Breakthroughs

Be a stairs master

e won’t sugarcoat it: Running stairs blows. The upside is that it’s a quick way to break a sweat and turn your legs to jelly. But how hard do you need to go to reap the benefits? To find out, scientists at McMaster University in Canada had subjects run on a StairMaster and then run one or two flights of stairs in short intervals. In the end, both protocols increased peak oxygen uptake — by 12% in the first test and 7% in the second — and demonstrated that brief and intense stair climbing could improve cardiovascular fitness in