Walking up and down stairs

 Rating: 3.0/5.0
no_photo
Posted by byhtomit
Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 4:20pm filed under Cardio - Walking

Calories Burned:  531 calories per hour   (based on a body weight of 150 lbs.)
Instructions: 
The above calorie count is based on a weight of 188 pounds (85.35kg) and a flight of stairs being 4.47m high.  The formula is E = mgh / 1000 where E = energy in calories, m is the mass (your weight) in kg, g is gravity (9.81 m/s²), h is the height of the flight of stairs in meters.  In this case, E = (85.35) x (9.81) x (4.47) / 1000 = 3.74 calories per flight of stairs going up and about 1.40 calories burned going down (about 37½% of going up calories). 
It takes an average of 18 seconds to ascend one flight of stairs and about 10 seconds to descend one flight.  In order to compute the time for one hour of exercise, we need the formula 10f + 18f = 3600, which translates to 28f = 3600, and f = 128.57 flights of stairs in one hour round trip.  If I do, 128.57 flights of stairs up and 128.57 flights down, with going downstairs taking about 37.5% of the needed calories, this would produce this equation:

E = (3.74 cal/flt x 128.57 flts) + (1.40 cal/flt x 128.57 flts), so E = 661.65 calories per hour.
Tags:  walking, stairs

Exercise Comments

You are almost correct. You calculated energy in Joules or Kilojoules using mgh and not Calories (capital C for Kilocalories). So 3.74 kj = 0.893 Calories. So total in one hour using your numbers would be 158 Calories. Of course that is just the work done. Considering metabolic processes are not that efficient, you would burn off quite a bit more than that.
 
October 7, 2014 at 2:06pm
I suppose this is where it would be beneficial to use a fitbit ... Christmas just may come early for me this year :-)
 
August 13, 2013 at 12:36pm
Actually, no. The simple thing about this math is that no matter how long it takes someone to do this exercise, they will burn the same amount of calories. The same holds true for running versus walking. Running a mile and walking a mile burns the same number of calories. The difference is how much power is being expended to reduce the amount of time it talkes to acheive the goal.
 
April 19, 2011 at 1:48am

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