How Do You Measure Up?
Reading time: x minutes
You may be interested in knowing how well you are doing, in terms of physical strength, in relation to your peers of a similar age and recommended guidelines. The following 4 exercises will help you assess this. With all exercises, it’s important to be careful and not do anything if you are currently injured. Having a measure of how we are doing now, allows us to assess our current habits and tweak our fitness / movement regime if we need to. ‘Think of them as quick performance checks for your strength, balance, and power – the essential health components that help you stay active, independent, and doing what you love.’ (Centr.com)
Test 1: Squat to Chair Test
This test is a measure of your power. If you can do a hip hinge correctly, you can get out of a chair with no problem and you're setting yourself up to age well.
All you need to do is count how many times you can go from sitting to standing – without using your hands – in 30 seconds. To do the test, find a chair with a straight back and no armrests. Sit in the chair with your feet flat on the floor, and cross your arms over your chest, resting your hands on your shoulders. Using a timer set for 30 seconds, stand up, then sit down, repeating this movement as often as you can until the time elapses. Count how many times you can move from sitting to standing. Ensure good squat technique with your knees throughout.
Benchmarks
These average scores do not take into account a person's medical history – for example if they have recently undergone surgery or have an injury.
Here is a link to an interesting BBC article if you want to read further.
Test 2: Single Leg Balance Test (aka The Flamingo)
A good test of balance is to stand tall in suitable footwear or bare feet. Put your hands on your hips and lift one foot off the floor so you’re standing on one leg. Without leaning against anything or using your hands to steady yourself, see how long you can stay balanced before returning your foot to the floor. Take the best of three attempts and then repeat, with your eyes closed. This is tough and you may be surprised by how quickly you start to fall over! Britain’s NHS suggests the following targets:
The ‘Dead Hang’ is a test of grip strength, upper body strength and muscle mass. It requires us to engage muscles in the arms, abs, back and shoulders. To try this one you might need to head out to find the monkey bars at the local park unless you have a sturdy pull-up bar at home. Grip the bar overhead with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width. Engage your core, then bend at the knees to lift your feet off the floor. Hold for as long as you can. Whilst this exercise looks a bit arbitrary, is a good measure of overall strength and fitness and it gives us age related targets to ensure that as we age we’ll be able to continue to carry children and grandchildren, lift suitcases and push lawnmowers. Dependent on our age, there are guidelines about the length of time we should be able to hold this position:
20s & 30s: Target: 60-90 seconds hold
40s & 50s: Target: 20-45 seconds hold
60s & 70s: Target: 10-15 seconds hold
How to improve xxx. I tried this for fun in November (pictured) and managed to hold for 39 seconds. I tried it again after completing our 6 Week Online Body Transformation Programme (during which my upper body strength increased by 52%) and I held for a 60 seconds.
Test 4: Sitting Rising Test
This is one of the trickier tests, so do take care with it and use common sense (i.e. don’t do it if you currently have knee, hip or back issues).
Start with no shoes on. Cross your legs and try to lower yourself to the ground without putting your hands or knees down. Once you’ve done that, try to stand up again without using any other part of your body to help.
This test is scored and we start with 10 points and lose a point every time you have to use a hand or knee. If you wobble, you lose half a point. Angela Rippon explains it well in this article. 8-10 is a great score. 6-7 ½ are twice as likely to have a shorter life. 3 ½ - 5 ½. If you score low you can do exercises to help strengthen the body and give better balance.