Why Do I Get Out of Breath Walking Up Stairs If I’m in Good Shape?

Even if you can run a 5K with ease, crush a 45-minute spin session, or power through a HIIT class, that looming flight of stairs can make you really start to doubt your fitness prowess—especially when you know you’ll be huffing and puffing your way up. “Am I really not in as good shape as I think?” Or: “Is something wrong with my heart!?”

Those questions are perfectly understandable, but let us reassure you: This phenomenon is way more common than you may think, and in lots of cases it’s actually NBD.

In fact, even the most fit folks among us can be humbled by a staircase. Exercise physiologist Heather Hart, CSCS, runs ultramarathons (that’s any race longer than 26.2 miles) and absolutely can sometimes still experience breathlessness when climbing up one. “For the majority of us, it’s totally normal,” Hart, a South Carolina–based certified run coach and founder of Hart Strength and Endurance Coaching, tells SELF. To find out why you might be feeling it—and what it actually means for your fitness—keep on reading.

1. You didn’t warm up.

Chances are, you probably don’t do a full-blown warm-up prior to climbing a flight of steps. “You're not stretching and jumping up and down and going for a jog [first],” Anuradha Lala, MD, advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at Mount Sinai, tells SELF. And while that’s totally understandable (you’d probably get some side-eyes if you busted out a whole calisthenics routine at the foot of a staircase), it also means your body isn’t really prepped for the work ahead.

“The whole point of a warm-up is that we’re priming our entire body—our muscles, our heart and our lungs—for exercise and we ease into that,” Hart explains. “When you’re climbing the stairs and you haven’t done any sort of warm up, it’s a very sudden change in oxygen needs for our body.” After all, that’s what it needs to create that extra energy to power you up them.

This rapid jump-in demand can quickly spike your heart rate and breathing rate. “You literally are going from zero to a hundred without warning,” Dr. Lala explains—and that just plain feels hard. It’s the same as if you were to spontaneously start sprinting versus beginning with an easy jog and building up your pace. The former would probably feel pretty uncomfortable, since your body hasn’t had a chance to gradually acclimate to the work you’re asking it to do. So if you notice that climbing stairs after you’ve power walked a couple blocks feels easier than when you’ve literally just gone from the couch to staircase, this might be why.

2. A bunch of muscles, including some really big ones, are at play here.

There are a lot of different parts working together to move you up the stairs. Climbing engages the largest muscles in your body, including your glutes, quads, and calves, Dr. Lala explains. It also recruits your core muscles too, Hart says.

And the steeper the stairs, the harder they’re going to have to work, Hart says, since taking bigger steps requires you to recruit a greater number of muscle fibers. Like we mentioned, your body needs oxygen to supply your muscles with energy; the more in play, the more oxygen you’ll need to sustain that effort—hence the increased breathing you may notice when tackling stairs.

3. You’re tapping into different types of muscle fibers.

Speaking of muscle fibers: When you’re doing easy aerobic activity, like walking on even ground, your type one fibers, or endurance-based slow-twitch ones, help you along. But when you start climbing stairs, you engage your type two fibers—a.k.a. your fast-twitch ones, which support powerful movements like lifting heavy weights or sprinting.

This can lead to the buildup of hydrogen ions and carbon dioxide in your muscles and blood; you need oxygen to clear that out to help stop fatigue from creeping in. This higher demand forces your body to respond by increasing your heart rate and breathing rate, which is why you may arrive at the top of the staircase huffing and puffing, Hart explains.

If your workout routine is heavily focused in the endurance space—like steady-state running, biking, walking, or swimming, which trains type one muscle fibers—your body might not be as used to engaging type two fibers as, say, someone who lifts heavy weights or does explosive exercises like sprints or plyometrics. So when it comes time to use them to climb a flight of stairs, it’s going to be that much more taxing on your body.

4. The effects of gravity are real.

Stair climbing may seem easy since it’s essentially just walking, right? Well, the key difference is gravity. When you’re strolling on flat ground, you’re propelling your body forward. But when you’re walking up stairs, you’re moving forward and up. Most people take bigger steps—and lift their hips higher—to do this, which engages more muscle fibers, says Hart. At the same time, gravity is doing its best to pull you back down, and your muscles have to work overtime to surmount that resistance, as SELF previously explained.

All this increases the amount of work your heart needs to do, Dr. Lala says. As Hart puts it, your heart rate and breathing rate will then amp up to supply your body with the oxygen to complete that extra work.

5. You haven’t actually trained for stair-climbing.

There’s a principle in exercise called “specificity,” which basically just means your body adapts to the very particular demands you place on it, Hart explains. This means that if you want to become a better runner, you need to run regularly; spending hours on other forms of endurance exercise—like riding your bike or logging laps in the pool—just won’t be as effective.

Same goes for stair climbing: Even if you’re doing movements that train those type two muscle fibers—like squats, deadlifts, and leg presses—those exercises are still not the exact movement and probably won’t carry over as well as actually climbing stairs would, Hart says. So unless your workout or daily life includes ascending a whole bunch of steps, it’s no wonder tackling a staircase will feel hard and fatiguing when you have to do it.

But there are some cases where breathlessness can hint at a problem.

In general, feeling tired and breathless at the top of a staircase can be totally normal and not a sign of anything concerning. But there are a few instances in which stair climbing fatigue does warrant a check in with your doctor:

• It takes a while to get back to baseline: “If you need to take several minutes of rest to recuperate, that’s not normal,” Dr. Lala says, as it could signal a potential heart issue like heart failure or a blockage in one of the arteries that supplies blood to the heart.
• You feel discomfort in your chest. “You should really never feel chest pain with exertion,” Dr. Lala says. This can be a sign of those heart issues as well.
• It suddenly got a lot harder. If you notice any abrupt change in the difficulty of stair climbing—for example, maybe it usually feels like a 6 out of 10 intensity for you, and then one day the same flight is suddenly a 9 out of 10—that’s another sign something might be going on, Dr. Lala says.

But as long as you don’t notice any of those red flags, getting your ass kicked by a flight of stairs is “not a concern at all,” Hart says. But if you want this task to be a little less taxing? Try climbing stairs more often. “It can get easier over time,” Hart says.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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