After John Korir won the 2025 Boston Marathon, runners flocked to his Instagram to learn more about the 28-year-old’s training. Yes, there were the typical postrace photos with trophies and training runs, but many were surprised to see a video of the champion with a 2:04:45 Boston finish taking a step aerobics class.
Korir’s moves, choreographed to music, demonstrated his ability to move with precision and rhythm. Watching these videos left Runner’s World with two questions: Why is step aerobics important to Korir—already one of the fastest marathoners of all time—and can any runner get the same benefits by taking a step aerobics class at their nearby gym?
“I always do my steps one month after my marathon race and I do it for one month before getting back to my training,” Korir, who also won the 2024 Chicago Marathon, told Runner’s World. ”It helps me a lot. It helps my muscles to be strong, it keeps me injury free, and helps improve my running posture.”
While he uses step as a pre-training and post-marathon tool, it turns out step aerobics can also help as cross-training during your training season. So, it may be time to pull out your mom’s old step bench and crank up your favorite playlist!
The Benefits of Step Aerobics for Runners
Since the 1970s, aerobics has been used to refer to exercise that makes you breathe hard or, use more air when you move. Anything that makes you take bigger, faster breaths—running, jumping, rowing, and cycling, for example—is “aerobic,” including climbing stairs. In fact, stair climbing is one of the easiest and best ways to both strengthen your heart and test your aerobic fitness.
Exercise physiologists have known about the benefits of stair climbing for generations, but it wasn’t until the late 1980s when Gin Miller, an aerobics instructor, and Reebok created the first step bench that set off a fitness phenomenon. Millions of athletes began to take step aerobics classes at their gyms and buy step aerobics workout videos to do at home.
Why did it take off? Because step aerobics can be effective for improving heart health and building muscle simultaneously, while not being high impact (unlike running). In 1989, Reebok commissioned researchers at San Diego State to study step aerobics, and they found that 40 minutes of step aerobics was equivalent, in terms of calorie burn and respiration, to running seven miles an hour. But the impact on the body was similar to slow walking.
“When you step, you have to know what your body is doing at all times,” Joseph David (pictured at the top of this story), a group fitness instructor and certified personal trainer at Life Time Dumbo in Brooklyn, New York, tells Runner’s World. “Step aerobics helps running because it’s all about cadence and coordination.” At Life Time, David teaches Ultra Fit, a sprint, balance, and strength class designed for competitive athletes. He and his runners utilize a step bench in the class.
In order to move quickly, like Korir, to the music without losing your balance, your body needs to be stacked properly. At every point during the workout, you should feel as if you’re stepping up and down between two walls that prevent you from swaying side to side, says David.
When you run forward, you are shifting your weight from one leg to the other. When you do step aerobics, your feet land any number of places and at different heights, too. Maintaining a strong posture—abs engaged and shoulders pulled away from your ears—throughout the step workout can translate to your running gait.
It isn’t only your feet doing the work. In order to not trip, you have to engage your quads, lift your knees from your hip flexors, and have your core turned on. Your whole body is doing the work and your feet are extensions of all of that muscular strength and mobility.
Dale Fingar-Davin, a Medway, Massachusetts-based ACSM-certified personal trainer, has run Boston 12 times and competed in four Ironman triathlons. She also regularly teaches step aerobics classes. “Going up and down strengthens the legs,” Fingar-Davin explains. “You’re also strengthening the ligaments and tendons in your lower body.” In this way, step aerobics mimics up and down hill training.
The experts admit that runners may feel self-conscious in a class. If you can, think like Korir and focus on the benefits. “The community and the energy of the room is helpful,” says David. “Plus, you get visual and in-person help. It’s like running a race—you want other runners around you. Everyone’s working toward the same goal.”
If you can’t (or won’t) get to a class, both experts suggest getting the original step bench rather than smaller versions without easily adjustable risers and find step aerobics videos on YouTube to get started. However, online classes are, often, a little too long and complicated for runners who want to get started with the basics. Start with some general tips before trying the workout below:
1) Make Sure There Is Plenty of Room Around Your Bench
If you’re new to step, start with no risers and increase the step height as you get comfortable. Put the bench in the middle of a room around with enough space so that you can move in all directions around the bench. While the most basic move is “step-up, step-down,” once you are comfortable you can move over the top and around the step in every direction.
You want to do lateral movements, says Fingar-Davin, as this will build the muscles of your inner and outer thigh, and you will get a better lower-body workout.
2) Stack Your Body
In order to do step aerobics safely, you need to imagine that, as in running, your body is in one line, even though your feet may move in different directions. The experts call this “stacking” your body. Your torso is in one line and your core engaged. Again, notice with Korir, that while his legs are moving, is torso is straight.
While your feet are doing the actual stepping, you want to start the movement from the tops of your legs, says Fingar-Davin. Also, think “up,” as in, you are trying to lift your feet and legs off the bench, not trying to land hard.
3) Land With Your Whole Foot
In the beginning, you want your whole foot to strike the step. As you get more comfortable and begin to move faster, you may eventually land on the balls of your feet and add in a hops, jumps, and turns.
Try This Step Routine to Get Started
This 35-minute cardio and strength sequence from Jessica Smith, a trainer and creator of Walk Strong 3: The Complete 8 Week Home Fitness Program, will introduce you to the step and also mix in some strength work.
“We work the right and left sides of the body evenly to avoid muscular imbalances with a particular emphasis on the posterior chain, important for runners in order to maintain a balanced posture and running gait. The movements done with the step can assist in developing balance, ankle mobility, agility and coordination, all important for runners’ speed and quickness out on the road,” she explains.
If you have a longer bench, rather than the box, simply turn it to the side and work off the narrow end. You will need light dumbbells.
Donna Raskin has had a long career as a health and fitness writer and editor of books and magazine articles. A certified run coach who has practiced yoga for many years, she also loves to lift weights, dance, and go for long walks with her hound dog, Dolly.
