Running stairs?

Yeah stairs rule. We ran stair and hill workouts for near the entire first half of the track season. Worst part was trying not to fall when they'd get slick with water/sweat/snow from outside. I didn't feel it was any harder on my joints, in fact I kinda liked it.

I wish the university would let me run stairs inside of the football stadium. I don't want to get charged for trespassing, so I'm not even going to try it.
 
Running long distances is far worse on your joints than stairs. Compare how many steps you are actually doing to the amount of pounding your joints take on a long jog.
 
As I have had some training in marathon running, running sprints on inclinations is a fantastic workout.

One issue that should be a concern, and may very well be a given. Work hard going up, and take your rest coming back down. When running or walking down and inclination your knees experience 3 times the amount of impact they would when running on a flat surface. Running up an inclination actually produces less impact on the knees.

Just a FYI.
 
Im running stairs 3x a week to complement my bjj training..

I run 6 floors up, 12 flights and then walk them down and then sprint back up.

Takes about 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down. I go as fast as i can up, and walk down.

I go for 15 minutes. By the last flight of stairs i barely want to step up.. i started with 10 minutes and worked up... Its just a quick thing i can do when i get off work to get some HIIT training . I lost 6 lbs in the last 2 weeks doing it.

Normaly end up running 120 flights of stairs atleast.. always pushing to beat then previous days time.
 
^^^ I do a similar set myself. It's a good workout if you get a chance to do it, it's really handy for me as I work in an office building where I am alone in it for a couple hours a day except for maybe a janitor and use some time to do the stairs before eating. I also do sprints of sorts through doors of one office to another to another (almost a maze shape the offices are here) and back around to complement the stair exercises, but if I had to pick one over the other, I'd take the stairs. No reason not to do stairs, sprints, long distance, each as you can.
 
Stairs certainly would be a good alternative. You may also want to consider skipping rope, or doing Bas' MMA workout as well. Mixing things up is the way to go. Be careful though, I find stairs (especially gonig down) very hard on my knees and a missed step can be serious trouble.
 
I run stairs at the university football stadium. Does anybody have any advise to give me on how to run stairs for MMA? Should I sprint up one of the flight of stairs then walk down and repeat. What I was doing before was just running hard but kind of pacing myself and jogging down the stairs and up them.

By the way this is the most brutal leg workout you can get my legs have never burned so bad after running stairs and I have wrestled ran cross country and lift weights.
 
Theres a nice stair case near where I live.

We call it the 380 stair.

Because it has 380 steps.

Brutal.
 
Do you guys run normal width stairs or are they wide?


I would be seriously concerned about stacking it when tired if they were normal stairs
 
In HS and College wrestling
we ran stairs.. sometimes with a dude on your back.
Hills too.

Stairs can be hard on the joints. but Ice foam rolling and a being in good condition to start is a good Idea..

We also ran lond distances, and did sprints, suicides, HIIT and farklet...

so i think you got to do it all- personally I needed the Long runs to recoup-
let the body go on automatic while I rest the mind... we never did "slow runs"
we had to do 3, 5, 8, 10, and 13 mile runs all to time. Fast 10 miles had to be under one hour
do the math.

if your knees ankles feet start to bother you , with stairs, try hills..
hills not available go take a spinning class, and be prepared to throw the F**k up.

got to mix it up or its not worth anything.

last thought on stairs... use a sand bag if your a smaller dude bring a dude with you..
and piggy back him.
 
Running stairs is great for conditioning. I would think that running is worse for the joints than running stairs. Running has a lot of harsh impact on the joints, especially sprinting. Stairs are not like bunny hops, or lunges, or jump hops because you're really not putting your weight before your knees. It also strengthens the muslces that keep the knees in place. I run stairs occassionally and I have had no knee issues from it. It's good stuff. But I do get issues from time to time with running and those other exercises I mentioned. And I think hills are worse than stairs because you change the weight bearing on your ankles to run hills, but you don't have to with stairs because they are flat. Running hills sometimes messes with my shins and ankles.
 
I run 2 times a week to supplement my cardio training. When I run, I incorporate three types of runs into my workout.

I start with a slow jog around the track equal to a half mile to a mile...or until I'm warmed up.

Next, I start with running stairs. I sprint up stadium stairs, jog across 3 sections, sprint down stairs jog across to starting point, rinse and repeat.

When this set is finished, I take a short break to stretch and catch my breath. I head down to the football field and start with the interval tarining. Sprint from the end zone to the 50 yard line then do lunges, Muay Thai knees, sidesteps or whatever back towards the end zone. Once back in the end zone, I'll do 20 pushups or 50 situps, rinse and repeat.

To cap it off, I'll jog another 2 miles at a slow pacewith the next to last lap briskly and a nice mellow walk to cap it off.

This has always been my rouine and it works well for me.
 
NormanBaitmen said:
I run stairs at the university football stadium. Does anybody have any advise to give me on how to run stairs for MMA? Should I sprint up one of the flight of stairs then walk down and repeat. What I was doing before was just running hard but kind of pacing myself and jogging down the stairs and up them.

By the way this is the most brutal leg workout you can get my legs have never burned so bad after running stairs and I have wrestled ran cross country and lift weights.
Click to expand...

I'd sprint up one, walk back down it, jog to the set, explode up it, walk down, etc.

IMHO, that kind of explode/slow recover/build back up/explode pretty well replicates a fight.
 
Me being flat footed, it really takes a toll on me running long distances. I stick to Interval Sprinting and usually finish with stairs.

Being flat footed is not fair...i would be in 10 times better shape if it wasn't for these flat dogs...damn the luck!!!
 
I mix it up every time. For instance, two days ago, we ran at the high school stadium (about 30 rows I think). First round was sprint up, walk across to the next set of stairs, jog down, sprint up the same stairs you came down, walk across to next set and repeat this till you get to the end (7 sets of stadiums, last stadium didn't count, it was just a walk down, walk back to finish and rest for a total of 2-3 minutes including the walk back). Second round was the same as the first round. Then the 3rd and 4th rounds were 2 sets of hopping up the bleachers, 3 sets of sprinting, 2 more sets of bleacher jumping, then walk back to the beginning (about 2-3 minutes rest). Ended up being a great workout.
 
I'm interested in hearing how you guys break up your stair workouts. I run stairs once a week and hill sprints another 2. For stairs, I have a 58 step staircase that I run 18x, 6 sets of 3. Anyone...
 
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