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From personal experience, everyone knows how difficult it is sometimes to climb up the stairs and how easy it is to jump down two steps. However, there is also an opposite opinion: supposedly more energy is spent on descent. We decided to check how things really are.

ABOUT benefit walking on stairs For losing weight or maintaining forms write numerous sites about healthy image life. Reported even what exactly like this way at the beginning of his career sought perfect figure Madonna. Notedthat while walking up the stairs, a variety of groups work muscles: calf, front and back thighs, buttocks, abs and core. Some sites recommend just rise, others note, that the descent is no less useful - some even indicate, that from the point of view of energy costs, going down is more profitable than going up.

Walking up and down stairs is indeed quite an energy-consuming activity. IN modern models fitness bracelets, which track activity, the item “flights traveled” is often encountered. Every step climbed burns approximately 0.17 kcal. American Council on Exercise allows calculate how many calories will be burned when walking up the stairs, depending on the person’s weight and the time of exercise. For example, if a person weighs 50 kg will devote walking up the stairs for half an hour will consume 199 kcal, which is only slightly less than contained in 100 g of ice cream without additives. For comparisons, half an hour of playing football or tennis will require fewer calories from him (174 and 149 kcal, respectively).

There is indeed a logical reason why going down can be as beneficial as going up. The fact is that walking down is an example of the so-called eccentric exercises in which the muscles involved in the activity are lengthened. In contrast, there are concentric exercises, in which the muscles contract. For example, when working out biceps with dumbbells, flexion of the arm is a concentric contraction of the muscle, and extension is eccentric. Unlike walking up and down the stairs, few people will say that extending your arm with dumbbells is much easier than bending it. Association of Fitness Professionals recommends Incorporate eccentric exercises into your regular workout routine, noting that they optimize gains in power, strength, muscle mass, muscle length during force development, and motor coordination.

If we consider the movement up or down the stairs from the point of view of physics, then the energy spent can be divided into three categories:

increase in kinetic energy of the body as a whole and its individual parts;
an increase in the potential energy of a body in the Earth’s gravitational field;
an increase in internal energy, which will eventually turn into thermal energy and will be used to heat the surrounding space.

The conditions of the problem under consideration will be as follows: a person of average weight and average physical fitness moves at normal speed (does not run) along a staircase with steps of ordinary height. Climbing one step 20 cm high takes a little more than 2 seconds, considering that there are still many steps ahead and you need to measure your strength. Then the increase in kinetic energy will be about 1 kcal, the increase in potential energy will be about 30 kcal, and the total energy consumption will be 170 kcal. It turns out that the human body is a machine with relatively low efficiency. To raise a body to a certain height, it is necessary to spend, in general, about five times more energy than if not a person with his musculoskeletal system, but, for example, a rocket engine, was used for lifting.

When ascending or descending, many different muscles work in your legs and torso to help keep your torso upright. It is also necessary to take into account the energy expended on the brain, since ascent and descent require concentration. All this together will ultimately lead to the release of thermal energy, by measuring which you can determine how much energy the human body requires to go up or down the stairs. Such fully calorimetric measurements do not exist. However knownthat the process of descent is characterized by lower metabolic and cardiorespiratory demands than ascent.

As a result, energy expenditure (namely, the difference between the state on the first step and on the last) will be greater during the ascent, that is, sensations do not deceive us. However, this will only be true if energy costs are assessed immediately after reaching the last step. It is impossible to stop the process of energy exchange in the body without killing it. It is logical that no one has ever conducted such an experiment on humans, but laboratory mice are a different matter. Belgian scientists from the University of Liege divided experimental mice were divided into three groups: the first ran up the treadmill, the second ran down, and the third was not exposed to any influence. Immediately after exercise for 75 to 135 minutes, the scientists sacrificed the animals and examined their quadriceps tissue. A higher concentration of substances responsible for oxidation processes was found in the muscles of mice from the downward running group. It turns out that if these mice had remained alive, the process of energy redistribution, triggered by physical activity, would have continued even at rest.

From the point of view of biophysics/physiology, human energy consumption is usually divided differently:

basal metabolism (the amount of energy that is necessary to support vital processes: breathing, blood circulation, thermoregulation, etc.);
specific dynamic action of nutrients (energy expenditure to convert incoming food into nutrients);
work allowance (energy expenditure on physical and mental activity).

