes control, a reduced risk of heart and arterial disease, and a lower risk of suffering from a stroke or heart attack. Moreover, regular cardio can help lower high blood pressure, plus it also helps to keep your resting heart rate low. In the long run, all of this means having a long and healthy life.
Perhaps the best part about having a strong and efficient heart is that it contributes to your overall physical ability and capability to exercise at a high intensity. Your muscles need blood and oxygen to function, especially when you are exercising, blood and oxygen which your heart delivers to those muscles.
Therefore having an efficient heart allows for a higher amount of blood flow to get to those muscles, thus allowing them to keep going for longer. It’s funny if you think about it, the more you exercise the stronger your heart gets, and the stronger your heart gets the more you can exercise.
Benefit #3: It Strengthens Your Skeletal System
Yet another benefit of using a Stairmaster is that it will help strengthen your bones, and it’s thanks to the science behind weight bearing exercises. A weight bearing exercise is any type of exercise that puts increased stress, pressure, or weight on your bones for a prolonged period of time, such as running up stairs.
These weight bearing exercises help to strengthen your bones in much the same way as your muscles grow. In other words, a weight bearing exercise is for your bones as a strength or weight training exercise is for your muscles. Doing higher amounts of weight bearing exercises will help you develop good bone strength.
Every time you do a weight bearing exercise it causes your osteoblasts, which are the cells responsible for creating bone matter, to lay down more bone mass in response to the increased stress they are experiencing. Having more bone mass is of course a good thing because it results in bigger, thicker, and denser bones.
This is beneficial because when you have stronger bones there is a lower chance of breaking them when you fall or are in an accident. Moreover, a weight bearing exercise is perfect for preventing degenerative bone diseases in your old age. A strong skeletal system is important and it is something that the Stairmaster can help you accomplish without question.
Benefit #4: Weight Loss
The next benefit that you will reap from using a Stairmaster on a regular basis is that it will help you burn a whole lot of calories and fat, this contributing to your weight loss goals. To start, did you know that walking 10 steps on a Stairmaster is like walking 40 steps on level ground? Therefore, the Stairmaster is about 4 times more efficient at burning calories than simply walking.
Your body needs energy to function, and that energy comes from the calories you eat. However, if you don’t have a readily available supply of calories, or in other words, if you haven’t eaten much, your body will turn to your fat reserves for energy, thus burning away fat very quickly.
How much calories or fat you burn while using the Stairmaster does depend on your initial body weight, with heavier people burning more than lighter ones, but no matter if you are heavy or light, you will still burn a lot of calories. For example, a 140-pound person will burn around 540 calories for every hour of using a Stairmaster, while a 165-pound person will burn around 660 calories for every hour spent on it.
What you should know is that many kinds of cardio actually require quite a few minutes to get into the zone where you burn fat, but that is not so with a Stairmaster. Working out with these stair climbers at a fast rate will have you burning away those calories in just 1 minute. Whether you are burning away calories or fat stores, the Stairclimber will help you get rid of them without a doubt.
There is also the fact that strenuous exercise such as this helps to boost your metabolism as well. Having a higher metabolism means that your body burns an increased number of calories, therefore contributing to weight loss. Moreover, your EPOC or exercise post oxygen consumption increases for several hours after your workout, or in layman’s terms, your metabolism stays revved up for long after you finish exercising.
Benefit #5: It Makes You Happy
Yet another benefit that comes along with using a Stairmaster is that it literally has the ability to make you a happier person. Sure, it will help you lose weight, build muscle, and improve your overall fitness level, all things which are bound to make you feel good about yourself, but that is not what we are really getting at.
Exercising at intense levels causes something awesome to happen in your brain. You have undoubtedly heard of the runner’s high, which is a feeling of joy and elation that runners get, almost like a high without the drugs, but that does not apply solely to runners. Using a Stairmaster has the exact same effect.
This kind of exercise causes your brain to ramp up its production of various endorphins. These endorphins are the same feel happy chemicals that cause the runner’s high, and they include substances such as dopamine, serotonin, and endocannabinoids. These compounds have the effect of causing feelings of joy, happiness, elation, calmness, and they help reduce pain as well.
In the long run, this means that using a Stairmaster can help you to control your anxiety, it can reduce stress, it can decrease the severity of depression symptoms, and it makes you a happier person overall. If you aren’t feeling too happy, try stepping on a Stairmaster and your life outlook will definitely improve.
Benefit #6: It Strengthens Your Muscles
The next benefit that we definitely need to talk about when it comes to using a Stairmaster is that it helps to strengthen your muscles. Of course walking up stairs utilizes your leg muscles, and when you go at a quick pace it really causes your legs to burn. Your quads, glutes, calves, and all of those other leg muscles will get an excellent workout from even the shortest of Stairmaster workouts.
A Stairmaster helps to build lean muscles that are strong and efficient. Building stronger leg muscles is valuable because it will help you run faster and jump higher, not to mention that you will be able to stand on your legs for longer without them getting tired. Moreover, using a Stairmaster also requires you to engage your core to stay upright and for your back to stay straight for the duration of your workout.
Therefore a Stairmaster also helps train your core and lower back muscles. Also, if you choose to swing your arms while on the Stairmaster it will also help strengthen your arms. Having stronger muscles means being able to lift more and exercise for longer, which are valuable benefits no doubt.
Benefit #7: It Is Low Impact
A great thing about the Stairmaster is that it is an intense form of cardiovascular exercise, but unlike running, it is a low impact exercise. This is very important for people who have bone or joint problems where high impact movements may cause pain, injury, and just generally make the pre-existing condition worse, all things which the elderly can definitely relate to.
The Stairmaster does not cause very much stress for the joints in your legs and there isn’t much impact with each step, thus allowing you to participate in exercise without putting your bones and joints at risk.
Benefit #8: Increased Cognitive Abilities
The final benefit that is worth mentioning when it comes to the Stairmaster is that it will help make you a smarter person, literally. Simply put, exercising actually stimulates the neurons in your brain to fire off more signals. What this means is that there is more brain activity going on in your noggin, and more neurons firing signals leads to better cognitive abilities.
Even better is that exercises such as the Stairmaster also causes your brain to create more of those neurons. In the long run, this means having better problem solving and critical thinking abilities. Moreover, it also means having better short and long term memory, so much so that it can actually help combat memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Conclusion
The Stairmaster benefits are there for the taking, but it is up to you to actually step on one. Stronger bones, a healthier heart, more efficient lungs, and bigger muscles are just some of the benefits for a regular Stairmaster routine. You should definitely get stepping on some stairs because it will without a doubt make you a happier and healthier person!
Any questions and comments are always welcome!