Can You Stand on One Leg for 10 Seconds? What Balance May Tell You About Healthy Aging
Here's a simple test researchers have studied as a potential indicator of healthy aging: the 10-second balance test.
Stand near something sturdy in case you need support. Lift one foot off the ground. Can you stay there for 10 seconds?
A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that the ability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds was associated with survival in middle-aged and older adults.
That doesn't mean standing on one leg will help you live longer.
The test is better thought of as a proxy.
Balance depends on several systems working together, including strength, coordination, proprioception, vision, and neurological function. That makes a seemingly simple balance test an interesting snapshot of overall physical function.
What Did the 10-Second Balance Test Study Find?
Researchers evaluated 1,702 adults between the ages of 51 and 75. Participants were asked to stand on one leg for 10 seconds without additional support. About one in five were unable to successfully complete the test. Researchers then followed participants for a median of seven years.
After accounting for factors including age, sex, body mass index, and several existing health conditions, people who were unable to complete the 10-second balance test had an approximately 84% higher hazard of dying from any cause during the follow-up period.
That number is attention-grabbing, but the context matters. This was an observational study. It found an association between balance performance and mortality risk. It did not show that poor balance causes earlier death or that practicing standing on one leg will extend your life.
The more useful question is:
What might your ability to balance tell you about your overall physical function?
Why Does Balance Matter as We Age?
Standing on one foot looks simple, but your body is doing a lot behind the scenes to keep you upright.
Your eyes provide visual information. Your inner ear helps regulate equilibrium. Receptors in your muscles and joints help your brain understand where your body is in space. Your nervous system processes that information while your muscles make constant adjustments to keep you from falling.
Balance therefore depends on a combination of:
Strength
Coordination
Proprioception
Reaction time
Vision
Neurological function
That's why balance is more useful to think about as part of your overall physical capacity rather than as an isolated skill.
Strength matters too, particularly as we get older. The better your ability to produce and control force, the better equipped you are to handle the physical demands of everyday life.
Healthy Aging Is About More Than Living Longer
A lot of conversations about aging focus on lifespan.
How do I live longer?
That's an important question, but I think there's another one worth asking:
What do you want those additional years to look like?
Being able to get off the floor, climb stairs, walk confidently on uneven ground, travel, play with your kids or grandkids, and continue doing the activities you enjoy are all expressions of physical capacity.
Maintaining those abilities requires more than simply avoiding disease.
It requires keeping your body capable.
Strength, cardiovascular fitness, muscle mass, mobility, coordination, and balance all tend to become harder to maintain as we age if we stop challenging them.
That's why training for healthy aging shouldn't begin when you consider yourself "old."
It should begin well before you desperately need those qualities.
Can You Improve Your Balance as You Age?
Yes. Balance is trainable.
Research in older adults has found that exercise targeting balance, proprioception, and sensorimotor function can improve measures of balance. The World Health Organization also recommends that older adults include activities emphasizing functional balance and strength as part of their weekly physical activity.
That doesn't mean you need to spend your workouts standing on unstable surfaces.
In fact, balance training is often made more complicated than it needs to be.
Good strength training can challenge balance while simultaneously improving the strength and coordination you need in everyday life.
Exercises that can help include:
Split squats and lunges
Step-ups
Single-leg Romanian deadlifts
Suitcase carries
Walking and changing direction
Controlled single-leg exercises
The exact exercise matters less than the principle.
As your ability improves, the challenge should gradually increase.
The goal isn't instability for the sake of instability. The goal is to build a body that can produce force, control movement, respond to changes in position, and move confidently through the real world.
How to Try the 10-Second Balance Test Safely
If you're curious about your own balance, you can try a simple version of the test.
Stand near a wall, countertop, or other sturdy object, so you have something to grab if necessary.
Without holding on, lift one foot off the floor and see whether you can maintain your balance for 10 seconds.
Then try the other side.
Pay attention to more than whether you simply "pass" or "fail."
Ask yourself:
Is one side noticeably easier than the other?
Do you feel stable or are you constantly correcting yourself?
Is the test more difficult than you expected?
Do you need to put your foot down immediately?
Treat the result as information, not a diagnosis.
Being unable to stand on one leg for 10 seconds doesn't automatically mean you're unhealthy. Injury, pain, vision, medications, neurological conditions, vestibular issues, and simple lack of practice can all affect balance.
If you have significant balance problems or a history of falls, use extra caution and consider discussing it with an appropriate healthcare professional rather than testing yourself without support.
Build Physical Capacity Before You Need It
One of the most useful lessons from research on healthy aging is that it's easier to preserve physical capacity when you've built some in the first place.
Think of training as building a reserve.
The more strength, cardiovascular fitness, coordination, and movement capacity you develop now, the more you have to maintain as you get older.
If you build a high level of strength and lose some with age, you still have strength.
If you develop good cardiovascular fitness and it declines somewhat, you still have aerobic capacity.
The same idea applies to balance and coordination.
You don't train today because you're worried about whether you'll be able to stand on one leg years from now.
You train because you want your body to continue giving you options.
The Real Takeaway From the 10-Second Balance Test
The 10-second balance test isn't a crystal ball, and standing on one leg every morning isn't a shortcut to longevity.
What the research reinforces is something more useful:
How well your body functions matters.
Health isn't just your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, or what shows up on a blood test.
It's also what you're physically capable of doing.
Can you move confidently?
Can you get off the ground?
Can you climb stairs?
Can you maintain your balance?
Can you keep participating in the activities that make your life enjoyable?
Those abilities become increasingly valuable as we get older.
You don't need to obsess over every new longevity study or chase every new health hack.
Getting stronger, maintaining your cardiovascular fitness, moving regularly, and continuing to challenge your balance and coordination is a good place to start.
Sometimes the most useful indicators of health aren't very sophisticated.
Sometimes it's as simple as standing on one leg.
If you're looking for personal training in Bethesda or Washington, DC, I work with adults who want to get stronger, move better, improve their fitness, and build the physical capacity to stay active for the long term.
The goal isn't simply to exercise today.
It's to build a body that keeps letting you do the things you enjoy for decades to come.
Research Highlighted
Araújo CGS, de Souza e Silva CG, Laukkanen JA, et al. Successful 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2022;56(17):975–980. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2021-105360.
World Health Organization. WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour.
Pšeničnik Sluga S, Kozinc Z. Sensorimotor and proprioceptive exercise programs to improve balance in older adults: a systematic review with meta-analysis. European Journal of Translational Myology. 2024.