Only 3.7% of perfect scorers on the sitting rising test died of natural causes in about 12 years, against 42.1% of the lowest scorers (Study). That study followed 4,282 Brazilian adults aged 46 to 75. A hard time getting off the floor is a warning sign for longevity, but it does not seal your fate.
Two simpler home tests point the same way: a one-leg stand and your usual walking speed. All three flag higher risk, but none of them shows that a poor result causes an early death.
What Is the Sitting Rising Test?
The sitting rising test checks whether you can sit on the floor and get back up with as little help as possible. The main study ran it at one private clinic in Rio de Janeiro between 1998 and 2023 (Study).
Scoring runs from 0 to 10. Sitting down is worth up to 5 points, and standing up is worth another 5.
You lose 1 point for each support you use: a hand, a forearm, a knee or the side of a leg. You lose half a point if the movement looks unsteady (Study). If you need a person, a wall or a table to get down or up, that half scores 0. The tester may allow more than one try, and the best score for each half counts.
Safety first. Keep a sturdy chair or another person within reach. Skip this test if you have balance problems or have had a recent fall or surgery. The same goes for a joint replacement or pain in your hips, knees or back. The one-leg stand and the walking test below are gentler places to start.
- Wear loose clothes, take off your shoes and socks, and clear a space on the floor.
- Stand with your feet a little apart.
- Lower yourself to sit on the floor, crossing your legs if that helps. Try not to touch the floor with your hands, forearms, knees or the side of a leg.
- From sitting, stand back up the same way, with no support. Take your time.
- Score each half out of 5. Take off 1 point per support and half a point for any wobble, then add the two halves. A partner can count your supports and wobbles for you.
The Sitting Rising Test and Longevity
The largest study comes from that clinic. Researchers tested 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75, then tracked who died. Half of them were followed for more than 12.3 years (Study).
Over that time, 15.5% died of natural causes. Deaths from COVID-19, accidents and other outside causes were left out of the count. Natural deaths rose step by step as the scores fell (Study):
- A perfect 10: about 4 in every 100 died.
- 8.5 to 9.5: about 7 in every 100.
- 8: about 11 in every 100.
- 4.5 to 7.5: about 20 in every 100.
- 0 to 4: about 42 in every 100.
Heart and blood vessel disease showed an even sharper gap. It caused about a third of the natural deaths. Fewer than 1 in every 100 perfect scorers died of it, against 14 in every 100 of the lowest scorers (Study).
A low score could simply reflect older age or illness. So the team accounted for age, sex, body weight, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Even then, the lowest scorers had roughly four times the risk of a natural death (Study). Their risk of dying from heart and blood vessel disease was roughly six times that of perfect scorers.
That second figure is less certain, because fewer people died of heart disease. Smoking, blood tests and medicines were not fully recorded, so the team could not account for them.
After those adjustments, the gaps between a perfect 10 and scores from 8 to 9.5 were small enough that chance could explain them (Study). Raw death rates for those scores still ran two to three times higher, so this does not prove the risk is equal. A score below 8 is the clearer warning sign. A single missed point is a much weaker one.
An earlier study from the same group found the same pattern. It tested 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80 and followed them for about six years (Study). Of the 159 people who died, only 2 had scored a perfect 10 (Press release). The authors reported that each extra point on the test was linked to 21% better survival (Study).
These studies have real limits. Everyone was tested at one private clinic in Rio de Janeiro, and 68% of them were men (Study). They were volunteers who chose to come in, mostly from better-off, well-educated backgrounds. The authors say it is unclear whether the results apply to other groups.
Each person took the test only once, and the team had no way to account for how active people had been. Most important, these studies only watched people. They did not test whether raising your score changes your future. A low score is a marker: it flags risk without showing what drives it.
Why would a floor test track aging at all? Getting down and back up takes leg strength, balance, flexibility and a body weight your legs can move. All of these tend to fade with age and illness. A low score may sum up several of those problems at once.
The 10-Second One-Leg Stand
The 10-second one-leg stand needs no floor work. In a 2022 study, the same Brazilian team asked 1,702 people aged 51 to 75 to stand on one leg. About 1 in 5 of them (20.4%) could not hold it for 10 seconds (Study).
Safety first. Stand next to a wall or a kitchen counter you can grab if you tip.
- Stand on a firm, flat floor.
