What are the Stairmaster Benefits?

Having been around for a very long time now, its longevity and reputation speak for themselves; however, you may still be wondering about the Stairmaster benefits and whether or not the Stairmaster is as relevant today as it was in years past.

I’d heard of the Stairmaster but had never seen, let alone used, one until I spent four weeks at my aunt’s house in Hawaii a couple of years ago.

During my stay, I used her Stairmaster Gauntlet Stepmill for 30 minutes, split into two sessions, 4 or 5 times a week.

My thighs looked and felt firmer at the end of my vacation than they had at the beginning.  This was a first for me.

Along with giving me a very effective workout, the Stairmaster enabled me to burn stacks of calories.

While I always have good intentions, I inevitably stray from my diet when on vacation.  As a result, I dread hopping on the scale once I’m back home.

That particular time I was thrilled to find I was the same weight I’d been before my trip.  I’d been eating more, and using the Stairmaster was my only exercise.

I thought about this recently and decided to research the Stairmaster benefits and drawbacks and write this article.  I hope it will be helpful to anyone who has been thinking about buying a Stairmaster.

The Stairmaster I used is no longer available.  Having compared the features and prices of various other models, I recommend the StairMaster SC5 Stairclimber as an excellent alternative.

Who do Stairmaster Workouts suit?

The low-impact nature of the exercise performed on the Stairmaster allows people of any fitness level to use the machine to improve their fitness, get stronger and more toned, lose weight, and experience the other benefits regular Stairmaster workouts offer.

What if I’ve Never Exercised Before?

Stairmaster Stepmill workouts are an excellent option for new exercisers.  That’s not to say the workouts are a walk in the park.  They’re not.

Most people find they sweat far more using a Stairmaster than when using other cardio fitness equipment.

Take it easy initially, and as your fitness improves, extend your sessions and include more challenging Stairmaster workouts in your program.

Are the Stairmaster Benefits Still Relevant in 2023?

Invented in 1983, the Stairmaster, AKA the Stair Climber or Stairmaster Stepmill, revolutionized the fitness industry.

It allowed people to engage in low-impact aerobic activity targeting the body’s major muscle groups.

Coming at a time when most fitness machines involved weights and resistance, stationary bikes, treadmills, and other cardio machines were not yet mainstream.

This being so, some may dismiss the benefits of the Stairmaster and believe it’s had its day.

While that could be said of the original model, the reality is the benefits of the Stairmaster Stepmill have increased over the years as research has gone into developing more efficient programming options.

Can’t I just use Regular Stairs?

Some people dismiss Stairmaster workouts as a gimmick, believing that going up and down a set of stairs will provide the same benefits.  This is simply not true.

While taking the stairs is undoubtedly beneficial and should be a part of your daily routine to be more physically active wherever and whenever you can, aspects of using the stairs don’t make them nearly as advantageous as doing Stairmaster workouts.

For example, unlike the Stairmaster, stairs don’t offer various resistance levels to maximize muscle toning, fat loss, and calorie burning.

As a result, toning will plateau much sooner when exercising on regular stairs than during Stairmaster workouts.

And after going up a set of regular stairs, you will have to come back down.

As with running down a hill, descending stairs is a high-impact activity that puts a lot of pressure on the lower body.

While the hips and ankles are impacted, the knees suffer the brunt of the force, which is around 3.5 times your body weight.  This amount of pressure on a small area can lead to pain and injury.

Stairmaster workouts, on the other hand, are low-impact and can strengthen the lower body, including the knees, helping ease pain and prevent injuries.

NB: If you have knee problems, get the ok from your doctor before starting a new exercise program.

How Long Should you use a Stairmaster?

Beginners can start with 5 to 10-minute workouts and build up from there.  If you’ve already been exercising for a while, you may be able to do longer workouts from the get-go.  I was able to when I started, but I’d been using an elliptical for several years.

Add an extra minute or two as you progress until you are doing 20 to 30 minutes at a time.

Twenty to thirty minutes on the Stairmaster, 3 to 5 times per week, will significantly improve your fitness and cardiovascular health.  This will be the case even if you work at a slow pace.

For example, climbing at 1 mile per hour on the machine will give you a workout equal to running on a flat treadmill at 6 mph, and the stress on your joints will be far less.

