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

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

3. You’re tapping into various kinds 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, enable you along. But once 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 result in the buildup of hydrogen ions and carbon dioxide in your muscles and blood; you wish oxygen to clear that out to assist stop fatigue from creeping in. This higher demand forces your body to reply by increasing your heart rate and respiration rate, which is why you could arrive at the highest of the staircase huffing and puffing, Hart explains.

If your workout routine is heavily focused within the endurance space—like steady-state running, biking, walking, or swimming, which trains type one muscle fibers—your body may 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 make use of them to climb a flight of stairs, it’s going to be far more taxing in your body.

4. The effects of gravity are real.

Stair climbing may easy because it’s essentially just walking, right? Well, the important thing difference is gravity. When you’re strolling on flat ground, you’re propelling your body forward. But once you’re walking up stairs, you’re moving forward up. Most people take larger steps—and lift their hips higher—to do that, which engages more muscle fibers, says Hart. At the identical time, gravity is doing its best to drag you back down, and your muscles must work additional time to surmount that resistance, as SELF previously explained.

All this increases the quantity of labor your heart must do, Dr. Lala says. As Hart puts it, your heart rate and respiration rate will then amp up to provide your body with the oxygen to finish that extra work.

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

There’s a principle in exercise called “specificity,” which principally just means your body adapts to the very particular demands you place on it, Hart explains. This implies that if you ought to turn into a greater runner, it is advisable run usually; spending hours on other types of endurance exercise—like riding your bike or logging laps within the pool—just won’t be as effective.

Same goes for stair climbing: Even in the event you’re doing movements that train those type two muscle fibers—like squats, deadlifts, and leg presses—those exercises are still the precise movement and possibly won’t carry over in addition to actually climbing stairs would, Hart says. So unless your workout or each day life includes ascending an entire bunch of steps, it’s no wonder tackling a staircase will feel hard and fatiguing when you’ve gotten to do it.

But there are some cases where breathlessness hint at an issue.

In general, feeling drained and breathless at the highest of a staircase will be totally normal and never an indication of anything concerning. But there are a number of instances by which stair climbing fatigue warrant a check in together with your doctor: