How strong am I for my age?

What your result means

Each test lands on one of four steps. Good and Strong put you at or above the usual for people your age and sex on the tests with a published table, and the dead hang, plank and squat use Gyroscope's training bands. Your lowest band is your weak link, since one low score points straight at what to practice.

Train that one for the next eight weeks. If it's the floor rise or balance, add the drills the scorecard shows plus split squats and step-ups. If it's push-ups, the hang or grip, presses, rows and carries move it. The strength protocol fits them into your week. Then test again on the date the scorecard gives you, the same way. One step up in eight weeks is real progress.

Where each band comes from

Floor rise. Sitting down and standing up are each scored from 5, a point off for each hand, forearm, knee or side of a leg you use and half a point for a wobble. 10 is Strong, 8.5 to 9.5 Good, 8 Fair and 7.5 or lower Building: the groups of a 2025 study that followed 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75 for a median of 12.3 years. Score it on its own page.

Push-ups. Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology push-up norms, 2003: men from the toes, women from the knees, one set to exhaustion. Excellent and Very good count as Strong. A woman's push-ups from the toes are scored on the knee table, which underrates her, and a man's knee push-ups get no band until he moves to the toes. Over 69, the 60 to 69 row is the nearest. Men also see their group in a study of 1,104 male firefighters, where the 41-or-more group had far fewer heart events over 10 years.

Dead hang and plank. No study has published hang times by age, so these are Gyroscope's training bands from its benchmark pages: a hang under 20 seconds is Building, 20 to 45 Fair, 45 to 60 Good and over a minute Strong. A plank under 30 seconds is Building, 30 to 60 Fair, 60 to 120 Good and longer Strong.

One foot, eyes closed. From 549 healthy adults, barefoot, arms crossed, best of three, stopped at 45 seconds. Strong is your decade's average plus one spread, Good your decade's average, Fair the next older decade's average.

Grip. Your best squeeze with each hand, added together, against US adults in NHANES 2011 to 2012: the 80th percentile and up is Strong, the 50th to 80th Good, the 20th to 50th Fair.

Chair stand, 60 and up. Full stands in 30 seconds from a 17-inch chair, arms crossed. Under CDC's line for your age is below average, which CDC counts as a fall risk. At 60 to 64 the line is 14 for men and 12 for women.

Squat set. Your best recent set becomes an estimated max (the middle of seven formulas, as on the one-rep max tool), over your bodyweight, on Gyroscope's squat bands: under 0.75 Building, 0.75 to 1.0 Fair, 1.0 to 1.5 Good, 1.5 and up Strong.

These tools are for adults 18 and up. Test again in eight weeks, the same way, at the same time of day. The bands are typical ranges, and the Gyroscope app personalizes yours.