- Lift one foot and rest the front of it against the back of your other lower leg.
- Keep your arms by your sides and look straight ahead.
- Hold the pose for 10 seconds without touching anything.
- You get up to three tries, on either foot (Press release).
You pass if you hold it for the full 10 seconds. Over roughly seven years, about 18 in every 100 people who failed died, against about 5 in every 100 who passed (Study).
Those who failed were also sicker: 38% had type 2 diabetes, against about 13% of those who passed (Press release). Even after the team accounted for age, sex, body weight and other illnesses, failing went with nearly double the risk of death (Study).
Failure climbed fast with age. About 5% failed at 51 to 55, and 8% at 56 to 60. That rose to just under 18% at 61 to 65 and just under 37% at 66 to 70. At 71 to 75, about 54% failed (Press release).
So if you fail at 72, about half the people your age fail too. If you fail at 55, only about 1 in 20 of your peers do.
The same limits apply here. The study only watched people, and everyone in it was a white Brazilian. There was no data on recent falls, exercise, diet, smoking or medicines that affect balance (Press release). If falling is your main worry, our look at tai chi and fall prevention covers that evidence.
How Fast Do You Walk?
Your usual walking speed, which researchers call gait speed, is the third test. The biggest analysis pooled the raw records of 34,485 adults aged 65 and older from nine studies. They were followed for 6 to 21 years (Study). Faster walkers lived longer in every one of the nine studies.
The authors suggest a simple version for clinics, using a stopwatch and a 4-meter course (Study). Here it is adapted for home:
- Mark a straight course of 4 meters (about 13 feet) in a hallway or on a path.
- Stand still at the start line.
- Walk at your usual pace, as if you were walking down the street. Don’t hurry.
- Have someone time you from your first step until you cross the 4-meter mark.
- Divide 4 by your time in seconds. That gives your speed in meters per second (m/s).
Walking 4 meters in 5 seconds gives 0.8 m/s. Doing it in 4 seconds gives 1.0 m/s. Try it twice to check that your times are close.
At about 0.8 m/s, people’s expected life span was typical for their age and sex, at most ages (Study). At 1.0 m/s or faster, people lived longer than their age and sex alone would predict. The authors floated 1.2 m/s as a possible sign of an unusually long life expectancy, but said more research was needed (Study).
The spread was wide. At age 75, the predicted chance of being alive 10 years later ran from 19% to 87% in men, from the slowest walkers to the fastest. In women it ran from 35% to 91% (Study).
A 2018 review pooled 48 groups of people, about 102,000 older adults in all, and found the same pattern (Meta-analysis). Each drop of 0.1 m/s went with about 12% more risk of dying early. It also went with about 8% more risk of heart and blood vessel disease, but not with cancer. The studies disagreed a lot on how strong the link was, and all of them only watched people.
These cut-offs come from people 65 and older, so they may mean little at 45. For daily step counts, see our piece on walking for longevity.
What to Do If You Fail
Failing one of these tests flags risk. It does not cause an early death. We also found no trial showing that training to pass a test adds years to your life.
There is better evidence for protecting the abilities these tests measure. The best example is the LIFE trial. It enrolled 1,635 inactive adults aged 70 to 89 who had some trouble moving. All of them could still walk 400 meters in 15 minutes (Trial).
A coin flip decided who joined an exercise program and who went to health classes instead. The program paired walking, aiming for 150 minutes a week, with strength, flexibility and balance work. People came to a center twice a week and exercised at home 3 to 4 times a week.
After about 2.6 years, 30.1% of the exercise group could no longer walk 400 meters within 15 minutes without sitting or help. In the class group, 35.5% could not (Trial). Lasting loss of walking ability fell too, from about 20 in every 100 to about 15.
Deaths were slightly higher with exercise, 5.9% against 5.1%, a gap small enough that chance could explain it (Trial). The authors said there were too few deaths to settle the question. So LIFE showed a gain in staying mobile, but not in living longer.
Balance responds to practice. A 2015 review of 23 trials in 1,220 healthy adults 65 and older found that balance training gave a moderate boost to standing balance (Meta-analysis). Where trials used several standing tests, the review counted the one-leg stand first.
The biggest gains came with 11 to 12 weeks of training, three sessions a week and 31 to 45 minutes a session. Each of those figures came from a separate comparison, rather than from one tested program. The trials were also of modest quality. A smaller 2023 review pooled three balance trials in healthy older adults and found no clear gain in standing balance (Meta-analysis).
