The guide

What should you measure first?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 202612 sources

Start with the tests that cost nothing. Sit down on the floor and get up without your hands, stand on one leg for 10 seconds, hang from a bar, and take a week of blood pressure readings at home. Each one predicted death or heart disease in big studies. Then add a VO2 max from your watch and a blood panel.

Most people assume that measuring how you’re aging means a DNA kit, a full body scan or a few hundred dollars for a “biological age” score. The cheap tests have the better record. Researchers did them on thousands of people and then waited years to see who died.

Why start with the free tests?

Because they test the whole body at once. Getting up off the floor without your hands takes leg strength, hip mobility, balance and a body that isn’t too heavy to lift, all in about five seconds. If one of those has slipped, the test finds it. That’s why a movement this simple predicted death over a dozen years.

The expensive tests mostly look at one part, and some of them are noisy. When researchers ran the same blood sample twice through six well known DNA age clocks, the results came out up to 9 years apart.

A picture from daily life

Before a mechanic orders parts, they take the car round the block. How it starts, brakes and turns tells them which part to open up. The floor test is the drive round the block. A blood panel is opening the hood.

How do you do the floor test?

1. Stand barefoot on a clear floor, with a sofa or a counter close by in case you need it.
2. Lower yourself to sit on the floor without using your hands, forearms, knees or the side of your leg.
3. Stand back up the same way.
4. Score each half out of 5. Take off a point for each hand, forearm, knee or side of the leg you used, and half a point for a wobble. Add the two halves for a score out of 10.

Researchers led by Claudio Gil Araújo tested 4,282 adults aged 46 to 75 this way and followed them for a median of 12.3 years, in which 665 died. Only about 1 in 10 scored a perfect 10.

The risks are after allowing for age, sex, weight and health conditions. If you’ve had a hip or knee replaced, a recent fall or a joint that hurts on the floor, skip this one and start with balance.

Can you stand on one leg for 10 seconds?

Stand next to a counter. Lift one foot and rest the front of it against the back of your other calf, arms at your sides, eyes straight ahead. Hold for 10 seconds. You get three tries on either foot.

In a study of 1,702 adults aged 51 to 75, 20.4% couldn’t do it. Over a median of 7 years, 17.5% of them died, against 4.6% of the people who could. After allowing for age, sex, weight and health conditions, not being able to do it went with an 84% higher risk of dying. It gets harder fast after the mid 50s.

Couldn’t hold 10 seconds, by age

• 51 to 555%
• 56 to 608%
• 61 to 6518%
• 66 to 7037%
• 71 to 7554%

How long can you hang from a bar?

Grab a pull-up bar with both hands, lift your feet and time how long you hold on. Nobody has followed hang times to see who dies, so the bands below are Gyroscope’s training bands. The closest study used a grip gauge instead. In 139,691 adults across 17 countries, each 11 pounds (5 kg) of weaker grip went with a 16% higher death rate over 4 years.

Typical bands are under 20 seconds building, 20 to 45 fair, 45 to 60 good and over 60 excellent. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours. Stop if your shoulder hurts or feels loose.

What about push-ups?

They’re a good test if you can do them. In 1,104 male firefighters with an average age of 40, men who could do more than 40 push-ups had 96% fewer heart and blood vessel events (cardiovascular disease) over 10 years than men who managed fewer than 10. It was a small study, with only 37 heart events, all in active men, so use it as a guide for yourself rather than a cut-off for everyone.

A week of home blood pressure

Nearly half of US adults (48.1%, about 120 million) have high blood pressure, and only 22.5% of them have it under control. At 40 to 69, each 20 points (mmHg) higher systolic (the top number) went with more than twice the death rate from stroke and twice the rate from coronary heart disease, in a million adults.

One measurement in a clinic tells you little, because blood pressure moves through the day. A week of measurements at home, morning and evening, tells you a lot. bloodpressure.guide has the seven-day home week, step by step.

Your waist

Wrap a tape round your bare waist at the navel. In the Harvard study a BMI of 25 to 30 carried only about 5% more risk than 23 to 25, while 30 to 35 carried 25% more and 35 and over 67% more. Weight alone misses where the fat sits. bodyfat.guide covers how to tell if you have visceral fat.

Then the ones that cost money

• A VO2 max from your watch. In 122,007 people who ran a treadmill test, the least fit quarter died at about 5 times the rate of the fittest 2 percent. Watches aren’t exact. In a study of 30 people, Apple Watch came out on average about 6 points (ml/kg/min) below a lab test, so use it to watch the trend. vo2max.guide covers the fitness number in full.
• A blood panel. A few markers do most of the work. Start with the blood tests that count most.
• A DNA age test, last. They disagree with each other and move between retests. Are biological age tests accurate?

Your turn

Take the floor test. It scores your sit-rise, balance and hang against the studies and gives you a date to test again.