Are Longer Stairmaster Workouts Better?

The time you spend on the Stairmaster doesn’t always reflect the Stairmaster benefits you will gain.

The most effective Stairmaster workouts are between 20 and 60 minutes long.  You may think you will get faster and better results by working out on the Stairmaster for longer.  That is not necessarily the case.

The human body can handle stress and quickly adapt to challenging routines.  This being so, you won’t see better Stairmaster results by using the machine for over 60 minutes at a time.

This is because after about an hour of exercising, your body will adapt, and your heart rate will lower, taking you out of your maximum fat loss and fitness target range.  When this happens, you will burn fewer calories, so weight loss will slow.

What is the Average Number of Calories Burned on Stairmaster?

Studies have shown that on average, Stairmaster workouts burn twice as many calories as walking.

The calories burned on Stairmaster during workouts vary from person to person, with factors such as gender, weight, and how fast you step key.

Most Stairmaster machines have the facility to enter these details, enabling their onboard computer to provide an estimate of how many calories you burn during each workout.

In fact, Stairmaster weight loss results rank as some of the highest among all fitness machines, with users typically burning between 360 and 520 calories or more each hour of use.

What do the Best Stairmaster Workouts Involve?

The best Stairmaster workouts will depend upon your primary aim.

If you want to tone a specific muscle group, your workout will differ from someone who wants to lose weight or improve their cardiovascular fitness.

Regardless of your goal, your sessions should start with a Warm-Up.  They should build in resistance and speed, have variation, and end with a Cool-Down.

Alternating your workouts will prevent your body from becoming accustomed to the challenge of your sessions.

Mixing things up will also largely avoid the fitness and weight loss plateaus that commonly occur when repeatedly doing the same exercise.

For the best result, use the correct form, as described below.

3 Effective Stairmaster Workouts

What is the Correct Form?

For optimal Stairmaster benefits, it’s essential to maintain the correct form throughout your workout.

Do this by keeping your head up and ensuring your eyes look straight ahead.

Resist the tendency to stick your elbows out to the sides, hunch your shoulders up or lean forward onto the machine’s rails.  Doing so will decrease the effectiveness of your workouts and result in a lower calorie burn.

With your shoulders down and relaxed, place your right foot firmly onto the step, driving your heel into it, with your toes pointing slightly outwards.

Keep your hip flexors and glutes engaged, and allow your left shoulder to lift, then lift your right shoulder upwards as you step up with your left leg.  Alternate this movement.

Don’t lean into the rails.  Rest your hands on them lightly. They should assist you with balance only.

Using the Stairmaster this way, you will get a great lower body workout that hits all the right muscles.

NB: Work at a slower pace if you have to lean forward onto the rails to maintain the correct form.

Next, we look at the primary Stairmaster benefits.

The Primary Stairmaster Benefits

Stairmaster workouts are highly effective for toning and strengthening the butt, hips, thighs, and calves.

They also target the core and are excellent for improving balance, coordination, mobility, and strengthening the bones.

Workouts are low-impact, so gentle on the joints.  They offer outstanding cardio benefits and can help you lose weight.

Regular workouts can also improve mood and ease stress.

Keep reading to find out more about these benefits.

• Low-Impact 

Advancing age or injury can prevent us from engaging in the exercise needed to improve or maintain our health and fitness.

Often this is because the activity we undertake is too strenuous for our fitness level or too hard on our joints, so we give up.

With its smooth, very low-impact motion presenting minimal risk of injury, the Stairmaster can significantly benefit in such situations.

You will need to work hard and fast to take advantage of some cardio equipment.  In doing so, you risk stressing your joints.

With the Stairmaster, you will get an effective workout, even using it slowly.

This means that people whose physical condition prevents them from using other exercise equipment can often use a Stairmaster to improve their fitness, tone up, and lose weight safely and comfortably.

• Excellent Lower Body Workout 

Stairmaster workouts involve climbing and pushing down against resistance.  These movements make for an excellent lower-body workout.

Workouts focus on the glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves, building strength and lean muscle mass.

A strong lower body makes it easier to perform functional movements.  Functional movements involve bending to pick up a bag of groceries, squatting to sit, getting into or out of bed, etc.

