The guide

Why does strength matter so much for a long life?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 202612 sources

Four cheap tests (getting up off the floor, grip, push-ups and standing on one foot) tracked who lived longest in studies of up to 139,691 people. In one, grip predicted death better than systolic blood pressure (the top number) did. The strength and balance behind all four come back within weeks of training, at any age.

Most people file strength under looks or sport, something for gym regulars and athletes. Doctors measure your blood pressure and cholesterol, and nobody asks you to sit down on the floor and stand back up. But in studies that followed tens of thousands of people for years, these small physical tests sorted the long lives from the short ones, and grip did it better than blood pressure.

Why would a party trick predict anything?

Sitting down on the floor and getting back up looks like something you’d do at a party. But it asks for leg strength, balance, flexibility and coordination all at once, and it needs enough of each for your own bodyweight. The test came from sports medicine researchers in Brazil in the 1990s. Claudio Gil Araujo, who led the studies, said people who pass it well are “in the higher quartile of musculo-skeletal fitness”.

Grip is a smaller window onto the same thing. A 2019 review of grip in older adults found it explains a person’s overall strength well, and that it goes with bone density, nutrition, memory, mood and quality of life. A strong hand is usually attached to a strong, healthy body.

A picture from daily life

A home inspector bounces on the floorboards as they walk through a house. One bounce doesn’t tell them what’s wrong. But a floor that gives tells them something about the beams underneath, and that’s the cue for a closer look.

These tests are the bounce. They’re cheap, quick and a little crude, and they tell you a lot about what’s underneath. And unlike a house, you can replace the beams yourself.

The floor rise

The first study, published in 2012, scored 2,002 adults aged 51 to 80. Sitting down and standing up were each worth 5 points, with a point off for every hand, knee or other support. Over about six years, each extra point went with 21% lower mortality, and the lowest scorers had 5 to 6 times the risk of people who scored 8 or more.

In 2025 the same team published a much bigger follow-up. They scored 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75, now with half a point off for a wobble, and followed them for a median of 12.3 years. This is how many in each group died over that time.

After taking age, sex, weight and health conditions into account, the lowest group’s risk of dying of natural causes was 3.84 times the top group’s, and their risk of dying of heart disease was 6.05 times. These are a group’s past, in middle-aged and older adults, and your score moves with practice. Score your floor rise.

Grip

The PURE study measured the grip of 139,691 adults aged 35 to 70 in 17 countries, rich and poor, and followed them for a median of four years. Every 5 kg (11 lb) less grip went with 16% higher risk of death from any cause and 17% higher risk of death from heart disease. Grip predicted both better than systolic blood pressure did.

What grip didn’t predict is interesting too. It had no link with diabetes, falls or fractures in that study, which fits the idea that a squeeze is a cheap window onto how strong and healthy the rest of you is. What’s a good grip strength?

Standing on one foot

In 2022 the floor rise team tried something even simpler. 1,702 adults aged 51 to 75 stood on one foot for 10 seconds, the other foot resting on the back of the standing leg, arms by their sides. One in five couldn’t. Over a median of seven years, 4.6% of those who could died, against 17.5% of those who couldn’t, and after age, sex, weight and health conditions, their risk was 84% higher.

How many couldn’t hold 10 seconds rose fast with age.

Balance is what keeps a stumble from turning into a fall. More than one in four US adults 65 and older falls each year, and falls send about 4.5 million older people to the emergency room. How long should you be able to stand on one leg?

Push-ups

The famous push-up study followed 1,104 male firefighters in Indiana, average age 39.6, for 10 years. They did push-ups in time with a metronome until they couldn’t keep up or reached 80. Heart events per 100,000 person-years fell from 1,757 in men who did 0 to 10 push-ups to 79 in men who did 41 or more.

It’s a striking curve, but it comes from 37 heart events in all, only one of them in the 41-plus group, and every person in it was a working male firefighter. The authors said it may not apply to women, older people or people who don’t exercise. How many push-ups should I be able to do?

And lifting itself?

The tests measure what you have. The question most people care about is whether building more of it helps. In the biggest study so far, 147,374 US health professionals followed for up to 30 years, people who lifted 90 to 119 minutes a week had a 13% lower risk of death than people who didn’t lift, after taking their walking and other exercise into account. A 2022 review of 16 studies found lifters had about 15% lower death rates. How much you need has the full numbers, and the surprise about walking.

Don’t healthy people just do better on tests?

Nobody has run the trial that would settle it, where thousands of people train to raise their scores and researchers count who lives longer. Until someone does, we’d train anyway, since the strength itself makes daily life easier and lowers the odds of a fall.