Stand next to a wall or counter for safety. Lift one foot a few inches off the floor, arms out for balance, eyes forward. Start counting. The number of seconds you can hold the position without hopping, touching down or grabbing the wall is a rough index of how well your body is aging.
Researchers have tracked one-leg balance across thousands of adults and found that it tends to decline faster than grip strength, gait or muscle mass. In a Mayo Clinic study published in PLOS ONE in October 2024, balance on the nondominant leg was the measure that fell most steeply with age. As senior author Kenton Kaufman, director of the Mayo Clinic Motion Analysis Laboratory, put it in the press release, "If you can stand on one leg for 30 seconds, you are doing well."
What counts as normal for your age
The most-cited age benchmarks come from work at Duke Health, summarized by AARP in a review of one-leg balance research. Adults in their 30s and 40s could typically balance for close to a minute. That drops to about 45 seconds in the 50s and around 26 seconds by the 70s.
Age band Also read: Not all magnesium supplements are the same: which form is right for you | Typical one-leg balance time (eyes open) |
|---|---|
30s-40s | Close to 60 seconds |
50s Also read: How many squats should you be able to do? Norms sorted by age and sex | About 45 seconds |
70s | About 26 seconds |
These are averages, not pass-fail lines. A 72-year-old who holds 25 seconds is in the normal range for her decade. But the numbers are useful as a personal baseline. If you are far below your band, it is a signal worth paying attention to.
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What the British birth cohort found
The strongest evidence linking midlife balance to real-world falls comes from a British birth cohort born in 1946. In a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers led by Joanna Blodgett tracked 2,046 adults with balance assessments at ages 53 and 60-64, then followed them for falls up to age 68. At age 53, 69 percent could hold the balance for the full 30 seconds. By ages 60-64, only 50 percent could.
The falls link was clearest for people with consistently poor balance. Adults who scored under 15 seconds at both midlife tests had more than three times the risk of recurrent falls in their late 60s compared with those who held the full 30 seconds. Each additional second of balance was associated with a 4 percent lower risk of recurrent falls. The researchers cautioned that the test is better as a population-level warning sign than a bedside diagnostic, but as a self-check it is hard to beat for simplicity.
Why the seconds slip away
Balance is not one skill. It draws on vision, the inner ear's vestibular system, and the somatosensory feedback from muscles and joints. Any of those inputs can fade with age, and small drops in strength, especially around the hips and ankles, compound the effect.
The stakes are concrete. The CDC Foundation reports that more than one in four Americans age 65 and older falls each year, resulting in about 3 million emergency department visits, 1 million hospitalizations and 32,000 deaths. A hip fracture in later life often marks the start of a permanent loss of independence.
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Standing balance is one of the few markers that responds quickly to practice. Kaufman's advice in the Mayo release was blunt. "If you don't use it, you lose it. If you use it, you maintain it."
Three exercises to hold the line
The National Institute on Aging's Go4Life program recommends three low-equipment balance moves for older adults, all of which can be done at home next to a counter.
Single-leg stance. Stand on one foot, holding a chair back or counter lightly for safety. Work up to 30 seconds per side, then progress to hands off. NIA suggests doing it while brushing your teeth to build the habit.
Heel-to-toe walk. Place the heel of one foot directly in front of the toes of the other, so they touch. Take 20 steps in a straight line, eyes fixed on a spot ahead. Practice near a wall until it feels steady.
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Balance walk. Walk in a straight line, arms out to the sides, lifting the back leg and pausing for a second before setting it down. It trains the same muscles the one-leg test measures.
Adults over 65 should aim for balance work on most days, alongside the strength and aerobic activity recommended in federal guidelines. If your test time falls well below the band for your age, a physical therapist can screen for the underlying reason.
This article is made and published by Emil Martesen, who may have used AI in the preparation.