TMHS 875: 3 Fitness Tests to Ensure Your Longevity
The Model Health Show
Shawn Stevenson
4.8 • 7.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Longevity isn’t just about living a longer duration – it’s about ensuring that you are healthy, mobile, and functional into your later years. And if you want to be healthy and vibrant when you’re older, you’ve got to train for that goal now. Today, you’re going to learn about important markers of longevity that you can measure for yourself.
On today’s show, we’re going to go through three fitness and mobility tests you can do to measure your overall health. These three fitness tests are backed by research, easy to conduct at home, and most importantly, can be improved upon if you’re not satisfied with your results.
You’re going to learn the science behind why your balance, walking speed, and your ability to get up and down from the floor can tell you a lot about your health. I’m also going to be sharing actionable steps you can use to get stronger, improve your mobility, and increase your chances of a long and healthy life. Enjoy!
In this episode you’ll discover:
- What the gait speed test is and how to do it.
- What your gait can tell you about your lifespan.
- The connection between gait speed and muscle function.
- How to improve your gait.
- Why walking is considered a wonder drug.
- The link between steps per day and testosterone levels.
- What the minimum effective dose of walking is.
- Why spending time barefoot is good for your health.
- The health benefits of walking backwards.
- How to do the single-leg balance test.
- Why falls can be so dangerous for the elderly.
- How to improve your balance.
- Why big toe strength is actually an indicator of longevity.
- What the sit-and-rise test is.
- How to improve your mobility.
- The benefits of sitting on the floor.
Items mentioned in this episode include:
- Peluva.com/model - Get 15% off barefoot shoes with the code MODEL
- Themodelhealthshow.com/longevitytest - Get videos of the longevity tests, charts to see where your performance is at, longevity resources, and more!
Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to automatically receive your episodes:
This episode of The Model Health Show is brought to you by Peluva.
Peluva’s barefoot minimalist shoes support postural alignment, proprioception, and overall functionality. Get 15% off your order by using code MODEL at peluva.com/model.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Sean Stevenson. |
| 0:04.7 | For more, visit the modelhealthshow.com. |
| 0:11.5 | Welcome to the model health show. |
| 0:13.1 | This is fitness and nutrition expert, Sean Stevenson, and I am so grateful for you hanging out with me today. |
| 0:20.1 | On this episode, I'm going to share with you three |
| 0:22.5 | fitness tests that you can do right now to see if your body is fit for a longer lifespan. |
| 0:31.6 | Now, all three of these tests are backed by science, and we're going to go through the research. |
| 0:37.3 | And they're also simple enough |
| 0:39.3 | to do at home right now so follow along with me to learn the science how to do each test and most |
| 0:47.2 | importantly how to improve your performance on each test to make sure that you are fit and ready for a long healthy life. |
| 0:58.2 | Now each of these three tests are going to be progressive. So we're going to do the easiest |
| 1:02.7 | tests first and work our way to the most challenging test. And we're going to start off with |
| 1:08.1 | test number one, which is the gate speed test. |
| 1:13.9 | A comprehensive analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association of walking speed studies shows that down to the 10th of a meter per second, an older person's pace, along with their age and gender, can predict |
| 1:29.9 | their life expectancy, just as well as the complex battery of other health indicators. So instead |
| 1:37.4 | of a doctor assessing a patient's blood pressure, body mass index, chronic condition, smoking |
| 1:42.6 | history, and all these other common factors to |
| 1:46.1 | estimate their survival, a lab assistant could simply time the patient walking a few meters |
| 1:52.2 | and predict just as accurately the person's likelihood of living five or ten more years, |
| 2:03.8 | as well as their median life expectancy. |
| 2:13.0 | So again, this test is just as accurate, crazy as it sounds as this whole battery of blood work and looking at these different lifestyle factors, simply lining the patient up or lining yourself up |
| 2:19.8 | and doing this gate speed test can accurately predict your life expectancy. |
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