The sitting-rising test (SRT) is a 10-second move with no equipment: you lower yourself from standing to sitting on the floor, then stand back up, using as little support as you can. In a 2014 study of more than 2,000 adults ages 51 to 80, the people who scored lowest on the test had more than five times the risk of dying over a median of 6.3 years than the people who scored highest, even after researchers adjusted for age, sex and body weight.
Here's how the test itself works, as independent descriptions of the original protocol agree on performing it:
- Find a clear, flat, non-slip space, ideally within reach of a wall or sturdy furniture in case you lose your balance.
- From standing, barefoot, lower yourself to sit on the floor using the fewest supports you can manage — crossing your legs either way is allowed.
- From sitting, stand back up again, again using as little support as possible.
- Each half of the movement — sitting and rising — starts at a maximum of 5 points and loses 1 point for every support you use, such as a hand, a forearm, a knee or the side of a leg, plus a half point for any noticeable loss of balance.
- Add the two halves together for a score out of 10. A 10 means you sat down and stood back up with no support and no instability at all.
What did the study find?
A team led by exercise physiologist Claudio Gil Araújo scored 2,002 adults ages 51 to 80 — 68% men — on the sitting-rising test using that same 0-to-10 formula, then grouped them into four score bands (0 to 3, 3.5 to 5.5, 6 to 7.5, and 8 to 10) and tracked who died.¹ Over a median follow-up of 6.3 years, 159 people (7.9%) died. The lower a person's score, the higher their mortality, in a graded, stepwise way (p < 0.001): compared with people scoring 8 to 10, people scoring 0 to 3 had 5.44 times the risk of dying (95% CI 3.1 to 9.5), people scoring 3.5 to 5.5 had 3.44 times the risk (95% CI 2.0 to 5.9), and people scoring 6 to 7.5 had 1.84 times the risk (95% CI 1.1 to 3.0) — after adjusting for age, sex and body mass index. Across the full range, each one-point increase in score was linked to roughly a 21% lower risk of dying during the study.
What does a low score mean?
Not on its own. A single sitting-rising score doesn't diagnose anything specific — it's a snapshot of musculoskeletal fitness: leg strength, flexibility, balance and body composition all working together in that moment, each of which tends to decline with age and inactivity. The study's authors describe the test as a simple, safe tool that could add useful information to a routine health exam, not a stand-alone diagnosis. Their analysis is also a retrospective cohort that only adjusted for age, sex and body mass index — it can show that lower scores track with earlier death, but it can't prove the score itself is the cause, and it didn't account for participants' existing illnesses or how physically active they were day to day, either of which could explain part of the link.
If you needed a lot of support to get up from the floor, that's a reasonable thing to mention at your next physical rather than a reason for alarm on its own.
What the research says
Brito and colleagues' 2014 study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that a lower sitting-rising test score was independently associated with a stepwise higher risk of all-cause mortality over a median of 6.3 years, after adjusting for age, sex and body mass index.¹ The design is a retrospective cohort — researchers scored people on the test and then tracked who died, rather than assigning people to different fitness levels — so it can show an association but can't prove that a low score itself shortens life. The more likely explanation, which the study's own conclusion points to, is that the test is a proxy for broader musculoskeletal fitness and functional capacity, both of which independently predict survival; the analysis didn't account for baseline health conditions or habitual physical activity, so some of the link may reflect those unmeasured differences rather than the test result on its own.
What you can do this week
- Try the test yourself, barefoot, in a clear space near a wall or sturdy furniture you could reach if needed. Note how much support, if any, you used sitting down and standing back up.
- If you needed a lot of support, build the specific things the test measures — leg strength, hip and ankle flexibility, and balance — with bodyweight squats, lunges, or by practicing sit-to-stands from a chair and gradually working toward lower surfaces.
- Treat it as one data point among several, the way a 10-second one-legged stance or grip strength double as quick, equipment-free markers of aging — none of them replaces a clinician's exam, but all three are worth trying once and mentioning if something feels off.
A single floor-to-standing move won't tell you everything about how you're aging. But it's one of the simplest tests researchers have linked this directly to a measurable health outcome — reason enough to try it, barefoot and unhurried, and see where you land.
