4 flights of stairs in under a minute

hroderick

If you can, you pass the latest inferential self test

GiddyupTim

I saw this too.
I kinda of like it. This is the kind of very simple test that anyone can do for themselves and maybe give themselves a bit of motivation to do better when they already know they should but have not been.
It reminds me that, before the safety elevator was invented, buildings were never built that were more than five stories tall. People did not mind much walking up five flights of stairs -- they were in better physical conditioning generally -- but they would start to balk at six flights.

fittocycle

I like it too. My husband and I are both almost 58. We just had a new home built and I deliberately chose a 2 story floor plan. I thought we needed the daily challenge of climbing stairs. Might change my mind in a few years but I figure it’s use it or lose it! 😂

aokoye

I'm almost positive I can do that, but I don't time myself walking up stairs. My main issue with the lack of working elevators in some places is that there are plenty of people who have mobility issues unrelated to physical fitness that make elevators more than a little useful. That's also my primary issue with this test of sorts, though I realize that the authors are probably not thinking about a "one size fits all" test (if you could even make such a test).

FL_Hiker

I can run 18 miles but stairs kick my *kitten* still lol, oh well 😔

GottaBurnEmAll

I'm a very active person, but I have arthritis that has deformed some joints that make navigating stairs difficult for me. I can do it, but there's no way I can do it quickly.

Redordeadhead

40 seconds, but it was difficult!

foxtrot1965

FL_Hiker wrote: »

I can run 18 miles but stairs kick my *kitten* still lol, oh well 😔

There are professional stair climbers. I only know this because I did a stair climb for the CN Tower. Even the professionals will tell you that stairs kick their *kitten*!

jesspen91

Phew I did it in 30. I live on the 9th floor and my lift breaks all the time so I've definitely had some practice. I also used to work on the 3rd floor and never got the lift.

Lounmoun

How people perform on an exercise test that requires them to move very briskly can predict their risk of premature death from heart disease, cancer and other causes, a study presented Thursday at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology found.

Those with good exercise capacity — capable of high levels of physical exertion, say, on a treadmill — had less chance of dying early of any cause.

The participants in the study underwent an exercise echocardiogram, but there’s a much easier method to check your exercise capacity in a similar way: See if you can climb four flights of stairs at a fast pace — in under a minute — without having to stop, said Dr. Jesús Peteiro, the study author and a cardiologist at University Hospital A Coruña in A Coruña, Spain.

If you can do it, you have good functional capacity. If not, it’s a sign you need more exercise, he noted.

I was able to do the stairs in under a minute. I do climb stairs multiple times every day. I have not been on a treadmill in years so I wonder how that would go.

AnnPT77

It seems like there have been quite a few of these tests I've seen trumpeted over the years: Grip strength, getting up from the floor (how fast and by what method), number of squat-to-touch-chair in X seconds (or maybe it was checking number of seconds for X reps, can't recall), and others I'm forgetting.

There's nothing wrong with the idea, from one perspective: Most active/fit people will be able to do these things with more speed/facility than same-aged people who are less active/fit, and being active/fit correlates with health and longevity. When you look at any one of these tests on a large-group basis, sure, doing better on the test correlates with health and longevity.

However, I've seen people have exactly the wrong reaction to these findings, too. The most extreme example I saw was people reading about the grip test one, then saying they were going to go work on their grip strength in order to live longer - not joking, I think (comments on Facebook, so not unexpected).

And, as some have observed, there are physical limitations people can have that don't let them "get a good score" on one or more of these tests, even though they're otherwise healthy/fit and are probably doing a decent job of pursuing health and longevity. These folks are in the statistical tails of results in the studies, as people who couldn't do the test, but thrived pretty well despite it (along with a few who did everything wrong and lived a long time anyway ).

It was a bit of an aside in the linked article, but I really liked this bit:

Freeman . . . said it would encourage him even more to push his patients to exercise regularly and vigorously.

He recommended 30 minutes a day of “breathlessness.”

“When people say, ‘I can’t exercise because I’m short of breath,’ I say, ‘Great, what a wonderful thing, I want you to use that your advantage,’” Freeman said. “I want you to warm up and get right to that point where you’re breathless — not passing out, but challenged. And I want you to stay there for as long as you can. Take a break when you need to and then resume.”