Just wondered: Is it normal that my legs always seem to be tired when I climb just a short flight of stairs. I do about 30KM's a week and still even on my off days the stairs at work just gets the better of me. It is not that I stay tired or anything, it is just that I would expect that being quite fit, my legs should not even wink after climbing 100 stairs! What can this be and is it only me!?
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maybe your leg muscles are a bit fatigued - my legs get pretty heavy after doing a lot and lack spring!
hope this helps - sure others will add more!
Hope this helps....keep running!
As my work involves endless stairs the only thing I can recommend is working on your quads and calfs,this takes the edge off it slightly.
I was thinking about the same thing only yesterday. I always get really sore legs going up stairs and get out of puff while non runing friends don't seem bothered. Very annoying as I consider myself fitter than them and I am the one puffing and panting !
A couple of years ago I had problems with my knees which turned out to be caused by one set of muscles round my kneee being stronger than another set so my knee caps were being pulled out of line. Walking up steps and lying in bed were both particularly painful.
It was cured by a couple of short physio sessions followed by stretching and step exercises. Basically if you put your foot flat on the step and lift your weight with your knee (rather than, as I do naturally, putting the ball of my foot on the step and lifting with the toes/ankles) it quite quickly builds the strength back up. It doesn't feel natural but it is a lot easier.
Before I started running, I could quite easily run up several flights of stairs - up to the point of being able to (just) manage 1 floor at work carrying 10 reams of paper!
Now that I'm running 10 miles a week, just walking up stairs is slightly painful - I put this down to the muscles wanting some time off to recover!
Climbing stairs is presumably an anerobic activity - more like a sprint, and I think there are two possible anerobic mechanisms that depend on the effort expended. Running probably won't make your short stair climbs much easier directly.