Stairway to Heaven

Everyone knows that the stepper is how you forge buns of but a select few also know how to get a full fat burning cardio and core-strength workout at the same time. Shhh...here's the secret.

Unless I'm indeed unique (and I don't think I am) there are a lot of us who are reminded every day of what a dramatic workout something as simple as a flight of stairs can provide. Yet when it's office chucking-out time and the gyms are suddenly chocka there is pretty much always a free stepper sulking in a comer somewhere. The humble stepper is possibly the most underused and ill-used piece of kit in the whole gym, and all because of a simple misunderstanding about how to use it.

To come at the stepper from a different angle (from behind to be precise), let's consider what exactly it is working. While steppers differ slightly from each other in design and the way they provide resistance, the bottom (sorry) line is that they present you with resistance which you overcome by pressing down or stepping up with alternate legs. To do that your body has to recruit a number of muscles, most notably the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus, known collectively to gym bunnies as the glutes, and to everyone else as your bum. Because of this most people see the stepper as a means of toning the buttocks, and for some reason that means that it is largely left to the women. This is presumably some kind of throwback to the days when men honestly believed that biceps were what attracted the opposite sex.

Which leaves us with a couple of people desultorily bobbing up and down on the stepper while a couple of doors down there are rooms full of men and women doing traditional leg exercises such as lunges and squats or queuing for half an hour to get on the treadmill.

Let them. Because the fewer people who understand the potential of the stepper, the more machines there are for the rest of us.

The first thing to understand is that stairs are hard work because we are supporting our own bodyweight and lifting it up, making each step a mini-lunge or squat. Up the resistance of the stepper so you have to launch yourself a little harder and you now have a tough workout for the quads at the front of your thighs and the calves at the back of your legs. Upping the resistance also takes the stepper into serious cardio workout territory - which shouldn't come as a surprise to those of us who get out of breath going upstairs. Last, but not at all least, comes the biggest single tip of standout stepping. It's breathtakingly simple, very little known (judging by the gyms I go to) and changes absolutely everything. You ready for this? OK, here it comes. Just. Let. Go.

Give it some and let go, that's all there is to it. You see people hanging off steppers in all sorts of ways, resting their bodyweight on their arms (bad for the wrists), or hanging off backwards. What you don't see are people who let go and use their arms as counterbalances to their pumping legs.

Let go, and now your legs are taking all your bodyweight which massively increases the strength and cardio benefits. Letting go forces you to balance which brings in all the muscles of the torso - obliques, abs and back - and builds up core strength. No matter how quickly or slowly you go you'll now bum far more calories in a much shorter period of time. With all your weight on your legs (and thus driving the stepper) you will burn calories at around twice the rate you get on a stationary bike and not so much less than when you're on the treadmill. Unlike the treadmill, however, the stepper remains a very low-impact activity with minimal shock on the joints. Even serious runners can benefit from the stepper as a way of upping the 'mileage' in their leg muscles without overloading knees or provoking shin splints.