You may always use treadmills and elliptical machines and ignore stair master. So how to use this heart-pumping cardio to make the most of your stair-climber workouts.

1) Maintain your Posture

To put strain on the right parts of your body-the glutes and hamstrings instead of your back-slow down and get your posture right.

2)Don't hold on.

Don't rely on the slides of the machine. That reduces the load of your body on the stairs and reduces the effectiveness of your stairmaster workout.Ultimately, you want to build your abilities to not hold on at all.

3)Do two at a time.

Try skip a step. Start slowly and focus on methodically climbing up while keeping your balance.

4)Switch it up

Try crossover steps, where your body is turned to the right or left as you step up. This move will hit your abductors, stabilizers, and glutes medius.

5)Add weights

When you feel easy, grobing a pair of dumbbells before you head over to start your stairmaster workout. As you step up, add a biceps curl, overjead press, or slide raises.

6)Practice intervals

Shoot for 20-30 minutes on the machine, start with a 10-minute warm up to activate your heart and your muscles. Then, launch into 10-15 minutes of intervals. Start with a 1:1 ratio of high intensity to recovery. 1 minute on, 1 minute off.

7)Monitor your heart rate

To measure the time it takes for your heart rate to return to resting levels post-workout. As your body becomes more conditioned, that recovery time will shrink.