The Sit-to-Stand Test: Leg Strength With Nothing but a Chair

How to do it

Use a firm, standard-height dining chair with a backrest — roughly 43 to 45 cm to the seat — not an armchair and nothing soft. Sit with your back against the backrest, feet flat, and cross your arms over your chest so you can’t push off your thighs. The clinical protocol notes that repeat assessments should use the same height chair, so whichever chair you pick, keep using that one. Then stand up fully and sit back down five times, as quickly as you safely can, and time it from the first movement to sitting after the fifth.

Do a practice rep first so you know the pattern, then one timed attempt. If you feel unsteady, keep a hand free or stay near a wall — and if it isn’t safe to do without pushing off, that itself is useful information to bring to your provider rather than a reason to force it.

Why legs are the ones to watch

Grip is quick and useful, but the tasks people notice losing are almost all lower-body: stairs, getting out of a low chair, up from the floor, in and out of a car. Leg strength is what carries you, and it’s also what responds most visibly to resistance training.

That makes the chair test unusually well-matched to this audience: it measures the thing you care about, it needs nothing, and it improves with exactly the training the rest of this site is about.

About the published thresholds

You’ll see timed cut-offs quoted for this test in clinical guidance, used as a screening step. We’re deliberately not printing a threshold here as though it were a pass mark, for two reasons: the numbers vary by protocol and population, and a self-administered version at home isn’t the same measurement as one performed in a clinic.

What we’d rather you take from it is the comparison that’s actually valid — you, against you. If five stands took twelve seconds in March and sixteen seconds in June, that difference is real and worth acting on, regardless of where either number sits in a table.

Reading your result honestly

Repeat it every two or three months, same chair, same instructions, same time of day, and log the number. Expect some variation — a couple of seconds either way on a tired day means very little; a steady climb over several tests means something.

If your time is getting consistently worse despite training, look first at whether protein and sessions have slipped, then raise it with your healthcare provider. A test result is a prompt for a conversation, never a diagnosis you give yourself.

Common questions

Keep reading