People with weak lower body strength struggle to do these everyday tasks.  Those with lower body strength do them without giving it a second thought.

Most workouts and sports require lower body strength, so a strong lower body makes achieving fitness goals and sporting endeavors easier.

For optimal Stairmaster benefits, it’s essential to maintain the correct form throughout your workout, as outlined above.

• Great Core Workout

The majority of toning Stairmaster benefits focus on the lower body muscle groups.  You will also get a core workout by maintaining the correct form outlined above and engaging your abs.

When doing Stairmaster workout routines, you must maintain your balance as you step.  This repeated movement will strengthen your core, further improving your balance.

While good balance benefits people of all ages, it is especially advantageous for older folks as it can help prevent falls.

Additionally, a strong core improves posture and spinal alignment and helps to prevent or alleviate chronic back pain.

It also makes it easier to do day-to-day tasks, such as lifting young children, hoisting groceries out of the car, and even walking up a steep flight of stairs.

• Cardiovascular Conditioning

Using a Stairmaster 3 to 5 times a week for a minimum of 20 minutes will benefit your cardiovascular system and increase your stamina and endurance.

As your fitness improves, increasing your speed and working at a higher level of resistance will enable you to continue to grow your fitness.

Varying the programs and including HIIT workouts will improve your stamina even faster.

This is the case with stair climbing of any type.  However, the benefits of a Stairmaster or Stepmill with moving steps that necessitate you to climb continuously offer more significant benefits than a machine requiring that you only lift your feet and press down on the pedals.

This is because the former engages more hip and leg muscles, elevating your heart rate to a greater extent and burning more calories.

Some studies show that “stair climbing” significantly improves your VO2 Max, or maximal oxygen consumption, the oxygen volume your body can use during exercise.  The higher your VO2 Max, the more oxygen your body can use, and the better your aerobic fitness.

• Weight Loss

Among the Stairmaster benefits that draw so many people to it is that it allows for a high-calorie burn rate with a low-impact exercise.

The reason for this is two-fold.

Firstly, any exercise that engages the glutes – the body’s largest muscle group – typically burns the most calories.

Stairmaster workouts target and tone the glutes and the entire lower body, building muscle over time.  With a higher degree of muscle, you will burn more calories, even when resting.

Another reason the Stairmaster is an efficient calorie burner is that when using it, our heart rate very quickly elevates into the fat-burning range.  It’s estimated that during every 20-minute session, your pulse will be beating fast for around nineteen minutes.

This can make the number of calories burned on Stairmaster greater than that obtained from many other forms of exercise.

With a Stairmaster, the intensity of your workout can be as challenging as you want to make it.

However, less effort is needed to burn calories compared to using some other types of cardio equipment.

Heavier individuals tend to burn more calories than light ones during physical activity.  And putting in more effort and speed burns more calories than moving at a leisurely pace.

• Improves Balance and Coordination

Regular Stairmaster workouts improve balance and coordination because they challenge the body to maintain stability while performing dynamic movements.

The stepping motion requires the use of multiple muscle groups, including the legs, core, and stabilizer muscles, which work together to keep the body balanced.

Additionally, the repetitive nature of the exercise can help improve proprioception, or the ability to sense the position of one’s body in space, which is an important aspect of coordination.

• Improves Mobility

One of the most important Stairmaster benefits that is often overlooked is that regular workouts can improve mobility.  They do this by strengthening the muscles in the legs and hips, helping overall stability and balance.

Furthermore, the repetitive motion of stepping on and off of the machine can improve flexibility in the hips, knees, and ankles.  Over time, this can help reduce the risk of injury and improve overall mobility and function.

• Strengthens Bones

Regular weight-bearing exercise – physical activity that puts increased pressure on the bones for an extended period – such as stair climbing, can increase your bones’ mass and strength.

As strength or weight training is for your muscles, weight-bearing exercise is for your bones.  The more of this type of exercise you do, the stronger and denser your bones will become.

Strong bones provide strength, improve balance, and support your internal organs and muscles.

A strong bone structure supports your participation in sports and physical activity and enables you to stand straighter and so appear more youthful.

Our bone mass decreases as we age, putting us at risk for osteoporosis later in life.

