Climbing stairs is not only something you do to get to the next floor. Find out roughly how many calories the StairMaster burns.
While these are very rough estimations, the average person will burn around 133 to 229 calories per 15 minutes on the StairMaster at a moderate level/speed.
An important detail for these estimations is your body weight.
The 133 calories are the estimation for a 125-pound (56 kg) person doing this workout. On the other end, burning 229 calories while using the StairMaster for 15 minutes is the estimation for a 215-pound (97 kg) person.
I will also go into more in-depth estimations of the calories burned by weights and time intervals, what details influence your results, how to burn more calories on the StairMaster, and more.
Biggest factors in calories burned with the StairMaster
Correctly estimating how many calories someone burns on the StairMaster is very challenging. There are a lot of details that influence your actual results.
This does make things like estimating what amounts of food would align with your fitness goals more challenging. However, there are ways to make your prediction somewhat better.
One way is taking the details that influence the number of calories burned with the StairMaster a relatively high amount into account.
These details can help you make your StairMaster workouts burn more calories. A few examples include:
- Body weight: How much you weigh influences how many calories your body has to use to push yourself up the StairMaster steps. As you can expect, weighing more tends to require more energy (calories).
- StairMaster speed: StairMasters have many levels of speed. A relatively low level like 2 will burn fewer calories per minute than the faster level 8.
- Body composition: Two people can weigh the same number of pounds or kilograms but have different amounts of muscle. This is worth mentioning because an amount of muscle will burn more calories than the same weight in body fat.
- Ways of climbing the StairMaster: You can use the StairMaster in different ways which can change the challenge. For example, skipping a stair will make each step burn more calories.
Hidden calorie burning from the StairMaster
Something else that makes the results from StairMaster workouts more confusing is that the extra calorie-burning effects are not necessarily limited to during the session itself.
More specifically, there is something called afterburn where you keep on burning more calories than usual for some amount of time after your workout.
This will typically not last longer than 72 hours and won’t make crazy differences but small amounts do add up.
To get this afterburn effect, you need to use the StairMaster intensely enough.
Secondly, workouts like a StairMaster session can influence the levels of a variety of hormones. In turn, these can influence how many calories you burn outside of your workouts.
The estimations of the calories burned with the StairMaster below don’t take these more long-term effects into account. That means you could see slightly more results than the numbers below.
Chart of StairMaster calorie-burning estimations
The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention have a cheat sheet that says using stair climbers burns between 3.5 – 7 calories per minute at a light to moderate pace and more than 7 calories per minute at a fast pace (1).
Luckily, you can also make your estimations a bit more useful and precise for different body weights. To do this, you can numbers called MET values.
These are numbers that estimate (or sometimes measure) how intense certain workouts are. You can then use these METs in the formula below to calculate things like how many calories the StairMaster burns.
Formula: METs x 3.5 x (your body weight in kilograms) / 200 = calories burned per minute
Different sources give different numbers but one MET estimation for StairMasters is 9 (2).
In the first table below, you can find estimations for the number of calories burned on the StairMaster by weights and time intervals for the MET above.
It is quickly worth mentioning again that these estimations are far from perfect. The MET formula does not even include details like the StairMaster level of speed.
Besides that, knowing that 100 grams of boiled potatoes contain about 87 calories can help you put an amount of food on the numbers below (3).
| Time Weight Person | 1 Minute | 15 Minutes | 30 Minutes | 45 Minutes | 60 Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 125 Pounds (56 kg) | 9 calories | 133 calories | 266 calories | 399 calories | 532 calories |
| 155 Pounds (70 kg) | 11 calories | 165 calories | 330 calories | 494 calories | 659 calories |
| 185 Pounds (84 kg) | 13 calories | 197 calories | 393 calories | 590 calories | 787 calories |
| 215 Pounds (97 kg) | 15 calories | 229 calories | 457 calories | 686 calories | 914 calories |
How to burn more calories with the StairMaster
It is possible to get a different impression from the table above but how many calories you burn on the StairMaster is not something static.
This is good because it means you can get more results out of the same duration of StairMaster workouts.
First of all, you can turn up the speed level of your StairMaster. Faster movements tend to require more energy from your body.
Secondly, you can make it so your body has to move more weight per StairMaster step.
The most convenient way to do this is by building muscle mass with other workouts.
However, you could also use the StairMaster with weights if the weight limit allows it. Some equipment examples for this include a weighted vest and/or heavy backpack.
Next, you could burn more calories per leg movement by skipping a step each time.
Lastly, as long as you avoid overtraining, making your StairMaster workouts longer and/or doing them more often generally helps you burn more calories too.
How long does it take to see results from the StairMaster?
If you want to burn calories with the StairMaster you are likely also interested in losing weight and more specifically body fat.
It is true that the StairMaster can help you lose weight but there are conditions. Your habits in other areas like your diet still need to be good enough too.
That being said, if you create a fictional situation where all the calories burned with the StairMaster come from body fat you can get some interesting estimations.
A 185-pound (84 kg) person using the StairMaster every day for 20 minutes will burn an extra 1834 calories or about 0.52 pounds (0.23 kg) of body fat after a week.
If the same person keeps up the same StairMaster routine for a month (four weeks), they will burn an extra 7336 calories or about 2.1 pounds (0.92 kg) of body fat.
Something important to keep in mind is that as you lose weight with the StairMaster, the same durations and intensities will start to burn fewer calories.
Is the StairMaster good for burning calories?
The StairMaster is a great fitness equipment option for burning a lot of calories in a short amount of time. Especially if you really turn up the intensity.
An additional benefit of StairMasters is that they help you do this in a low-impact way. This can reduce your risk of injuries which would reduce the number of calories you can burn a lot.
One potential downside of the StairMaster could be its cost or the gym subscription required. This second option would also require more transport time than at-home workouts.
Another thing worth mentioning is that personal preference matters too. If you don’t like StairMasters, there are a lot of other effective gym machines for weight loss.
Lastly, even if you pick one of the cardiovascular StairMaster alternatives instead, it can be helpful to build some muscle mass outside of these workouts.
This will not only help you burn more calories on the StairMaster but also throughout the day.
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FAQ
How many calories do you burn in 10 minutes on the StairMaster?
The average person will burn around 89 to 152 calories in 10 minutes on the StairMaster. Keep in mind that your actual results can vary.
How many calories do 1000 steps on the StairMaster burn?
At an average pace of about 80 steps per minute, doing 1000 steps on the StairMaster burns around 111 to 190 calories.
