What Are The Benefits Of Stepper Machine Exercise?

I began using a mini stepper machine for my main cardio exercise back in 2019 after researching various options.

And in this article I share the many benefits of stepper machine exercise I discovered that convinced me to start using one in my own workouts.

Besides learning how stepper exercise can improve our health, I gathered some fitness tips from sports science experts on how to best put this machine to use in our workouts.

I’ll also pass along this helpful info in the coming sections.

Science resources included

As is my custom here on heydayDo, I will provide links to all of the relevant sports science & medical resources, clinical studies, and nutritional data used in this article.

 

What are the benefits of stepper machine exercise?

Regular exercise on a stair climber or step machine provides a low-impact workout that can improve our heart health.

It can tone & strengthen all lower body muscles, from our butt on down through our thighs & calves.

A stepper machine is small & portable, and it’s quiet while in use too.

It’s also easy to use a pair of dumbbells & add upper body exercises while pedaling on a mini-stepper, creating a full-body workout.

 

Improve your fitness on a stair stepper machine

Here’s a little more detail into each of the health & fitness benefits that regular workouts on a stepper machine provide us.

 

Stepper exercise is low-impact aerobic exercise

A stepper machine is considered low-impact exercise because your feet never leave the machine’s surface.

In a nutshell, this means that on a stepper you’re sparing your hip, knee, and ankle joints from the repeated impacts they endure while running or doing an aerobics class.

Those activities require that your feet leave the ground and come back down again hundreds or thousands of times, with your whole weight pressing down on all your lower body joints at impact.

It’s easy to see why they’re considered high-impact exercise.

High-impact exercise — which has its own set of benefits to be sure — may not be the best choice for older people (40 & up) or anyone else who is dealing with joint pain, arthritis, or bone loss issues like osteopenia or osteoporosis.

 

And so using a stepper machine to get in our low-impact cardio workouts is a great alternative. I love using one, & here’s the Xiser brand I bought:

That image links to its Amazon product page. But if you’re interested in the Xiser, I encourage you to use my coupon code below & buy it directly from Xiser.com, because you’ll save over $250 compared to Amazon’s price.

 

Which is better, the stepper or the treadmill?

Both the stair climber and treadmill machines offer very good health benefits depending on how they’re used.

The stair stepper machine is better at providing a low-impact cardio workout for people who don’t want to stress their joints, like those dealing with arthritis.

Their workouts can be longer on a stepper & pain-free too, because there’s no foot impact like there is when running or briskly walking on a treadmill.

And — ironically perhaps — a treadmill is better for your bones because it provides higher-impact exercise, and weight-bearing exercises like walking or running strengthen your bones.

Cardiovascular Stepper Exercise Benefits

Do you ever feel winded when you climb stairs? These types of machines mimic the natural motion our legs do when climbing stairs, so we feel it in our leg muscles plus we get good cardio work in too.

A stepper machine provides a moderate level of aerobic activity when you use it for your regular 30 to 60 minute steady-state cardio workout.

Steady-state just means that you’re going at the same pace throughout your workout.

The American Heart Assn. recommends we get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity in order to reap its benefits.

 

Heart strong

A great way that regular physical activity like this benefits us is that it improves our cardiovascular health.

This means our heart will get stronger from our consistent exercise and won’t have to work as hard during our daily life.

 

And the stair stepper is a great machine for these cardio benefits

And don’t forget your most important muscle, your heart.  Steppers can improve your heart health:

* It can help you with losing weight, which can in turn help lower your blood pressure.

* Exercises like being on a stair stepper, a stair climber, & real stair climbing can greatly improve your cardiovascular endurance.

* This act of climbing stairs strengthens your heart muscles so that it can provide oxygen-rich blood to the muscles in your body.

* Improving your muscle’s oxygen intake improves the amount of energy they have, which you’ll feel as having more strength for a longer period of time.

 

As a result we’ll gain more endurance, and normal tasks that involve physical effort – like carrying groceries up the stairs – will become much easier, thanks to regular exercise.

A stronger heart also gives us a chance to take part in more of life’s fun activities like playing ball with kids, going on a long bike ride, or hiking with our dog.

 

Stepper exercise for weight loss

Does a stepper machine burn calories? Of course it does.

Does a stepper machine burn enough calories to lose weight?

Well, that depends on a couple of things which we’ll look at now.

 

How many calories do stepper machine workouts burn?

To find this out, use an online calculator like this one or consult a chart that has a list of common exercise options (treadmill walking, jogging, skiing, stair climber machines, etc.).

Going with the calculator, I type in my personal stats:

• Age: 64
• Weight: 180
• Height: 6′ 2″
• Activity: stair step machine
• Duration: 60 minutes

Hit enter and voilà – for every hour on the stepper machine I’ll burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 572 calories.

Your number will be different of course.

Weight is the main determinant here, so if you weigh more than me you’ll burn more than 572 calories.

If you weigh under 180 lb., you’ll burn less.

 

To lose weight, burn more calories than you consume

Experts at the Mayo Clinic say we need to burn 3,500 calories more than we consume for every pound of weight loss.

Let me illustrate how to put weight loss in motion using a stepping machine those numbers of mine above in an example.

So if I do a 30-minute workout 6 times a week (3 hours’ worth), my calories burned is about 1,700 calories/week above what my body uses when it’s inactive**.

** – You need a special calculator to give you your BMR (basal metabolic rate), which is how many calories your body burns per day if it’s inactive.)

Here’s a free one you can use on HealthStatus.com: BMR calculator.

