The Sitting Rising Test

Have you heard of this? The sit and stand test is all about sitting down and standing up again from a cross-legged position.

Simple, huh? Not so fast… The minute you use your hands, sides of your legs, knees or elbows to help you up, you lose points. There’s a maximum score of ten (five for getting down, and five for getting up again).

Why is this important or relevant? The test measures flexibility, strength and balance. A study was carried out by the Brazilian physician, Claudio Gil Araujo. He uses the test with athletes, but also on patients. He assessed some 2,000 patients aged 51 to 80. People who scored fewer than eight points on the test were twice as likely to die within the next six years than people who got a higher score. Those who only managed three points or fewer were more than five times as likely to die within the same period, compared to people who scored more than eight points.

Each point increase in the SRT (sitting rising test) is associated with a 21 percent decrease in mortality from all causes.

So, how do you do it?

• Stand on the floor in your bare feet with a clear space around you.
• Without leaning on anything, lower yourself to a sitting position on the floor
• Now, stand back up without using your hands, forearms, the sides of your legs or your knees.

Basically, you get five points for lowering yourself down without using hands, forearms, sides of legs or knees, and five points for coming up without. You also get a minus point for putting your hand on your leg. If you lose your balance, you lose half a point.

Darn it, I thought I had this test covered. Another blogger had written about it, and I realised the version I’ve been doing regularly isn’t the full bhuna. I don’t use my hands or arms, but I do use the sides of my legs to get myself up again. Sit down cross-legged and it seems impossible to get up without using some other part of the body.

There’s a video on YouTube that shows the test being done correctly (by a young whippersnapper of an athlete).

Have you done the SRT and what was your score?