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Comment by aninteger | Hacker News Reader

Bonus points for doing this while going down. Taking public transportation as part of my daily commute involves a lot of stair climbing and descending. I always find it fascinating to watch the people who rush from bus to train platform and watch them descend 2 stairs at a time (basically always doing long long long) the whole way down. I've never been brave enough to try this method of descending though.

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For some reason I always (if reasonable, and that's often) climb and descend two steps at a time, like you describe. It's quick, and doesn't even tire much more than doing short-short-short, since while the exertion is a little higher, the entire staircase takes a lot less time.

At some point you get good enough at this stuff to descend a staircase, quickly, at a busy train station (somewhat; can't be too busy because then the stairs are too crowded) with no arm rests in range, while you hurry to the underground bicycle storage. There you take two steps down at a time, then get your bike up those stairs (bike in a gutter) in the same way, and not miss a stride when you jump on the bike to cycle to school.

It also feels really efficient. I've never fallen yet doing this stuff, though there have been cases while descending some staircase where I came a bit closer than I'd like.

Addendum: I don't count stairs, by the way. Apparently not nerdy enough.

Me too also... I just find stairs boring, so I nearly always take them as quickly as I can, which means two at a time.

Really kind of scared a friend once doing it down stairs... he was pretty concerned for my safety!

For descending, on some stairs I can descend while "falling", it's very fast and not tyring it all.

You have to land on the edge of the stair below so you "drop", then rinse and repeat.

If you do it constantly, you only have to support your body ( but you use your weight to fall, so don't support it too much) and slide with your hands.

If you can't do it the first time, land with your foot normally and then always turn them slightly to go to the stairs below

Kinda hard to explain

Take a look at my reply, we're doing the same damn thing! It's probably rather common.

Lol, my legs do the same thing though while dropping. So a small variation on it :D

An other variation would be to keep your feet in a 45° and then keep doing and landing on every stair edge

Never seen someone else doing that, it's insanely fast if you can master it :D

Did that in my childhood on wooden stairs in my parents house. Rounded edges, kid of hazardous in general but great to slide down like this. Kind of want to try this again, but I also value the integrity of my bones.

I only do it when i can place both of my hands for support and if my hands can slide on it.

It's not dangerous i think though, wooden stairs works best indeed :p

Stair surfing - I've still done it as a middle aged guy.

I would like to learn to do it hands free, one foot in front of the other (forward and down to the next step). I can surf a bit without grabbing the rails, but only rarely make it to the bottom. Definitely needs the perfect wooden stairs to get maximum flight time!

I've done two at time descending for the longest time until stumbled over another fun way to do this. One at a time, but you let one leg drop free while you pull the other leg forward to hit the next step. Somewhat hard to describe in a manner that makes sense. Think of hitting a drum with sticks. Only works with shallow stairs though. You know it works when your legs just kinda do their own thing and pull you forward. Obligatory don't try this in public warning.

I find two steps at a time much easier than what feels like tentative tip-toeing of single steps. I guess it’s just what you get used to.

Three steps at a time can be a bit ‘shaky’ at times. Especially as I usually try that when tipsy. Not fallen yet though!

Honest question, why are you afraid of trying skipping steps on the way down? I ask because I've always done this, and when I'm with company they comment incredulously how quickly I descend the stairs. It never even occurred to me it was difficult or special before.

Perhaps because the penalty for failure rapidly escalates to twisting an ankle and goes up to death, with more likely results of bruises or broken bones?

I've been doing it for a few months too. It was scary at the beginning. The steps at work are pretty high and the first few times I actually had pain in my quads afterwards. It's best to practice on empty stairs with a rail at first.

it’s easy once you’ve done it a couple of times. literally that easy to learn.

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