How to go downstairs

As with my post on how to climb stairs, the  information in this post comes from Esther Gokhale, the posture lady.

To begin with, here’s an interesting study about going up and down stairs: Researchers in England conducted a study wherein people walked either up or down the stairs of a ten-story building. They’d either take the elevator up and walk down, or walk up and take the elevator down. While both groups became fitter, the group that walked down the stairs did better fitness-wise than those who walked upstairs. They had lower insulin sensitivity, lower blood fat levels, better bone density, superior balance, and twice the improvement in muscle strength. That’s kind of hard to believe. Going downstairs seems so much easier!

Anyhow, here are the instructions:

Position your body in a shallow zigzag squat. 

As with going upstairs, keep your butt behind and your torso angled forward from the hip joint. Don’t tuck your pelvis. You want your glutes (butt muscles) to stabilize you. Use the thigh muscle to lower you as your front foot approaches the step below.

Rotate your feet and legs externally. This encourages optimal alignment of your knees, hips  and pelvis.

Click on video in this sentence to see how you should look. 

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