Stair-Climb Test Gave Only Rough Estimate of Aerobic Fitness

The work is a pilot study in people, published in 2026 in Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging. It is observational. It compared stair-climbing measures with laboratory results in 28 adults aged 40 to 70 (20 women and 8 men). It was small, and the authors call their findings preliminary.

The researchers recruited healthy, sedentary adults in the Jyväskylä region. People with chronic diseases needing medication, a body mass index above 30, or regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise of more than 60 minutes a week were excluded. Smokers were also excluded.

Each person did two lab tests. One was a maximal treadmill test that measures VO2 max, the highest rate at which the body can use oxygen. It is a standard gauge of aerobic capacity. The other was a leg press test that measured the peak force the legs can produce while held still.

On a second visit, about a week later, participants climbed indoor stairs at a constant, self-chosen brisk pace. One climb was four flights (81 steps, 14.28 metres of vertical rise). The other was six flights (121 steps, 21.48 metres). The team recorded climb time and mean vertical power, which is body weight lifted over the height climbed, divided by time. They also recorded perceived exertion and heart rate right after each climb.

Faster climbs and higher vertical power were linked to higher VO2 max and stronger legs. The standardized coefficients, a measure of how closely two things move together, ranged from −0.61 to −0.27 for climb time and from 0.41 to 0.73 for vertical power. Climb time is negative because a longer climb time went with lower VO2 max and weaker legs, while higher vertical power went with higher values of both.

Those links did not hold up under a basic check. After the researchers accounted for age and sex, the associations weakened and were no longer statistically significant. Age and sex both affect how fast people climb and how fit they are, so the stair measures may have been partly reflecting those two factors.

The team then built prediction models. For each outcome, a statistical method called LASSO regression picked the two best stair-based predictors. For VO2 max, the models explained between 21% and 52% of the differences between people (R² of 0.21 to 0.52). The authors describe this as weak to moderate. Cross-validated performance, a test on data held back from model building, was significantly different from zero. The models did not significantly predict lower-limb strength.

The authors conclude that a short, self-paced stair test may be a feasible field-based way to estimate aerobic capacity in middle-aged and older adults. They add that its predictive accuracy appears limited and should be further examined in larger samples.

For anyone tracking VO2 max over the years, the study offers a caution about simple do-it-yourself tests. A stair climb is easy and needs little equipment, but this one gave a rough estimate, not a measurement. The participants were also a narrow group: healthy, mostly women, and not very active. The findings may not apply to other people.

What to watch next

Larger studies that test whether stair-climb estimates hold up across more varied groups, and whether they can follow changes in fitness within the same person over time.

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