A 2026 review of 92 studies and 5,932 older adults looked at walking speed. Compared with doing nothing, strength training sped it up by a modest amount (Meta-analysis). The review could not show that it sped up walking more than other exercise, such as walking or mixed programs.
Supervised programs that got harder over time worked better. Programs built on leg moves like squats, leg presses and calf raises did especially well. The authors also noted that long, high-quality studies are scarce.
In a 2022 review, lifting fast, called power training, showed no clear extra gain in walking speed over ordinary strength work (Meta-analysis). Only 6 of its 20 trials measured walking speed, though, and that evidence was weak.
Does getting faster help you live longer? One study hints at a link. Researchers timed the walking speed of 439 people aged 65 and older every three months for a year (Study).
Over 8 years, about 32 in every 100 died among those who were still at least 0.1 m/s faster at the year’s end. About 41 in every 100 died among those who sped up only for a while. Among those who never sped up, 49 in every 100 died.
But this study only watched people and put no one through training. Its authors said more research was needed to learn whether helping people walk faster changes survival.
Training can help you stay mobile, and it may improve your balance and walking speed. Those are real gains, even though they do not prove a longer life. For how much strength work to do, see our guide to strength training for longevity. For fitness and heart health, see zone 2 training.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Sitting Rising Test Accurate?
It is a useful signal, but a rough one. The big studies come from one clinic in Rio de Janeiro, and 68% of those tested were men (Study). They watched people rather than testing a treatment. Still, low scores predicted natural deaths even after the team accounted for age, weight and common illnesses. So the test seems to add something beyond those factors.
How to Do the Sitting Rising Test?
Go barefoot in a clear space, with a sturdy chair or a helper nearby. Sit down on the floor, then stand back up without using your hands, forearms, knees or the side of a leg. Start at 10 and take off 1 point for each support and half a point for each wobble (Study). Skip it if you have balance problems, a recent fall or surgery, a joint replacement or joint pain.
Can the Sit Rise Test Really Predict Longevity?
It predicts risk across large groups, but it cannot tell you what will happen to one person. In the largest study, 42 in every 100 of the lowest scorers died of natural causes over about 12 years (Study). The other 58 did not, and about 4 in every 100 perfect scorers still died of natural causes. Treat a low score as a reason to work on strength and balance.
What If I Can’t Stand on One Leg for 10 Seconds?
Many older people can’t. About 54% of people aged 71 to 75 in the Brazilian study could not do it (Press release). Balance training may help: in one review, programs of 11 to 12 weeks with three sessions a week showed the biggest gains (Meta-analysis). Practice next to a counter, and see a doctor if you often feel dizzy or unsteady.
Key Takeaways
- The floor test flags risk. Over about 12 years, 3.7% of perfect scorers died of natural causes, against 42.1% of those who scored 0 to 4 (Study).
- The one-leg stand points the same way. Of those who could not hold it for 10 seconds, 17.5% died over about seven years, against 4.6% of those who could (Study).
- Walking speed has useful benchmarks. In people 65 and older, about 0.8 m/s matched typical life expectancy, and 1.0 m/s or faster predicted a longer life (Study).
- These are warning signs. All three tests come from studies that watched people. Even the study that tied a gain in walking speed to longer survival could not show cause. Its authors called for more research (Study).
- Training protects mobility. In the LIFE trial, walking plus strength and balance work cut major loss of mobility from 35.5% to 30.1%. Deaths did not fall (Trial).
- Safety first. The one-leg study only included people who walked steadily (Press release). Keep support nearby, and skip the floor test with joint or balance problems.
Test Yourself, Then Train
Try all three tests once this week. Write down your floor score, whether you held the one-leg stand, and your walking time. Repeat them every few months and watch how your own numbers change. The walking-speed researchers suggest tracking speed over time, since a drop might signal a new health problem that needs checking (Study).
If you score low, don’t panic. Build walking, leg strength and balance work into your week, the same mix the LIFE trial used. Start small: a daily walk, two strength sessions a week and a minute of one-leg practice while the kettle boils. If you have joint pain, balance problems or a recent fall, talk to a clinician before you start.
These tests can’t tell you how long you’ll live, but they can show you where to start.
This article is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Talk to a qualified clinician before changing your health regimen.
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