UKC

Hi, 

Does anyone know an indoor or outdoor set of stairs (or steep hill) I can train on. I live in west London and know of Richmond Hill but I was wondering if there was any other alternative.

I understand that training my legs for the coming mountaineering trip is best done hiking and I have plans to do that but this is more of a daily workout routine I wish to do.

I'd rather avoid the stair-machine thing at the gym. I tried it and it feels like the stairs move down rather than I climb up.

Cheers

Kayvon

In reply to Kayvon:

Horsenden Hill or Harrow Hill might fit the bill, but just barely. Maybe Holland Park and bits of Notting Hill. (Can you see a pattern forming here?) 

Not many hills but a lot of tower blocks, if you can find a way to access them. 

In reply to Kayvon:

You could do a few laps of the stairs to Covent Garden tube station.

In reply to planetmarshall:

I was going to suggest the stairs at Queensway Tube -  there are147 steps apparently.

In reply to planetmarshall:

A friend of mine did this. In big boots. It's not a bad idea, as you can ride the lift down to save your knees. I think Hampstead is the deepest station, and quieter than Covent Garden.

In reply to Kayvon:

Guy's Hospital Tower stairs are not difficult to access. The building is about 150m high, has 34 floors, and must be pushing 500 steps. The Shard, next door, would be the ultimate London training venue but is heavily defended against casual visitors.  

In reply to Kayvon: Neither Holland Park nor Notting Hill are as steep as the steep side of Richmond Hill up Nightingale Lane.

I've run up all of them....

How far do you want to go - rather than getting the train to London I'd head out to Dorking

In reply to flaneur:

I was working in 22 Bishopsgate recently and they had a fire drill so opened the stairwells. I had to take the opportunity 🙂 Up 59 floors non-stop. Took me 13 minutes. No use to the OP though, as even with an access pass for the building you can only access the stairs in an emergency.

In reply to Kayvon:

Some gym step machines are useless, you just rock left and right. Look for one of these, don't lean on bars, hands for balance only. 

https://www.stairmastergauntlet.com/

In reply to Hooo:

I wouldn't do that. I prefer to train the legs for walking downhill too.

In reply to Kayvon:

Not in London, but I used to do 15 laps of a steep 80m steep in Berlin with big boots and a rucksack crammed full of telephone books; fast up, and slower down a gentler and longer slope to the side; that gave me 1200m of ascent in about 2 hours. I used to put 15 pebbles in one pocket and transfer one to the other pocket after each lap because it got so boring that I’d lose count otherwise, but it stood me in good stead when I got to the Alps.

In reply to Hooo:

I worked in a hi-rise opposite the Shard, and not long after the Borough Market attacks there was a scare with a rogue Range Rover parked up illegally in the vicinity. The authorities were understandably twitchy, so the whole area was put under lockdown and no one was allowed out of any of the nearby buildings. Up on Floor 16 I'd heard the commotion and followed it on the news, and I knew that the lifts weren't operating but hadn't heard about the area lockdown.

I needed to get back home as it was my son's 6th birthday and I had a couple of hours' commute on the train. At 3 pm I ran all the way down the stairwell, let myself out of one of those emergency exits with a horizontal bar, and when I got to the plaza in front of the Shard to get to London Bridge station I found the whole place taped off, with police marksmen on the perimeter shouting at me. They had no idea who I was and where I'd suddenly appeared from. After a bit more shouting, it all got sorted out.

My boss was not best pleased when I got in the next day as the alarm from the exit out of the stairwell has been triggered, setting it off in the whole building and adding to the excitement. When I finally got home my son was in a foul mood and not in the slightest bit grateful about the effort I'd made...

In reply to seankenny:

The tower blocks is what i'm after 

Thanks

In reply to planetmarshall:

My girlfriend works around there, whenever I go there i take the stairs. But I need a place where I can have a backpack with some weight on and not bother commuters.
I'm assuming after a few rounds I would get told off by the staff

In reply to Fraser:

Same situation as Covent Garden I'm afraid

In reply to Hooo:

I'll give this a go

In reply to flaneur:

Nice, I'll try it today or tomorrow 

In reply to wbo2:

Nightingale Lane is brilliant, I wonder what's its degree of inclination ! 

In reply to Kayvon:

The metal fire escape stairs are ideal. This one is near where I live but only has 3 floors
The access is easy and unrestricted 

All I need is a 15 floor building with one of these 

In reply to Kayvon:

Drop a rope down it. Run up - ab down. See if you can do an up and a down in one minute, 60 per hour.

