The tests

What is the sit-to-stand test, and what's a good score?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20264 sources

Sit down on the floor cross-legged, then stand back up, using as little help as you can. Each half starts at 5 points, and every hand, forearm, knee or side of a leg you use costs a point. A 10 is a great score and 8.5 or more is good. In 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75, the score tracked survival over 12 years, and it goes up with practice.

Two different tests go by this name, which is why the charts you find don’t seem to match. The floor version (the sitting-rising test) was worked out by Brazilian researchers in exercise physiology and sports medicine in the 1990s and is the one with the survival studies. The chair version is the 30-second chair stand, which CDC uses to check fall risk in people 60 and older. Both are below, but the floor version is the one people try in the living room and then send to their parents.

How to score the floor version

1. Stand barefoot on a rug or mat, with a chair or wall within reach.
2. Cross your legs and sit down on the floor without leaning on anything, if you can.
3. Stand back up the same way.
4. Start each half at 5. Take off 1 point for every hand, forearm, knee or side of a leg you use, and half a point if you wobble or lose your balance. Add the two halves.

You can try a few times. Your best way down and your best way up count. One hand on the floor coming up makes a 9. A hand and a knee coming up makes an 8. A wobble on the way down and a clean rise makes a 9.5. Both hands and a knee each way makes a 4.

It’s the move you make when you get down on the floor to play with a grandchild, or to fish something out from under the couch, and then get back up again. You need strong legs, hips and ankles that bend far enough, balance, and enough strength for the weight you’re lifting, which is all of you. A weak spot in any one of them shows up as a hand on the floor.

What the scores meant in the studies

The first big study, published in 2014, tested 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80 and followed them for a median of 6.3 years. Each extra point on the test went with 21% lower mortality. In 2025 the same research group published a larger follow-up of 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75, 68% of them men, followed for a median of 12.3 years.

Those percentages describe what happened to groups of people tested at one exercise medicine clinic in Rio de Janeiro, so they describe a group’s past and can’t forecast yours. Two in three were men, and nobody has run a trial to show that raising your score adds years. The score itself does move with practice, and the things that raise it (leg strength, balance and getting comfortable on the floor) are the things you’d want at 80 anyway.

How to raise your score

These are practice drills, the same ones the floor rise tool gives you.

• Sit down to the floor and back up once a day, with as little help as you can.
• Chair stands with your arms crossed, three sets of 8 to 10.
• Split squats, holding a counter at first.

Aim for one fewer touch at a time. A 7 that becomes an 8 in two months is real progress. Skip the test if you have a joint injury, recent surgery or get dizzy, and don’t push through pain. The muscles that get you up off the floor are mostly your quads and glutes, with your core holding you steady, so how to build strong quads, how to build strong glutes and the strength protocol are the next step past the drills.

The chair version, for 60 and up

CDC’s version uses a straight-backed chair with no arms and a 17-inch seat. Sit in the middle, cross your arms at the wrists against your chest, and keep your feet flat. On “go”, stand all the way up and sit back down, as many times as you can in 30 seconds. If you’re more than halfway up when time runs out, it counts. A score under these numbers is below average for your age, which CDC counts as a fall risk.

The scorecard takes the chair stand for anyone 60 or older. For the longevity side of the floor test, lifespan.guide answers What is the sitting-rising test?