Every year, I climb to the top of Everest. It’s no big deal. I take it one step at a time, 80,000 steps per year.
By the time Dec. 31 arrives, I calculated, I have ascended at least seven vertical miles, carrying loads roughly equal to the weight of three pickup trucks, mostly composed of laundry, groceries and small children.
You see, I live on the top floor of a duplex.
Public health messaging has convinced us that the only way to work out is “exercising.” Yet for most of human history, of course, living was exercise. Humans got most — if not all — of the physical activity needed to stay healthy through natural movement in their daily lives.
After a half-century asking us to exercise more, doctors and physiologists say we have been thinking about it wrong. U.S. and World Health Organization guidelines no longer specify a minimum duration of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity.
Movement tracking studies show even tiny, regular bursts of effort — as short as 30 seconds — can capture many of the health benefits of the gym. Climbing two to three flights of stairs a few times per day could change your life. Experts call it VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.
“The message now is that all activity counts,” said Martin Gibala, a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Canada. And perhaps nothing’s better than stairs.
Here’s how to take your first step toward living to 100.
Staircase athletes
In the world’s “Blue Zones” — Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; Loma Linda, California — a disproportionate number of people live to be 100 and beyond. Scientists aren’t certain why, but they’ve proposed several reasons, including diet, genetics, social connection, purpose and daily physical activity, especially on hills and stairs.
The villagers of Sardinia, a rugged part of Italy, stand out. A typical octogenarian engages in daily physical activity equivalent to climbing many flights of stairs. When researchers looked at what was behind Sardinians’ extraordinary longevity, three factors — terrain slope, distance to workplace and working as a shepherd (who often climb more than 1,000 feet per day) — were most strongly correlated with longer lives. In some regions, the global pattern of men dying earlier than women was virtually absent.
Since we can’t all move to Sardinia, as beautiful as it is, we can just stop avoiding gravity instead.
From a topological perspective, modern life has leveled what’s healthy about Blue Zones, replacing them with a “frictionless” landscape of elevators, cars, instant delivery and sedentary jobs. Just about a quarter of U.S. adults meet the modest targets for aerobic activity.
Yet our stairs remain. And if you’re looking to maximize the benefits of short bouts of exercise, “stair climbing is the clear winner,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney.
That’s because of what stairs, and hill climbing generally, force your body to do. With each step, you must momentarily balance your entire body weight on one leg. As you ascend — an exquisite feat of neurological coordination — you’re constantly lifting at least 100 pounds into the air, boosting your heart rate and cardiovascular fitness. On the way down, bracing against the pull of gravity, you build bone density and muscle strength, especially in your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves, adductors and core muscles.
Over the past decade, studies have shown the potency of going up and down stairs each day to boost your health. It doesn’t take much. Just taking the stairs daily is associated with lower body weight and cutting the risk of stroke and heart disease — the leading (and largely preventable) cause of death globally. While it may not burn many calories (most exercise doesn’t), it does appear to extend your health span. Leg power — a measure of explosive muscle strength — was a stronger predictor of brain aging than any lifestyle factors measured in a 2015 study in the journal Gerontology.
Subsequent studies put a finer point on it: Just nine to 10 brief bouts of vigorous activity per day — averaging 30 to 45 seconds each — lowered the risk of dying by about 40 percent in non-exercisers, according to a 2022 study in Britain. Benefits increased as people exercised longer, but most of the risk reduction occurred during the first few minutes of daily activity.
Anyone who’s ever prepared for a race will be familiar with the question: What are you training for? At some point, I realized what I’m really training for — whether I acknowledge it or not — is the life I want to lead when I’m older.
If the goal is live independently and get out of a chair unassisted, something has to change for many Americans.
The belief that your daily routine isn’t exercise is a good place to start. The truth is that we don’t have “exercise” guidelines, Gibala said. We have physical activity guidelines. That doesn’t distinguish between the gym, dancing or using your home stairs.
“Exercise doesn’t need to be this special thing you do in this special place after you change into special clothes,” Gibala said. “It can be part of everyday life.”
How little activity can you do?
Four minutes daily. Essentially a few flights of stairs at a vigorous pace. That’s the effort Stamatakis found delivered significant health benefits in that 2022 study of British non-exercisers.
“We saw benefits from the first minute,” Stamatakis said.
For Americans, the effect is even more dramatic: a 44 percent drop in deaths, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently accepted for publication.
“We showed for the first time that vigorous intensity, even if it’s done as part of the day-to-day routine, not in a planned and structured manner, works miracles,” Stamatakis said. “The key principle here is start with one, two minutes a day. The focus should be on making sure that it’s something that you can incorporate into your daily routine. Then you can start thinking about increasing the dose.”
Intensity is the most important factor. You won’t break a sweat in a brief burst, but you do need to feel it. A highly conditioned athlete might need to sprint to reach vigorous territory. But many people only need to take the stairs. Use your breathing as a guide, Stamatakis said: If you can sing, it’s light intensity. If you can speak but not sing, you’re entering moderate exertion. If you can’t hold a conversation, it’s vigorous.
The biggest benefits come from moderate to vigorous movement. One minute of incidental vigorous activity prevents premature deaths, heart attacks or strokes as well as about three minutes of moderate activity or 35 to 49 minutes of light activity. Other studies show an even wider gap for reducing the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes: One minute of vigorous activity is roughly as effective as about 1½ hours of light activity.
If you rarely climb stairs, or it’s not safe to climb unassisted, then ensure you check with your doctor before starting any activity regimen.
How to do it
Home. Office. Subway. A step platform in your living room. All stairs work at every fitness level.
But they work best with someone else. That’s a lesson from Blue Zones: Social connection is probably essential to our health. You can’t “stair-climb” out of a solitary, stressful, junk-food-filled lifestyle on your own. Try a few sessions with a coach, friend or social fitness app to stick to your routine.
If you want to know where your fitness level stands (or lies sprawled on the couch), the best gauge of cardiorespiratory fitness is VO2 max, a measure of how much oxygen your body can consume during intense exercise. You can test this in a lab, use a stopwatch or health app, or estimate it with an online calculator.
The most important thing? Start moving, said Gibala, who recommends beginning with at least 30 seconds of continuous climbing or one minute of ascending and descending. “It doesn’t matter what you are starting from, you’re still going to see benefits,” he said.
After that, it’s just one step at a time. I made a calculator where you can estimate your own annual ascents — and decide how many Everests you want to climb.
Upward.
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