Bone loss can start as early as age 20, so it is never too early to take preventative measures.

Research shows that after age 35, men and women experience a 1 percent bone loss yearly.  This increases to 2 to 3 percent for females three to five years after menopause.

Strong bones resist breaking during a fall, with fractures being more likely to occur in bones weakened by osteoporosis, especially in the hip, spine, and wrist.

A bone fracture later in life can result in a loss of independence that could be permanent or even death.

• Eases Stress

Individuals who exercise regularly experience lower levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine.

When we feel stressed about work or family-related issues, it’s common for our minds to wander instead of staying focused on what we’re doing at that very moment.  This can lead us down an endless spiral of negative thoughts.

Climbing on a Stairmaster can be meditative.

It’s not a replacement for therapy or meditation, but it can clear your head so you can focus on the present.  Rather than worrying about life’s problems, you’re focusing on moving your body.

Focusing on the present moment provides an escape from the world, allowing you to forget outside stresses and responsibilities for a while.

• Enhances Mood

We tend to focus on the physical benefits of exercise, but regular exercise also promotes better mental health and emotional well-being.  Individuals who exercise regularly also tend to have lower mental illness rates.

Research shows that exercising boosts dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins.

Low dopamine levels are linked to depression, while serotonin is a natural mood stabilizer.

Endorphins are “feel-good” chemicals that your body releases in response to pain, fear, and stress, making you feel happier, less stressed, and more relaxed.

Stairmaster Drawbacks

Clearly, there are many benefits of Stairmaster workouts; however, there are also some drawbacks, which we will look at next.

• Cost

Stairmaster Stepmills are pricy, but you won’t find a better fitness aid.  Period.

The top-of-the-line models are sturdy and durable and offer access to various programs and workouts targeting different fitness goals.  Buy one, and it will be the only exercise machine you will ever need.

• Space requirement

A true Stairmaster – not a stair stepper – requires a fair bit of room.  They don’t fold to store, and they are very heavy.  Once in place, you won’t be able to move it to free up space.

• Doesn’t work the upper body

Stairmaster workouts don’t target the upper body.  Swinging your arms as you step will burn additional calories but won’t build much strength or muscle tone.

Strength training with resistance bands or dumbbells at least two or three times a week will address this.

• Incorrect use can cause back pain

Using a Stairmaster without first warming up can result in injury, as can working out with improper form.

To prevent this, do some dynamic back stretches before working out, and don’t hunch over or lean on the handrails as you step.

NB: Read “What is the Correct Form?” before your first Stairmaster workout.

Final Thoughts on the Benefits of Stairmaster

If you’re in the market for exercise equipment and considering which to buy, don’t overlook the benefits of Stairmaster.

An excellent calorie burner, its muscle-toning potential for the glutes and thighs, in particular, is way beyond that of most exercise machines.

And, it does a great job of exercising the core.

With regular use, you will also improve your balance, coordination, and mobility, build stronger bones, and may even feel happier and less stressed.

Offering low-impact workouts, the risk of developing a stress injury when using a Stairmaster is far less than it is when doing some other exercise forms.

It can provide a very challenging workout, but even working at a slow pace, you will burn many calories.

As your fitness improves, you can increase the difficulty level of your Stairmaster workouts to keep challenged.

And, with so many Stairmaster workout routines possible, the likelihood of becoming bored is less, so you will be more likely to stick with it.

Due to its size and higher-than-average price tag, the Stairmaster Stepmill won’t be for everyone.

If, however, you have the space, it’s within your budget, and you decide to purchase one, I think you will be very pleased with it.

To experience the Stairmaster benefits at home without the hefty price tag, take a look at the Maxi Climber.

Far smaller, lighter, and foldable, and without all of the fancy extras, it is a fraction of the price of a Stairmaster.  It won’t give you the same workout, but it targets the same muscle groups.

If you are a heavier-set individual seeking a reasonably-priced alternative to the Stairmaster, check out the Xiser Commercial Mini StairMaster.  Its performance is far superior to that of many regular-sized steppers.

It can support a weight of up to 400 pounds and will fit into the smallest space.  (Click the previous link to read a review.)

You may also like to read this article on the Stair Climber Benefits.