Korean J Sports Med.  2019 Mar;37(1):17-28. 10.5763/kjsm.2019.37.1.17.

Effects of Stair Climbing on Blood Pressure, Lipid Profiles, and Physical Fitness

• Moon JW
• Yoon YS
• Lee HJ
• Jeong TH
• Hwang YH
• Kim HS

• KMID: 2440633
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.5763/kjsm.2019.37.1.17

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of the study is to identify the effects of worker's stair-climbing on blood pressure, lipid profiles, and physical fitness.
METHODS
After recruiting 114 healthy adult women aged 20 to 64 years who have had sedentary for more than 3 months, we divided into two groups: the stair group (SG, n=57) and control group (CG, n=57). SG was supposed to do stair-climbing in daily life like workplace and home for 12 weeks. To investigate the effects of the lifestyle changing of stair-climbing, resting blood pressure, heart rate (HR), and lipid profiles were measured before and after 12-week stair-climbing. Also, physical fitness items such as peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak), back muscle strength, sit and reach, isokinetic strength of knee joint, static and dynamic balance were measured.
RESULTS
As a result of the 12-week lifestyle changing of stair-climbing, resting systolic blood pressure (SBP; p < 0.05) and HR (p < 0.01) were significantly decreased in SG. Low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) was significantly reduced in SG (p < 0.05). There was a significant improvement in the VO2peak (p < 0.001). There were a significant improvement in back strength (p < 0.001) and bilateral knee extensor (60°/sec: p < 0.05, p < 0.01, 180°/sec: p < 0.01, p < 0.01) and knee flexor (180°/sec: p < 0.01, p < 0.05) of isokinetic strength. There were significant improvements in static balance of one leg standing eye-closed (p < 0.05) and dynamic balance of left/right velocity (p < 0.01), forward/backward velocity (p < 0.01).
CONCLUSION
In this study, 12 weeks of lifestyle changing of stair-climbing improved SBP, resting HR, LDL-C, VO2peak, back and knee strength, static and dynamic balance as well as increased physical activity volume of stair-climbing in the daily living.

Keyword

Blood pressure; Lipids; Peak oxygen consumption (VOâ‚‚peak); Stair-climbing; Strength

MeSH Terms

Adult
Back Muscles
Blood Pressure*
Female
Heart Rate
Humans
Knee
Knee Joint
Leg
Life Style
Motor Activity
Oxygen Consumption
Physical Fitness*

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Stair climbing daily record.

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  Fig. 2 Physical activity. (A) Stair group. (B) Control group.

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