Exercising at Work

In an attempt to hit the ground running this summer’s climbing season, instead of going to the gym I’ve started exercising while at work.  And no one even notices.  What do I do?  Climb stairs.  Sounds simple enough, right?  It is.

For me, the hardest part of stair climbing was breaking the habit of using the elevator.  I work in a building with several different towers and often have to go down one elevator, walk to another, and go back up.  After two and a half years, my elevator riding habit is fairly well ingrained into my subconscious, I often find me reaching for the “up” button without even thinking.  Slowly, though, I am building a new habit, a stair-climbing habit.  You should build a new habit too!

Obviously, climbing one flight of stairs a few times a day isn’t going to make much of a dent in your fitness level.  To gain more fitness-per-floor, there’s a couple of things I do to work my mountain climbing legs.

1. Instead of, say, going from the 4th floor to the 2nd floor, I’ll walk down the stairs all the way to the basement and then back up to the 2nd.  Now, instead of only going down two flights, I go down four flights and up two.  Going from 1st to 4th?  Down to the basement, up to the roof, and back down to 4th.  Do whatever works.  This really doesn’t take up that much time, so you won’t get coworkers asking where you’ve been, and you get a lot of up and down which is so crucial in mountain climbing.

2.  Climb the stairs with your toes.  When I’m stair climbing to get fit, I step on every step (not every other step like some people suggest: “It’s more strenuous so you’ll get a better workout!”  I disagree.  I prefer the repetition of one step at a time to the more strenuous and less repetitive two steps at a time…), let my toes bend up toward my shin, and then stand up on my toes to take the step.  This works more muscle groups and stretches your calves at the same time!

So that’s it.  I will also go all the way up and all the way down if I have a bit of downtime; as an IT professional I have a lot of sitting-around-and-waiting-for-things-to-go-wrong time.

Give it a try and let me know what you do to increase your stair climbing fitness!