This Underrated Gym Machine Can Add a New Element to Your Workouts
Lifters long held to the assumption that any amount of cardio would kill their gains. Thankfully, that type of bro-science is now largely ignored—especially by guys with lofty goals like body recomposition—but the question of what kind of cardio exercise fits best into a training plan is still the talk of the free weight floor.
You don't have to take to the treadmill jogs to get the calorie-burning benefits you're looking for to compliment your resistance training. Other cardio machines can add variety to and enhance your training without the joint-pounding that comes with running—specifically, the stair climber machine. Available in many big-box gyms, the humble stair climber is a fantastic calorie-burning tool that’ll help you get and stay lean and bolster your work capacity with weights.
Below, we dive deeper into what the stair climber is, how to use it, and the benefits of this underrated machine.
What Is a Stair Climber?
The stair climber is a large, vertical machine with three to four steps that constantly revolve, like the belt of a treadmill, so you can essentially climb stairs in place. Unlike a treadmill, however, you'll be challenged to lift your bodyweight as you step to the next rung of the machine. Stair climbers are available in many commercial and private gyms.
Benefits of Using a Stair Climber Machine
Burning Calories
Thirty minutes of fast stair climbing burns about 400 calories per 30 minutes for a 180-pound man, according to the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities, which assigns metabolic equivalents or METs, a measure of your working metabolic rate versus your resting metabolic rate, to different physical activities. According to these estimates, the stair climber burns roughly two and half calories more per minute than jogging and six calories more per minute than brisk walking. Case and point: The stair climber is an efficient and effective fat-loss tool for lifters looking to reveal their hard-earned muscle mass or stay in a slight calorie deficit during a body recomposition phase.
'I have used this machine countless times to speed up my rate of fat loss or slow down my rate of gain (during a bulking phase),' explains Chris Parnell, an NYC-based personal trainer and men's Physique competitor in the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation. 'The key is to remember your goal; if you’re trying to gain size, your cardio time shouldn't exceed the amount of time you spend resistance training.'
Improved Work Capacity
Some small studies have shown that using a stair climber can help to improve your Vo2 max (a measure of how much oxygen a person can use during hard exercise). An improved Vo2 max means you can work harder for longer. Although weight training isn’t as taxing on your cardiorespiratory system as other activities like running, a lack of conditioning can impact your ability to lift weights effectively.
'The biggest carryover to lifting that the stair climber has is its ability to increase a person’s aerobic capacity, which increases their ability to do more work for longer,' Parnell says. 'If you’re barbell squatting for 10 reps and you’re breathing heavily and your cardio is failing before your legs fatigue, [you can] start incorporating the stair climber.'
Lifters looking for a cardio fix aren't the only exercisers that can benefit from using a stair climber. Runners can too, even if the relatively slow pace of the machine seems counterintuitive. Thanks to the potential Vo2 max benefits, runners can turn to the stair climber as a useful tool to keep improving their fitness when they want to save their joints from accumulating more stress from pounding the pavement.
Building Up Leg Strength
We’re not saying you should replace leg days with stair climbing; lifting heavy weights remains the best way to grow muscle. Still, consistently hitting the stair climber does activate the muscles in your legs (quads, hamstrings, and glutes), which can help you build muscular endurance and strength. Every time you step up onto another step, you're driving into hip extension and full knee extension, and over the course of a stair climber workout, you accumulate a ton of volume doing this.
The stair climber is also considered a weight-bearing exercise, since you’re placing the entirety of your body weight onto a leg every time you step upward. Weight-bearing movements have been shown to increase bone density, helping to prevent fractures as you age. You can easily add a load it a bit too, by strapping on a weight vest, so you can turn your stair climbing session into resistance training for even more benefits.
How to Incorporate a Stair Climber Into Your Workouts
The question isn't whether you use a stair climber, but how you should use a stair climber—and the answer to that question really depends on your goals. Parnell says a safe and effective starting point for anyone is to perform two 30-minute weekly sessions at a moderate intensity, which 'does not negatively impact my resistance training.' You can also safely sneak in stair climber work at the end of almost any strength workout; even 6 to 8 minutes of moderate-pace stair climber work can help you pile up a few extra steps and burn a few extra calories.
There isn’t really a cap as to how often you can use the stair climber, but make sure you're paying attention to your rate of recovery. If you feel sore or fatigued during your gym sessions, even with 48 to 72 hours of rest between body parts, then you’re likely doing too much.
If you want to build muscle mass and stave off excessive fat gain, setting your limits on the stair climber is much simpler. 'I would not use the stair climber for more than half the amount of time you spend resistance training,' explains Parnell. 'So if you weight train for three hours every week, don’t use the stair climber (or perform any aerobic exercise) for more than an hour and a half.' The reason why: You’ll burn too many calories and end up not gaining any or much muscle mass.
You can perform your stair climber sessions on your weight training days or separate days. If you do hit up the stair climber on the same day you lift weights, perform cardio after you lift weights. Otherwise, you risk being too fatigued to have a productive lifting session.
How to Progress Your Stair Climber Workout
In addition to adding a session to your week, you can tweak your stair climber workouts to be easier (or harder).
Focus on slight increases in difficulty, instead of adding time to your workouts, says MH US fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. You might raise your speed ever so slightly on the stairclimber, or add an external load (like a weight vest) to your workouts. If you choose to increase speed, keep those adjustments as small as possible; you're climbing stairs, so it doesn't take much speed to progress that challenge. Progress with speed no more than once every five to six workouts; it'll challenge you more than you expect, even if you don't notice it. Never progress speed and add weight simultaneously.
You can also add time to your sessions, although don't make this your main way of "progressing." As with all cardio modalities, honing the quality of your work is better than doing more work for the sake of spending more time on the device.
Avoid changing your stride on the stair climber. Sure, you may see people trying to add a resistance band between their ankles (to stimulate their glutes on each stride) or trying to climb the stair climber laterally. That's not the best use of the machine—and it might not be the safest way to use it, either.
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