The test
The sit-rise test
Sit down on the floor and stand back up, leaning on as little as you can. It is the closest thing to a whole-body measurement in the battery, which is both why it is useful and why a low score is hard to act on.
What you need. Clear floor space. Bare feet or grippy socks.
How to do it
Doing it properly
- Start standing. Lower yourself to sitting on the floor.
- Then stand back up.
- Use as little support as you can, but do not risk a fall to protect your score.
What counts
You start with 5 points for going down and 5 for coming up. Take off one point each time you use a hand, forearm, knee, or the side of your leg. Take off half a point if you wobble noticeably.
What most people get wrong
- Forgetting to count supports on the way down.
- Not counting a knee.
- Rushing.
The evidence
What it actually shows
You start on ten: five for sitting down, five for getting up. You lose a point for each support you use on the way — a hand, a forearm, a knee, the side of a leg — and half a point for an unsteady execution. A hand on your own knee counts as a support.
The scoring distribution comes from Araujo and colleagues, who scored 6,141 adults aged 16 to 98 at the CLINIMEX clinic in Rio between 1998 and 2018. Your score is read against that distribution for your age and sex, which is what turns a number out of ten into a percentile.
The instruction is scripted, and the wording matters: try to sit and then to rise from the floor, without worrying about speed, using the least support that you believe is needed. Rushing it costs points that a slower attempt would have kept.
That distribution comes from one sports-medicine clinic in one city. The people who attend a clinic like that are not a random sample of anywhere, and the Index reads your score against them rather than against the general population.
It is four things in one number — strength, flexibility, balance and how much you are carrying. That is what makes it a good single measurement and a poor instruction: a low score does not say which of the four to work on. The other eight tests are what separate them.
The mortality evidence usually quoted alongside this test comes from a different and earlier cohort. The Index scores against the 2020 paper because that is the distribution it can actually place you in, and it does not carry the earlier study's risk figures across.
Araujo CGS, Castro CLB, Franca JFC, Araujo DS. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 2020;27(8):888–890. n=6,141 (4,101 men, 2,040 women), ages 16–98, CLINIMEX Rio, 1998–2018.
The next step
One test is one test.
This measures one thing. The Evolution Index measures nine, across the three domains that decide how long you stay useful, and reports your weakest rather than your average — a strong heart does not buy you out of a floor you cannot get up from.
Every score is published with the error around it, because a change smaller than the measurement error is not a change.