Will You Live A Long And Healthy Life? These 3 Tests Can Tell You Right Now

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Most of us here want to live a long, healthy, and strong life. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. But how do you know where your health and strength are currently at? Do you have a reasonable starting point or is serious improvement needed?

Luckily, there are ways to tell you where you’re at. I didn’t know this before. But, there’s a physiotherapist who specializes in treating people over 50. They made a great video about this. He has created three tests. The results from them give a good estimate of your current health and your odds of living longer.

As usual, I’m linking the video below. Scroll past the video to find more details about each individual test.

Grip Strenght Test

First, there’s the grip strength test. Before we dive into this, it’s important to say that correlation is not causation. As the physiotherapist says, weak health and short life aren’t due to weak grip. Instead, if you have weak health, you usually have poor strength. Grip strength measures strength well.

So, how do we go about figuring out our grip strength and how do we know if it’s good or bad?

First, we have to run some calculations. Take your body weight and divide this by 10. For example, 160 pounds / 10 = 16 pounds. Now, we want to find something in our house that’s 16 pounds. You may have dumbbells, or you could fill up a bag with enough stuff to make it weigh 16 pounds.

Then, you’re going to want to hold your arm at the side of your body and bend your elbow 90 degrees. So, you’re lifting the bag up at the elbow, resisting gravity. Then, you hold it as long as possible until you can’t hold it anymore. For an example of the holding position, look at the image below. He’s not holding anything there, but that’s the position you should be in.

We’re aiming for a total of 30 seconds minimum (the longer, the better). According to the physiotherapist, 30 seconds shows you have a good grip. This means you’ve passed the first test.

Bolt Test

Secondly, we have the B.O.L.T. test, which stands for Body Oxygen Level Test. According to the physiotherapist, this is important to measure. It shows how well your lungs and blood use oxygen and carbon dioxide.

As he explains, a lot of health problems at a later age come from the fact that we run out of cardio. This test shows how you’re doing on that front.

This is how you perform the test. Start by sitting comfortably and breathing deeply through your nose. Then, breathe out completely through your mouth. Then, before you breathe again, you’ll hold your breath as long as you can. And, you’ll pinch your nose.

The test ends if one of the following two things happen: you take a breath, or you have your first strong urge to breathe. This is how you can then rank yourself:

• Less than 10 seconds: this is concerning and needs to improve
• Between 10 – 20 seconds: pretty poor, this needs to improve
• Between 20 – 30 seconds: average
• Between 30 – 40 seconds: good
• More than 40 seconds: great

Research shows that people with a B.O.L.T. score of over 40 seconds have a longer and healthier life.

Balance Test

Finally, we have a balance test. As we all know, falling is quite a big danger if you’re getting a bit older. So, how well you can balance is a good indicator. It shows if you’re likely to injure yourself in a fall (research backs this).

The test itself is simple. You’re going to want to stand on one leg and you’re going to try and stay on that one leg as long as possible. For safety, the physiotherapist recommends standing in the corner of a room. If you wobble, you won’t fall and injure yourself.

So what are we looking for in terms of duration? Apparently, if you can stand on each leg for 30 seconds or more, you’re much safer than people who can only do 10 – 20 seconds. If you’re below 30 seconds, you’ve got some work to do and he even states that he likes to get his patients up to 60 seconds.

Stefan K.

Stefan has been vegan since 2019 and has been regularly working on his strength since the beginning of 2023. He’s on a mission to help other vegans get stronger and have all of them achieve the quality of life they deserve.