Toronto Stair Workouts: Where to Climb and a Plan for Men Over 40

The best-known Toronto stair workout is the Baldwin Steps, the switchback staircase that climbs the escarpment from Spadina Road and Davenport Road up to Casa Loma. Glen Stewart Ravine in the Beach and the stair-only entrances to the West Toronto Railpath are good alternatives, and the CN Tower’s 1,776-step charity climbs give you a goal to train for. Climb hard, walk down slowly, and keep sessions to 20 to 30 minutes at first.

Where to find stairs worth training on in Toronto

A useful training staircase is long enough to take more than a minute to climb, wide enough to pass people, and has a railing for the descent. These public options fit, in rough order of how hard they are:

The Baldwin Steps are the obvious first choice because they sit in the middle of the city and are long enough that ten climbs is a real session. A WWF-Canada training team used exactly that: 110 steps a climb, ten climbs, 1,100 steps, with push-ups and dips between rounds.

Why stairs are worth your time

Stair climbing raises your heart rate faster than almost anything you can do without equipment, which makes it efficient for men short on time. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton found that three 20-second all-out stair climbs, three days a week for six weeks, raised peak aerobic fitness by about 12% in previously untrained young women (Allison et al., 2017). A later McMaster study had sedentary adults run up a 60-step, three-flight stairwell three times a day, spread hours apart, and still saw fitness improve, though by a modest amount (Jenkins et al., 2019).

Neither study tested men over 40, so treat the numbers as a direction, not a promise. The practical point holds: short, hard climbs build aerobic fitness, and they work your quads and glutes harder than flat running does.

A 6-week stair plan that protects your knees

Start with walking climbs and build to faster efforts. Do it twice a week, with at least one rest day between, alongside your usual strength training.

Warm up with five minutes of brisk walking and two easy climbs. Cool down with a flat walk, not more stairs.

Going down is the risky part

The descent is where tired legs get careless, and the front of your thigh has to brake every step. A few rules keep your knees out of trouble:

1. Walk down every time. Never run down a public staircase, and never race other people on it.
2. Hold the railing on the way down once your legs feel heavy.
3. Stop the session if one knee starts to ache rather than just feel tired. Pain that is still there the next morning means the session was too much.
4. Skip outdoor stairs after a freeze. Concrete and wood steps ice over, and a fall on stairs is a much worse injury than a missed workout.

If you already have a sore knee, read how to exercise with knee pain first, and get a physiotherapist to clear stair work before you add speed.

Training for the CN Tower climb

The CN Tower has 1,776 steps, and two charity events let the public climb them. WWF-Canada’s Climb for Nature was first held at the tower more than 30 years ago and still runs there. United Way Greater Toronto’s ClimbUP was scheduled for November 14 and 15 in 2026. Check each organizer’s site for dates and fundraising minimums before you register.

The tower is a continuous enclosed stairwell, so outdoor intervals alone won’t prepare you. In the eight weeks before:

• Keep one interval session a week on the Baldwin Steps or a similar set.
• Add one long session a week in a building stairwell you have permission to use, climbing steadily for 15 minutes in week one and building towards 30.
• Practise a steady pace you can hold for the whole climb. Starting too fast in an enclosed stairwell is the easiest way to blow up halfway.

What to do this week

Pick one staircase from the table and do the week 1 session twice. Note how many climbs you managed and how your knees felt the next day. That log tells you whether to progress or hold. For more places to train outside, see the guide to outdoor workout spots in Toronto. If you’d like someone to fit stair work into a full week of training and check in on it, weekly coaching does exactly that.