Longevity calculator
10-second one-legged stance test — how you compare with your age group
Enter how long you held a one-legged stance and your age. The page tells you whether you cleared the ten seconds the Araujo study tested and what share of your own five-year age group could not. It does not return a balance age — see below, because that absence is the point. Free, instant, no sign-up.
This is the number worth leading with, because it turns a pass or fail into information. The share who cannot do it roughly doubles every five years, from about one person in twenty at 51–55 to a clear majority at 71–75. Holding it at 68 is not ordinary — more than a third of that age group cannot.
| Your five-year age group | Could not do it, in your age group |
|---|---|
| 51-55 | 4.7% |
| 56-60 | 8.1% |
| 61-65 | 17.8% |
| 66-70 | 36.8% |
| 71-75 | 53.6% |
What the cohort showed
Crude death percentages across the whole cohort, and a hazard ratio adjusted for age, sex, BMI and comorbidities. They describe two groups of people in one study, not you.
Single-leg work is trainable and easy to fit around everything else. The coach can put it in the week without turning it into a project.
There is no balance age here, despite the name
The study measured one binary at one duration: could you hold the stance for ten seconds, yes or no. It published no mapping from a hold time to an equivalent age. Turning a four-second hold into "balance age 78" would require a curve nobody has drawn — you would be inventing the exact kind of number this page exists to avoid. What the data does support is the peer comparison, so that is what comes back: the share of your own five-year age group who could not do it. Consumer versions of this test hand out an age anyway.
Why it refuses to answer outside 51 to 75
That was the cohort. Nothing in the study licenses a claim about a 25-year-old: the cohort did not include one, failing the test at that age usually means something entirely different — an inner-ear problem, an old ankle injury, being tired — and quoting the association would be running it on a population that was never observed. Almost every consumer version of this test extrapolates anyway. This one returns nothing, which is the honest answer.
The protocol, because a sloppier version is an easier test
Barefoot. The top of the free foot resting against the back of the opposite calf. Elbows extended, arms at the sides. Eyes fixed on a point at eye level about two metres away. Up to three attempts, on either foot, before a participant is recorded as unable. Holding a wall, letting the arms swing, or fixing the eyes on the floor all make the test easier and make the comparison meaningless. Do it somewhere you can put a hand out if you need to.
The study
Araujo and colleagues, British Journal of Sports Medicine 2022;56:975-980. They applied that protocol to 1,702 adults aged 51 to 75, about two thirds of them men, and followed them for a median of seven years, during which 123 people (7.2 percent) died. Deaths were 4.6 percent among those who could hold the stance and 17.5 percent among those who could not. Adjusted for age, sex, BMI and comorbidities — coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and dyslipidaemia — the hazard ratio for death from any cause was 1.84, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.23 to 2.78. A lighter adjustment gives 2.18 (1.48–3.22); the conservative figure is the one shown here.
Which way the arrow points
This is observational. Standing on one leg is not a treatment; it is a quick read on a nervous system, a set of hips and an inner ear all working at once, and the people who cannot do it differ in many ways the model could not adjust for. The authors name recent falls and physical activity among the variables they had no data on. A failed hold is a reason to raise it with a doctor and to start practising, not a statement about how long you have.