Yes, according to the research. In a study of 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80, every one-point improvement on the 10-point sitting-rising test was associated with a 21% improvement in survival over six years. People who scored 8 to 10 were dramatically more likely to survive the follow-up period than people who scored 0 to 3. It is not magic. It is a fast, equipment-free way to measure the muscular strength, balance, and flexibility that keep you alive.
What Is the Sitting-Rising Test?
The sitting-rising test (SRT) is exactly what it sounds like. From a standing position, you lower yourself to sit on the floor, then stand back up, using as little support as possible. No hands on knees, no grabbing furniture, no pushing off the ground.
Scoring is simple. You start with 10 points: 5 for sitting down, 5 for standing up. Every time you use a support (a hand, a forearm, a knee, the side of your leg), you lose one point. Wobble or lose your balance and you lose half a point. A perfect, controlled sit and rise with zero assistance is a 10. Needing a hand and a knee both ways puts you around a 6.
The test was developed by Brazilian exercise-medicine physician Claudio Gil Araújo and his team at Clinimex in Rio de Janeiro. It takes about 30 seconds, requires no equipment, and can be done on any nonslip surface. That simplicity is the point. Most fitness tests measure one thing: grip strength, walking speed, or VO2max. The sitting-rising test measures several at once.
Does the Sitting-Rising Test Really Predict Longevity?
The original study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (Brito et al., DOI: 10.1177/2047487312471759), followed 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80 for a median of 6.3 years. During follow-up, 159 participants died (7.9%).
The results were stark. After adjusting for age, sex, and body mass index, lower scores predicted higher mortality with high statistical confidence (p < 0.001). The survival odds differed 5.44-fold between the highest and lowest scorers. Each single-point increase on the 10-point scale was associated with a 21% improvement in survival.
A larger follow-up study reinforced the finding. Researchers tested 4,282 men and women aged 46 to 75, and the middle-aged and older adults who could sit and rise with no support were roughly six times less likely to die of cardiovascular causes over the following decade than those who struggled. They were also less likely to die of other natural causes, including cancer. The study was covered by the Washington Post, with Araújo noting that the test assesses “all of the aspects of fitness that are not aerobic”: muscular health, balance, flexibility, and body composition.
Two caveats keep this honest. First, these are observational studies. The test predicts mortality; it does not prove that practicing floor-sits extends your life. People who move well tend to be healthier in many ways the test cannot separate. Second, the participants were 46 to 80 years old. The predictive value for a healthy 30-year-old is untested and probably meaningless, since nearly every 30-year-old scores a 10.
How Do You Do the Sitting-Rising Test?
Do not do this alone the first time. Araújo himself says to have a partner watch, score you, and steady you if you topple. If you have hip, spine, or knee arthritis, or any serious joint problem, skip it. It is not worth an injury.
Otherwise, the protocol is:
- Stand on a nonslip surface in comfortable clothes, barefoot or in flat shoes.
- Without worrying about speed, lower yourself to a cross-legged sitting position on the floor, using as little support as you feel you need.
- Then stand back up the same way.
- Your partner scores each half out of 5. Subtract 1 point for every support used (hand, forearm, knee, side of leg, hand on knee). Subtract 0.5 for a visibly unsteady performance.
- Add the sitting and rising scores. That is your SRT score out of 10.
There is no warm-up required and no special equipment. The whole thing takes under a minute.
What Does Your Sitting-Rising Test Score Mean?
The researchers grouped scores into four bands:
- 8 to 10: Excellent. You moved with full control and minimal or no support. In the original study, this group had the best survival odds by a wide margin.
- 6 to 7.5: Good. Minor support use. Still associated with meaningfully better outcomes than the lower bands.
- 3.5 to 5.5: Below average. Multiple supports needed. Mortality risk climbs noticeably from here.
- 0 to 3: Poor. Significant difficulty sitting and rising. This group had the worst survival odds in the study, with a hazard ratio of 5.44 versus the top group after adjusting for age, sex, and BMI.
Context matters more than the raw number. A 75-year-old who scores a 7 is doing well for their age. A 52-year-old who scores a 4 has a functional deficit worth addressing. The test is most useful as a personal baseline: test yourself now, work on the underlying capacities, and retest in three to six months.
Why Would Getting Off the Floor Predict How Long You Live?
Because getting off the floor is a compound movement that quietly tests nearly everything that declines with age. Think about what the movement demands: ankle mobility to stay balanced at the bottom, hip and knee flexion to fold down, core stability to control the descent, leg strength to drive back up, and balance throughout.
Each of those capacities is independently tied to survival. Low muscle strength predicts mortality in older adults. Poor balance predicts falls, and falls are a leading cause of injury and death after 65. Stiff joints and lost mobility predict frailty. The sitting-rising test does not measure any of them precisely. It measures all of them at once, which is why Araújo calls it special: “There are many tests of balance or strength or flexibility. But what makes this test special is that it looks at all of them at once.”
It also captures something subtler: the difference between exercising and moving. Plenty of people who “work out” three times a week still cannot get off the floor gracefully, because machines and benches never ask their joints to move through full ranges under their own body weight. The test exposes the gap between gym fitness and real-world function. That gap is where longevity lives, which is the same reason healthspan, not just lifespan, is the metric that actually matters.
Should You Try the Sitting-Rising Test?
For most adults over 40, yes, with the safety caveats above. It costs nothing, takes a minute, and gives you a genuine functional baseline. Treat it as a screening tool, not a diagnosis. A low score is information, not a verdict.
Skip it if you have active joint problems, recent surgery, severe arthritis in the hips, spine, or knees, or any condition where falling carries real risk. If you are unsure, the safer equivalents are the chair-stand test (sit-to-stand from a chair, timed) or a supervised functional assessment with a physical therapist. Both are well-validated and carry essentially zero injury risk.
One more honest note: if you are under 40 and active, you will almost certainly score a 9 or 10, and the test tells you nothing you did not know. Its predictive power comes from the population it was studied in. Do it for fun, not for insight.
How Do You Improve Your Sitting-Rising Test Score?
You do not improve the score by practicing the test. You improve it by building the capacities the test measures, and the prescription is unglamorous:
- Strength train twice a week. Squats, lunges, hinges, and carries rebuild the leg and hip strength that drives the rise. Thirty to sixty minutes a week is the dose linked to roughly 20% lower premature mortality, and it is enough to move the needle here.
- Eat enough protein. Muscle cannot be built or preserved without raw material. Most adults over 50 need more than they think; the evidence-backed target and the math are in our guide to how much protein you actually need per day.
- Work on balance directly. Single-leg stands, tandem walking, and tai chi all transfer. Balance is a use-it-or-lose-it capacity, and it goes first.
- Keep your joints moving through full ranges. Deep squat holds, hip openers, and ankle mobility drills attack the exact stiffness that costs points on the descent.
Retest every few months. If your score climbs from a 5 to an 8, you have not just improved a party trick. You have rebuilt the strength, balance, and mobility that the research ties to survival. That is the whole game, and it is refreshingly free of gadgets, which puts it in the same category as the interventions that survive every which biohacks actually work audit: the ones that ask something of you instead of selling something to you.
The Bottom Line
The sitting-rising test is one of the rare longevity metrics that is free, fast, and backed by real cohort data: 2,002 people in the original study, 4,282 in the follow-up, with a 21% survival improvement per point on the scale. It works because it measures everything at once: strength, balance, flexibility, and body control. Try it with a partner, know your baseline, and build the capacities behind it. No device required.
