How long should I be able to stand on one leg?
With your eyes open, essentially as long as anyone bothers to time you until about sixty. The study behind the norms stopped every trial at 45 seconds and nearly everybody under forty reached the cap.
Eyes closed is the version that actually separates people. The averages run around fifteen seconds in your thirties, eight in your fifties and under five past sixty. That collapse happens because vision covers for the inner ear and the sense of where your limbs are, and closing your eyes removes the cover.
The ten second test people have read about comes from 1,702 adults aged 51 to 75. One in five could not hold it, and over seven years their death rate was 1.84 times higher after adjusting for age, sex, weight and existing conditions. The 4.58 figure that ran in the press was before any of that.
Source: Araujo et al, British Journal of Sports Medicine 2022
Try the one-leg stand1 min, free, nothing to installEyes open and eyes shut, against 549 adults, and the ten-second mark studied in 1,702 people.
Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS · How we review
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