It’s the end of our stairs challenge, so tell us how it went! Did you do a lunge-focused lower body workout? Try our ladder of increasingly difficult push-ups?
As reader hellhog points out, each level of stair pushups uses a slightly different set of muscles. While a flat push-up uses your chest, decline pushups (with your hands lower than your feet) put more emphasis on your shoulder muscles. In gym terms, it’s like the difference between a bench press, incline bench, and overhead press. Or to put it another way, it’s the difference between a vertical press and horizontal press. Whether this is a pro or a con depends on what kind of a workout you’re trying to get. If you’re looking for variety, the stair progression can be a good way to get it.
If you’d like to continue with more exercises in this vein, try tricep dips on a few different levels of stairs, or planks or side planks. We’ve only scratched the surface of upper and lower body exercises you can do on stairs, so sound off in the comments if you’ve found others you love!
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