 

And if I clean up my diet and reduce my daily calories by 500 a day, there’s another 3,500 less calories per week.

Combining the better diet and the stepper machine exercise, in this example I’m now burning+reducing 5,200 calories/week more than what I’m taking in with all my eating & drinking.

That’s about a pound and a half of weight loss per week, which is great because medical experts agree that 1-2 lb. per week is a safe amount of weight loss.

It is possible to safely lose 3 lb. per week a few times during the course of a multi-month weight loss cycle.

But your diet has to be spot-on, & you absolutely have to get all the proper nutrients your body needs in order to recover from your workouts.

 

Will a stepper tone my stomach?

Aerobic exercise on a stepper will not directly tone your stomach unless you’re doing isometric tightening of your ab muscles off & on throughout your workout.

But since regular aerobic exercise is a good activity choice for losing weight, time on your mini stair stepper machine will help your stomach’s muscle tone show itself eventually thanks to your calorie burning.

This will improve your stomach’s appearance if you combine it with a lower calorie diet like we looked at earlier.

 

Strength training on a stepper

Your lower body will become stronger from regular cardio workouts on a step machine.

This is because a stepper workout provides a form of strength training for all of the major muscle groups in your lower body.

The resistance comes from the hydraulic piston/s that your muscles encounter as you press down on the step machine’s pedals.

Some mini-steppers like my Xiser have adjustable resistance:

So as your leg muscles get stronger you can increase the resistance you encounter in your workout, which in turn will improve the quality of your stair climber time.

 

Progressive resistance training 

Steadily and gradually increasing the intensity like this is called progressive resistance training.

This type of strength training workout program offers a boatload of benefits to your physical & mental well-being.

As you build the muscle mass from your butt down through your legs using your stepper exercise machine, your body’s metabolism will increase.

You will burn more calories while you are at rest as a result, and this will be a big assist to any fitness & weight loss goals you may have.

 

HIIT it for great stepper exercise benefits

I talked earlier about the traditional steady-state cardio workout where you cruise along at a moderate pace for 30 to 60 minutes.

And you’ll burn the appropriate amount of calories per hour at that moderate pace (it was 572/hour for me).

Make no mistake: consistently doing that will bring you benefits.

But how would you like to burn more calories as well as better improve your cardio fitness and your muscle strength…in a LOT less time?

It sounds like a phony infomercial claim, but it’s true…I proved it to myself that it was true.

What did I do?

I switched to a low-impact HIIT program on my stepper for my weekly cardio.

I stopped doing the 3-4 workouts per week of the longer moderate exercise, and switched to 2-3 short HIIT workouts per week instead.

 

How to HIIT it

Are you familiar with HIIT?

Here you can read Mayo Clinic’s brief explanation of HIIT and its principles & benefits.

HIIT involves going all-out for several seconds, then resting for at least double the time of your 100% effort, repeating that cycle as needed.

The American Council on Exercise posted this sample HIIT workout you can check out.

I don’t follow it, I just do my own thing as usual 😄, and so can you.

I’ve studied HIIT’s sports performance research quite a bit, and I’ve written a few workout guides on high-intensity training you can read here on heydayDo if you’re interested. Here’s one for older adults like me: HIIT For Seniors.

Yours truly, doing my HIIT workout on my Mini StairMaster

More mini stepper benefits

Moving past the fitness benefits stepper exercise provides, here a couple more good things a stepper machine offers that I’ve found quite helpful.

 

A mini-stepper is portable

One of a stepper’s really nice benefits for me is that it’s a compact exercise machine that doesn’t weigh very much.

I own a Xiser mini-stepper and its folded travel dimensions are 21” x 14” x 4”, and it only weighs 14 lb.

Here’s what it looks like:

It’s easy to take with me on road trips or put away if need be.

I can work out wherever I want to with ease — leg strengthening exercise & cardio benefits in my hotel room anytime I feel like it.

I did a detailed product-testing review on several mini-steppers here on heydayDo, and you can see that all of them are small & lightweight.

This is a very convenient feature compared to fitness equipment like traditional stair climbing machines, ellipticals, or treadmills.

You can get a great workout without having to cough up a big chunk of real estate in your home to do it.

 

A stepper is a quiet exercise machine

The last benefit of a stepper exercise machine I want to mention is a minor one, but it still comes in handy.

Stepper exercise is virtually silent.

There’s no motor noise, nor is there any noise of your feet impacting the machine like you hear when you’re on a treadmill.

 

FAQ

Here are answers to a few common questions asked about steppers & stepper exercise.

 

Wrapping up

So we see that the little stepper machine provides a lot of big benefits for us, assuming we work out on it regularly. It’s great for our heart health & endurance, and can burn a bunch of calories too.

And while it can provide nice toning & strength gains for our legs, it doesn’t do much for our upper body muscles.

That’s why I’d like to encourage you to add weightlifting to your fitness plans if you haven’t done so already.

I’ve written up a few different dumbbell workouts here on heydayDo that you can easily do at home or the gym. Check them out if you’re interested:

9 Muscle-Building Dumbbell Exercises for Seniors – Full Body

Skinny Fat Workout & Diet Plan for Women & Men

7 At-Home Dumbbell Exercises for Flabby Arms Over 60 (or 50)

5×5 Workout for the Over 50 Year Old

 

OK, time for me to step on out of here (ouch, sorry…) 😄.

I hope my research into the benefits steppers and stair climbing equipment offers is useful to you, and I wish you well on your fitness journey.

– greg