E

In reply to Kayvon:

Reminds me of working at a power station in Suffolk. One of my colleagues was training to go up Everest - East Anglia does not have the best terrain for training to go up Catbells, let alone Everest! He made do with walking up and down the turbine hall stairs with a heavy rucksack for a couple of hours after work every day. Certainly got him fit .... though probably didn't do much for altitude training given he probably never got much higher than 50m above sea level!

In reply to Kayvon:

Pretty dull, but walking as briskly as possible on a treadmill at 15% is an excellent workout. 6k an hour is 900m of ascent and quite a hard standard to reach. Also apparently you don’t need much down hill training to counter the eccentric muscle damage from that, so saving your knees by getting the lift down is a valid strategy. 

In reply to Kayvon:

Being careful of knees etc... don't neglect walking DOWN the stairs. If you find stairs and lift in a building it may be tempting to walk up and then lift down. But walking down may be as or possibly more beneficial to you, and exactly what you can't get from a gym stairmaster type thing

I've always found walking down a hill tougher, so that's where I'd get most benefit in training. And on a more general theoretical basis... https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/dr-michael-mosley-eccentric-exe...

Incidentally, this isn't new knowledge, the old-time athletes always said putting a barbell back down under slow control was more beneficial than the picking-up part of the deadlift - if you couldn't do that it was too heavy for you. When you see someone in a gym dropping/slamming the barbell down every deadlift rep, not only are they being ******* idiots they're cheating themselves out of half the benefits 😂

In reply to Kayvon:

Russell Square used to be a good romp - not been for years

167 steps according to the web. 

When I lived on the fens I would put the running machine at 25% gradient and power walk - I am sure that was useful - if nothing else in terms of increased 'grit'

In reply to Kayvon:

If you've some screws, a drill and some ply you could just make a box. It's not very exciting, but getting used to tedious plodding is good training alongside the physical motion. Put 10-15kg in a rucksack and go up and down 500 times and you'll be sweating like [insert favourite inappropriate simile].
A bonus is you get to go up and down - though the down bit isn't quite hill-specific. I'm wary of doing that (ie stepping forwards off a box) with significant weight, though. Not sure if that's physiologically justified, mind

In reply to Hooo:

I've got to ask, aren't they normally 'open'? What happens if you don't want to take the lift? 

In reply to Fraser:

Nope. Taking the stairs is not an option except in an emergency. Not for regular pass-holders anyway. 

In reply to Kayvon:

The down escalator at Angel tube (27m+) makes a great travellator for an impromptu game of gladiators after a night out. If you were there at a quiet time of day you could train on that until you get kicked out.

In reply to ablackett:

I like that idea 😂, but I imagine you'd get kicked out pretty quickly. 

In reply to flaneur:

About 25 years ago I recruited some mates to climb Guys tower to the equivalent height of everest (64 times, but split between us) as part of some fundraising. It quickly lost its novelty after the second or third ascent.

In reply to Kayvon:

Have you tried the property ladder?  I’ve heard that’s pretty steep in West London…

In reply to Hooo:

That's interesting. I did some googling and see that the fire engineers developed a very unusual escape strategy in the building. More info. here if anyone's interested:

https://www.wsp.com/en-gb/insights/22-bishopsgate-our-unique-passenger-lift...

In reply to Kayvon:

If you can get yourself down to Reigate Hill you can get some vertical distance in a fairly short walk. Some bit are seriously steep, do it with weight and you can knacker yourself pretty quickly.

Map here:

https://www.alltrails.com/en-gb/explore/map/elevation-training-418ef61?u=m&...

In reply to George Ormerod:

I'm not sure whether the treadmill in my gym has the inclination option or not, I will check this later. Thanks

I have a more "you loose it if you don't use it" kind of approach, so training my body going down the hill/stairs is definitely staying as part of my training.

In reply to CantClimbTom:

well said

In reply to nufkin:

Being a hobbits woodworker, I made a few of these boxes for mates who are into CrossFit. I have already tried a similar version with my coffee table (it's very sturdy, I built it myself) and very soon got board of it

In reply to Kayvon:

Woolwich foot tunnel is fairly long and has a decent amount of steps at either end of the tunnel. Google will tell you in more depth no doubt. I once got chatting to a guy training in the tunnel for a mine marathron and this place was perfect for it apparently. It has a bit more character and fragrance compared to its greenwich counterpart but is alot quieter.