Hi Jordan and Austin,
I wondered what your thoughts are on this?
At 39 years old I am unable to do this and never have been. This is despite Squatting over 400lbs and Deadlifting over 500lbs. Additionally I can run good 5k and 10k times and have no problem performing jumps or other athletic movements that utilise my knees.
So what gives? Are we all cooked if we don’t have the flexibility to do this trick? Will BBM be releasing a program to help people do this?
This version of the sit to stand test may be useful for a single functional screen regarding the musculoskeletal system’s status in folks where the chair version is too easy and other options aren’t available. I don’t feel confident that their results extend to all populations given the relatively limited data here.
That said, I’d bet a significant amount of money you can do this test and land in the lowest risk category, which is a score of 8-10. This means you can use 1 hand or 1 knee on the way down or up. I’d bet you could do that if you really tried. Even if you can’t however, that pokes a hole in the test as it places a high importance on flexibility, which can be a confounding factor when trying to assess function of the musculoskeletal and neuromuscular systems of trained individuals with specific adaptations. In untrained populations however, I think it’s reasonable, particularly the coordination required to to the test.
I should note that in a follow up study, there still was a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality at a score of 8 vs 8.5-9.5 vs 10, albeit small and with very noisy data. The reference group who scored 10 had very few deaths during the follow up period, so any small increase in mortality in the other groups could appear larger than it really is.
On the other hand, identifying individuals who can’t upright themselves from the ground could be helpful independent of predicting mortality. Perhaps these individuals would be directed towards therapeutic exercise (lifting!) and/or putting into place some monitoring system for falls.
Definitely not releasing a program to “teach to the test”, as that would make the test less useful…or something like that 