Can you get out of a chair without struggling?
Carry your groceries?
Climb a flight of stairs?
Get down on the floor and, rather importantly, get back up again?
Can you catch yourself when you stumble?
Those questions interest me a lot more at 72 than how much somebody can bench press.
Not because there’s anything wrong with bench pressing.
But because the older I get, the more I appreciate a different kind of strength.
The strength that lets you keep living your own life.
Your Legs Matter
There’s actually some fascinating research around something as ordinary as standing up from a chair.
Researchers use repeated chair-stand tests to measure lower-body function. You sit in a chair, stand up and sit back down several times, usually without using your arms.
Simple.
But performance on tests like this has been associated with mortality risk in older adults. A recent study of more than 43,000 adults over 50 found that both chair-stand performance and grip strength were associated with mortality over ab…
