Santa Monica’s Ultimate Butt Workout
Looking to lift, tone, and tighten your rear till it gets as much recognition as Kim Kardashian’s?
Look no further than the Santa Monica Stairs off of Adelaide Dr. near Pacific Palisades.
These two sets of stairways are constantly packed with L.A.’s fitness elite, including a handful of LAFD firefighters (wink, wink).
I have passed them many times over the past few years and thought, “Whoa, that looks intense.” Then continued on my way.
On Monday though, I was forced to face these endless, treacherous steps.
I was invited to participate in World Lifestyle’s Live Pink, Live Green Stair-A-Thon. For every set of stairs I scaled, they would donate $5 to breast cancer research.
The website’s specific focus was to bring attention to the everyday products we use that may increase our likelihood of developing breast cancer. Check out their full list of products to avoid here >>
Philanthropy and exercise, my kind of event.
About five minutes in, I discovered the stairs are not exactly treacherous — unless you’re trying to Tweet and climb, big no no. And they’re definitely not endless: one set is 189 stairs and the the other, which we did, is 170.
They aren’t easy though. By my third round, I was seriously feeling the burn. Determined to make as much money as I could though, I set my goal for ten sets.
At eight, I had to stop to catch my breath. At nine, I looked like this:
But I pushed through — despite the pain — and completed my goal in about 50 minutes.
1,700 stairs stepped and $50 earned.
According to this chart from the National Department of Health and Human Services, I burned about 708 calories doing it too.
What was bad though was the fact that I had trouble walking for the next three days.
My calves, quads, and bum felt like immobile boulders, and I seriously almost fell trying to stand up out of bed one morning.
I might expect this if I never did any kind of resistance training. But I do squats, lunges, and a variety of other lower-body exercises multiple times a week.
The lesson from this: stairs are a freaking amazing butt-blasting workout. And they’re free, big plus. You don’t need to live in L.A. to reap the rear boosting benefits either, just find a big set in your area and get climbing.
Done a couple of times a week you’ll have a Kim Kar – err – West booty in no time.
And guess what, ABC News just reported that women with big butts are smarter and more resistant to chronic illness.
Baby got back.
Ashley @ BrocBlog says:
This looks like it was a great event and an awesome workout! Ive been wanting to head over to the stairs for a while now and just never get around to it.
Whitney English says:
I highly recommend checking them out! Do it with a girlfriend so you can chat the whole time. You’ll complete 10 rounds in no time :)
Melissa Burron says:
I have (nearly) no butt and I cannot lie. It may be one of the reasons that I have so many back problems!
I will be working hard to get myself to be a little more bootylicious in the future.
BTW, I used my favorite version of BGB on my own blog just last week: http://www.thevalentinerd.com/tunes-for-tuesday-eclectic-jonathan-coulton/
Great minds…
Whitney English says:
Good luck on your bootylicious endeavors!
Bethann says:
Congrats on a job well done, Whitney! What a great event!
Sonali Chauhan says:
Great Job,… Congratulation to you Whitney! You did wonderful Workout Whitney! I’m totally surprised to see. Your Figure, you have well maintain your figure. Well Whitney tell us. What was your figure size before Workout & now what’s your current figure size after Workout ?
Leticia says:
Hi cute girl!.
Do u know?. I stair up around 1600 diary. But not in a row. 300 stairs every hour along 4 hours working at office.
I spend too much time sitting so I decided to up every hour and up an down the 5 floors of my job.
Sorry for my bad english.
Whitney English says:
That’s great!!! You gotta get activity in whenever you can. Way to multitask by doing it at work :)