Why Stairs Make It Difficult to Breathe, Even If You’re in Good Shape
You consider yourself a very suitable person. You work out in the gym regularly. You can run for miles and jump to and from the grocery store. But a couple of flights of stairs? Holy shit. This is why the staircase is your enemy, even if you are in shape.
The picture above shows the start of my gruesome ascent along the famous Coco Head Trail on Oahu. It’s an old railroad that seems to go on forever. Uphill. You usually do bodyweight lifts for 20-30 minutes, depending on your pace. Many of us have had to take frequent breaks and think seriously about our decisions in life.
It’s perfectly normal for anyone – yes, even those in insane athletic form – to puff and puff as they climb the stairs. This is because the ladder is heavy. That and climbing each step requires more different muscles than just walking. So when you go from walking to pushing yourself every step of the way, there is a quick burst of energy that can make you short of breath. As TIME Joe Holder, performance coach from New York City told TIME :
You are introducing a new variable very quickly. You go from rest to something very quickly, usually less than 10 seconds. This means that you will find yourself in an oxygen-depleted environment, and then you have to return to normal; it takes your body a second to catch up.
To keep fighting gravity and climbing stairs, you may feel short of breath as your muscles demand more and more oxygen. Because you combine oxygen-demanding activities with strength, exactly when you begin to feel death depends on your fitness level. Some people switch off faster than others.
The good news is that, like everything else, you can become better and more efficient in climbing stairs if you train your body to do so. As Greatist notes , you can include lower body strength building exercises such as lunges, split squats, and reverse lunges to lower the climbing part, stroke. Or just climb the stairs one more time.
This is why even healthy people are out of breath when climbing stairs | TIME