If you set out to estimate the energy obtained from food, then the final point at which the measurement will be carried out cannot be the moment when a person ate the last piece, since the biochemical reactions associated with the body receiving a particular food can be delayed for several hours after the meal. It's the same with exercise. The activity starts chains of biochemical reactions that continue when it ends. Physical activity increases such an important parameter as resting energy expenditure (also known as basal metabolism, that is, the first component of overall energy metabolism), and this bonus persists for quite a long time after training. Therefore, any walking on the stairs can be assessed from the point of view of changes in the entire energy exchange, that is, taking into account the processes launched by this walking - as scientists from Belgium have demonstrated, they are stopped only by biological death.

Greek explorers dialed a group of female volunteers who performed either eccentric or concentric exercises for a week. In the first group, resting energy expenditure increased by 12% over at least the next 48 hours, and fat oxidation by 13% (fat oxidation, along with carbohydrate oxidation, is one of the main processes that provide the body with energy). Resting energy expenditure is an important part of total daily energy metabolism, accounting for 60% to 75% of all energy expenditure. From a biochemical point of view, physical activity triggers muscle protein turnover, activates protease and hydrolase, and provokes the repair of muscle myofibrillar damage. Since eccentric exercises cause more microdamage to muscles due to an increase in the force developed and mechanical destruction of actin-myosin bonds than concentric exercises, the subsequent increase in resting energy expenditure is higher. It turns out that, although at the moment of completing the descent or ascent of the stairs, more energy will be spent on the ascent, in total it will be more expensive for the body to descend, since the increased energy consumption at rest will continue for some time. And if the person choosing to go up or down the stairs has the goal of increasing the final energy consumption, then it is better to choose the descent. At the same time, immediately after climbing a certain number of flights of stairs, more energy will, of course, be required to climb.

A group of scientists from Edith Cowan University (Australia) and National Taiwan Normal University decided finally clarify what is healthier for you - going down the stairs or going up. In 2017, they recruited a group of 30 women over the age of 60 who were overweight. For 12 weeks, half of the volunteers walked down from the sixth floor and took the elevator up. The second group was less fortunate: they walked up the stairs to the sixth floor and took the elevator down. In the first week it was necessary to go up or down only twice, but gradually the load was increased. Scientists analyzed a number of health parameters: cholesterol and insulin in the blood, blood pressure, bone mineral density, and maximum isometric contraction force of the knee. Speaking about the group descending the stairs, lead researcher Kazunori Nosaka noted: “They had significantly lower blood sugar and insulin levels, improved glucose tolerance test scores, decreased triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol), and increased high-density lipoprotein (good cholesterol).” All this indicated that the descent generally improved the health of the body and reduced the risk of diabetes. The group that climbed also improved their health indicators, but not as significantly. Overall, the scientists found that taking stairs was better for improving health and fitness.

Tony Kaye, Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Northampton, explains mechanics of eccentric exercises. Fewer muscle fibers receive more force, resulting in micro-damage to those muscles. After training, the body expends energy to regenerate these microdamages. Thus, despite the fact that more calories are burned during the ascent itself, the totality of descending the stairs and then restoring the body is a more energy-intensive process. According to Kay's calculations, the acceleration of metabolism after a 30-minute eccentric workout can last up to 72 hours, during which time the body will actively consume calories, even while at rest.

In addition to the physical health benefits, descending can also improve your mental state. Kazunori Nosaka notedthat during the descent the brain experiences a more serious load, since it is necessary to better control the muscles. Presumably, it may reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Nosako's hypothesis is not based on empty location: exists a lot evidence that physical activity slows down speed progression these diseases.

Thus, our own sensations from walking up the stairs mislead us. In fact, the descent is more energy-consuming for the body and is generally healthier than the ascent. Descent works especially well for preventing diabetes and lowering bad cholesterol, which can protect against a number of diseases.

Cover image: Photo by form PxHere

Updated January 29, 2025. A fragment has been added to the text about two classifications of energy consumption (from the point of view of physics and biophysics / physiology) and, accordingly, a discussion of how movement up the stairs changes energy consumption. For each of these sciences (physics and biophysics/physiology) the answer is different. In addition, in the text we mixed the answer to the question about energy consumption with the answer to the question about the usefulness of both processes (ascent and descent) for humans. Therefore, we have changed the verdict to “This is not certain” and advise readers to draw their own conclusions only after reading the text in full. The previous version can be found at link.