Get More Impact From Your Walking Workout With A Stair Stepper

When looking at a stair stepper exercise equipment for your Shreveport home, understanding why walking works better than using a stair stepper and the options that you have can help you make a better choice. Just like any other piece of exercise equipment, a stair stepper lets you control a number of different exercise variables that can be difficult to control when exercising outside the home and has different impacts when it comes to your body. Everything from calories burned to areas targeted is completely different between walking and working out on a stair stepper.

Calories Burned

Assuming that the person working out is around 150 pounds, female, and around 30 years of age, you can begin to break down the different calories burned from different exercises. We will take a person of these average statistics and say that they are working out for 15 minutes at a time. That is, 15 minutes on the stair stepper or 15 minutes of walking at a somewhat leisurely pace outside. Comparing the two will tell us about how you can maximize the impact of your workout even in a small amount of time.

At 15 minutes walking at 2 miles per hour will burn 47 calories on average. Walking at 3 miles per hour will burn 74 calories in a quarter hour on average. Finally, walking at 4 miles per hour, which is faster than many people jog, you will burn an average of 88 calories. None of these numbers are very impressive, but over an hour they would become 188 calories, 296 calories, and 352 calories respectively.

Walking on a stair stepper for 15 minutes with the same stats will burn 119 calories on average. For an hour of work that would put you close to 500 calories burned, or a pound of fat loss for every 7 hours on the machine. These numbers are a bit more impressive, and are for moderate use, not workouts where you put in your all or increase the difficulty, which could burn up to 1000 calories in an hour.

The difference between even the highest level of running and the lowest level of effort on the stair stepper is over 100 calories difference in an hour, or an extra 20 minutes of walking fast. For someone who is trying to lose weight or get into shape in their spare time, over the course of a year that could add up to a number of extra pounds of fat, fewer gains in terms of muscle, and even lowered levels of health. It seems obvious then to go for the larger numbers of calories burned over time.

Areas Targeted

Walking does tend to fall under the cardiovascular category in terms of exercise, but that doesn’t mean that it targets the whole body. For the most part, it helps with lungs and legs. It doesn’t tend to be very intensive, and it mostly just targets the lower legs. This does make it an enjoyable form of exercise for people who can manage to squeeze in a few minutes walking between appointments or in the evenings. However, it does mean that it will take quite a while for that kind of exercise to show real results.

A stair stepper, such as the ones sold at Fitness Expo stores will target a larger number of areas on the body, has the same cardiovascular impact, and is going to be much quicker to show results. It targets the back of the legs, the upper legs, the muscles in the buttocks, and when done properly can even help target the arms and chest.

A stair stepper will lead to the body being sore for the first few uses, making it important to pace yourself and not push yourself too far. Most of the newer models, such as the Matrix Fitness C5x Climbmill, will have built-in programs that allow you to begin with smaller workouts and then build up. these built-in programs also allow you to adjust the workout once you get used to one setting, making it so that a stair-stepper is always challenging, rather than walking outside which becomes overly easy and less challenging at some point.

Negative Impacts

One thing that many people don’t take into account when they are looking at exercises is the negative impacts that the motions they are undertaking can have on their body. One of the most common of these is the impact that running and walking has upon the knees. Most outdoor ground in Shreveport is not particularly forgiving and jars the body, leading to stress on the knee joints. Exercise equipment, on the other hand, is generally going to be designed to reduce these impacts to the body.

This is particularly important for people who are growing older as joint related stress can bring on arthritis, aging-related pains, and degeneration of the body much faster. Sadly, many people begin to get older and feel the need to exercise, hoping that it will help keep them younger. When done incorrectly, the exact opposite occurs, causing the body to break down faster and making the exercise that they are doing much less effective.

Another negative impact can be exercising outside in inclement weather. This is generally where most people fall behind on their fitness goals as facing nasty weather is a challenge they would rather not meet. This can be completely avoided by simply basing one’s workout rotation around an indoor routine that can be done even during periods of extreme heat or cold.

In Closing

Overall, best exercise equipment for home use is going to depend upon your lifestyle and your needs. Stair steppers are one of the many options that help lead to full body fitness and can be used by people at any fitness level. They tend to hold up better in terms of long-term use than things like treadmills, and they are much smaller and easier to deal with than whole body gyms, weight sets, and other options available.