CATEGORY: HEALTHY AGING & LONGEVITY
Getting down to the floor and back up sounds like nothing. Cross-legged on the way down, standing on the way up, with no hand, no knee and no chair to lean on. Among 4,282 middle-aged and older adults scored on that one movement, those who did it cleanly were far less likely to die over the following decade than those who needed the most support.1 Every point lost on the scoring scale tracked with about 33 percent higher risk of death from natural causes.
Ten Points, Minus One for Each Hand or Knee
The sitting-rising test was developed by exercise researchers and takes about a minute. Five points are available for getting down, five for getting up. A point comes off for every hand, forearm or knee used as a prop, and half a point for a visible wobble. Scores run from 0 to a perfect 10. What it measures is not how the heart and lungs cope with exertion. Researchers call it non-aerobic fitness: muscle strength, flexibility, balance, and the proportion of muscle to fat in the body. All four tend to slip with age, and the test folds them into a single number.1
One Minute of Movement, Then Twelve Years of Death Records
Nobody was assigned to anything here. Researchers at an exercise-medicine clinic scored 4,282 adults between 46 and 75 once, then waited. The waiting is what turned a one-minute movement into a statement about longevity. Over a median of 12.3 years, meaning half the group was tracked longer than that, 665 of them died, 15.5% of everyone tested.1 Deaths came from official state records. Families were not asked. The five score groups were then compared, from the lowest scorers up to the perfect 10s. Because the study only watched, it can show a link and cannot prove that moving better is what extends a life.
42 Percent Versus Fewer Than 4
The two ends of the scale were far apart. Among those scoring 0 to 4, about 42 percent died of natural causes during follow-up. Among those who earned a perfect 10, fewer than 4 percent did. Adjusting for age, sex and other health factors left the lowest group with roughly four times the risk of natural death carried by the top group. Smaller gaps counted too: each single point lower on the 0-to-10 scale was associated with about 33 percent higher risk. Deaths from cardiovascular causes, meaning problems of the heart and blood vessels, followed the same pattern.1
Why One Movement Carries So Much
Getting to the floor and back draws on several systems at once, which may be why it lines up so closely with survival. Leg and core strength, hips and knees that bend, steady balance, a favorable ratio of muscle to fat. These are the qualities that keep older adults on their feet and carry them through an illness. A low score can be an early flag that one of them is slipping. The arrow may also point the other way. Someone already carrying a hidden illness will find the movement harder, and that difficulty is a symptom rather than a cause. One earlier look at the same test followed 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80 for a median of about six years. The lowest scorers there ran roughly five times the risk of dying, and each extra point on the scale was worth about 21% better survival.2 That work came largely from the same research team, so outside confirmation is still thin.
Key Takeaways
- Scoring well on a sit-and-rise floor test tracked with lower risk of death over roughly 12 years in middle-aged and older adults. The study shows a link, not a cause.
- Each point lower on the 0-to-10 scale was tied to about 33 percent higher risk of death from natural causes, which suggests the score is picking up strength, flexibility and balance together.
- Scoring is simple: five points down, five points up, one off for every hand, forearm or knee that takes weight.
References
- Araujo CGS, de Souza e Silva CG, Myers J, Laukkanen JA, Ramos PS, Ricardo DR. Sitting-rising test scores predict natural and cardiovascular causes of deaths in middle-aged and older men and women. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 2025;zwaf325. link
- Brito LB, Ricardo DR, Araújo DS, et al. Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. 2014;21(7):892–898. link.