WHEN IT COMES to preparing for the great outdoors, indoors, few movements are as suited to building mountain legs as the humble box step-up. The CrossFit Hero WOD ‘Chad’, which challenges you to do 1,000 reps of weighted step-ups, was used by Chad Wilkinson to prepare for high-altitude mountain summits and military readiness, and many outdoor enthusiasts incorporate some form of a step-up into their training to prepare for the rigours of climbing.
But just how many step-ups would you have to perform to reach the elevation of Mount Everest? And what about some other mountains, a bit closer to home?
Whether you’re after a ludicrous fitness challenge, a fun bit of trivia, or just a new way to reframe your next leg workout, we’ve got answers. Lace up, start the clock, and prepare for some serious elevation gain.
Mount Everest
Working on the proviso that we’re using a 20” (50 cm) box, and counting each step up onto the top of the box as one rep, covering that 20” distance, let’s take a look.
Mount Everest tops out at 29,029 ft, each step up onto your box representing 1.67 feet of that journey, meaning to climb the height of Everest indoors, you’d need to perform:
17,387 step-ups
Mount Kilimanjaro
A little bit more realistic – but still, let’s be clear, a ridiculous challenge. Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro is 19,341 ft tall. This means you’d have perform:
11,584 step-ups
Mont Blanc
Coming into Europe now, and again, slightly more manageable, if not still insane. Mont Blanc, in the Alps stands at a still imposing 15,777 ft, leaving you with a leg day consisting of:
9,447 step-ups
Ben Nevis
Finally, finishing on on British turf, the tallest mountain in the United Kingdom, Scotland’s Nevis, is an impressive 4,413 ft tall. The reps for this one would tally up to a much more realistic:
2,642 step-ups
Still a serious challenge, but the good news is, because you have to step down from each rep, you will also have accumulated the equivalent of the climb down, by the time you reach ‘the top’.
Happy climbing…
This article originally appeared on Men’s Health UK.
