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Is it faster to jog up the stairs or聽take聽them two at a time?

This question was posed as part of New 女生小视频鈥檚 Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other鈥檚 questions. Here鈥檚 what our readers had to say
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Is it faster to jog up the stairs or take them two at a time?

Andrew Hardwick
Ipswich, Suffolk, UK

Two at a time, definitely. I say this with personal experience from years in an office 135 stairs up.

Humans have evolved to scramble up brief steep slopes with long strides. Jogging was created to improve fitness, not speed.

Use the handrail. Not just for adding pull on the way up, but for maintaining momentum on turns in the staircase.

As for down? I could do only one at a time, but a friend with longer legs could do two at a time on the way down, too. I could jump the last three steps to each turn landing, though.

David Cordiner
Birmingham, UK

I used to run up stairs two or three at a time (I couldn鈥檛 do it now). It is certainly faster than using every step. Just walking two at a time is slow.

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