Balance with eyes closed: how long should you stand on one leg at 40, 50, 60?

The most used reference is Springer and colleagues’ 2007 study of 549 healthy volunteers aged 18–99 (258 women, 291 men) at a US military medical centre. Barefoot, arms crossed over the chest, the raised foot near but not touching the standing ankle, three trials, a 45-second cap. Best of three, eyes closed:

• 18–39: 15.2 s
• 40–49: 12.7 s
• 50–59: 8.3 s
• 60–69: 4.4 s
• 70–79: 3.1 s
• 80–99: 1.9 s

Two raters timing the same people agreed almost perfectly (an intraclass correlation of 0.998 for the best of three, eyes closed), so the test is reliable to time.

These are means from a screened, healthy convenience sample. Springer published no percentiles, so there is no published answer to "what counts as the 25th percentile at 50".

With eyes open, Springer’s averages were 44.7, 41.9, 41.2, 32.1, 21.5 and 9.4 s across the same age groups. Until 60, most people are close to the 45-second cap, so the eyes-open test separates healthy younger adults poorly.

With eyes closed, times spread out and fall steadily with age, which makes the test useful at every age. The fall is steep through midlife: the average drops by about a third from the 40s to the 50s, and by about half again from the 50s to the 60s.

These are differences between age groups measured once, not one person tracked across decades. They describe how a 60-year-old today compares with a 40-year-old today, not exactly how your own time will change.

In Springer’s data, not meaningfully. There was no significant effect of sex on eyes-closed times (p = 0.515), while age had a strong effect (p < 0.001). A p-value of 0.515 means a gap at least this large would be common even if there were no true difference.

At 18–39 the women’s mean was 13.1 s and the men’s 16.9 s, but across the whole sample the sex difference did not reach significance. In the British cohort at 53, the medians were 5 s for men and 4 s for women.

So one table for both sexes is reasonable, with the caveat that this rests on two samples.

Springer’s volunteers were healthy and screened. The British birth cohort is closer to a typical population: 1,355 men and 1,411 women born in 1946, all tested at 53, with a 30-second cap. Their median times were 5 s for men (the middle half between 3 and 10 s) and 4 s for women (3 to 7 s), well below Springer’s 8.3 s average for 50–59. Part of that gap is arithmetic: a median sits below a mean when a few people stand for a long time.

That cohort was followed for deaths to age 66. Against the best fifth, people unable to do the test had a fully adjusted hazard ratio of 9.61, and the lowest fifth 2.53. In words: people in the lowest fifth were dying at about two and a half times the rate of the best fifth over 13 years, after adjustment. The "unable" group was small and included people who were unwell at testing, which helps explain why its figure is so large.

The authors found some evidence that balance time was more strongly linked to mortality than grip or chair rises. A composite of all three, lowest against highest fifth, gave a hazard ratio of 3.68. All of this is observational, in one British birth year.

Stand barefoot next to a wall or counter, arms crossed. Lift one foot so it does not touch the standing leg, close your eyes and start the timer. Stop when the lifted foot touches down, the standing foot moves, your arms uncross or your eyes open. Take the best of three. Stop if you feel dizzy. This is a benchmark, not medical advice.

Longstanding’s single-leg stand uses exactly that protocol and scores your best of three against Springer’s means for your age. Because Springer gives means only, the spread around each mean is our estimate, and the app says so. Its 18–39 band uses the women’s mean (13.1 s) rather than the total (15.2 s), which makes that band slightly easy.

The app’s 50–59 median is 7.4 s. Against the British cohort’s 5 s and 4 s, that means a typical 53-year-old may land around the 30th–40th percentile in the app. Read a lowish percentile in your fifties with that in mind.

The app does not compare your eyes-closed time with the 10-second eyes-open finding, which comes from a different test. Its two balance goals for 85, putting on trousers standing up (3 s) and putting on socks on one leg (5 s), both sit above Springer’s 1.9 s average at 80–99. Both are our judgment: dressing is done with eyes open, and the 5-second target in particular is demanding.