How long can you stand on one leg?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by the can you Asian Squat thread.

Standing on one leg was one of the other body movement/balance things that came up in it, and while I was tooling around the web I came across this blog post about what’s normal for various ages.

So … eyes closed I can pretty much hit the target for my age, but not much more, which is about what I’d suspect. And it’s interesting to see how much harder eyes closed is than eyes open, which I hadn’t really thought about before

But what really surprised me was how relatively easy I found the eyes open test. As in … hit the target for the best age range (not mine) without half thinking about it … doubled the target without really being in danger of falling … at that point I put my feet down not because I was going to overbalance, but my shin muscles were grouching and I was bored. But I reckon if you paid me ten bucks a minute I could probably reach the 3 minute mark. Average for the study was under 45 seconds.

The protocol is:

-Cross your arms across your chest
-Lift up one foot, not too far from your other leg
-Count from then till when you put your foot down, shift your balance foot, or wave your leg wildly to stay upright
So - am I just weird, or well practised? Or were the people in that study unusually crap at standing on one leg? Poll to follow…

2

Much better than normal. Age 77. Three trials, eyes closed, 7, 8 and 15 secs.

3

Deeply humbled: I thought I could do a minute easily.

Nope: ten seconds, average.

4

2 minutes was easy but boring. Then I tried eyes shut but aborted after a few seconds because it felt there’s a chance to actually fall down and I’m not being paid enough for that.

5

Standing on my left leg, lifting right leg: over a minute before my leg got tired and foot started to cramp, but I didn’t lose my balance

Standing on right leg, lifting left: 24 seconds. I have injured my right ankle numerous times and it is very weak.

I’m 47.

6

Eyes open: easy. Did 5 minutes before getting bored. Was getting a tad painful but I could have gone much longer. The cat didn’t make things easier by brushing up against my leg.

Eyes closed was much harder. 52 seconds was my best. About the same for both legs.

Age 38.

7

Yeah, my dog was milling around and I was watching the hockey game instead of focusing on a point on the wall when I did mine.

8

Yes, it’s amazing how much of a difference there is. You don’t realise till you try something like this how much you use your eyes for balance

9

All I know is the judge told me I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

10

I have enough trouble standing on two legs.

11

I think the people in that study must have been unusually crap at standing on one leg. I got bored after three minutes with my eyes open, but I wasn’t in any danger of losing balance. 32 seconds with eyes closed.

12

Someone else’s leg(dead)-hours.
Someone else’s leg(live)-2/3 second.
My own leg-3 minutes.

13

Until I get the other leg into my pants.

14

Another vote for recruiting subjects by a flyer posted in the waiting room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center somehow selected for people with poor balance.

56 years old and can fairly easily get past a minute with eyes closed.

15

I clicked > 1 min before I read the small print.

With eyes closed and arms crossed it’s remarkably difficult, and starting/stopping the stopwatch doesn’t help.

What’s the age target?

16

No, I can’t. My poor balance doesn’t allow it.

17

In the blog post it lists how long an average person of various age groups can stand on one leg, both eyes open and closed.

The “eyes open” one is remarkably consistent at 40-45 seconds until the subjects hit 60, at which point their scores start heading for the pit.

Maybe the researchers just told everyone who made it to 45sec “ok you can stop now”

18

Yes they did. Link to the article in the blog post and from the article:

19

Ah!

I don’t suppose the blog writer has really cottoned on to this point then. Because he’s saying the times “stay in the 40s” till middle age - but that’s not really the case - it could be averaging 10 minutes for a 20 year old, for all we know! (ok, unlikely…)

45 seconds seems an odd number to choose

20

With eyes open I can stand on my left foot almost indefinitely. It’s a balance drill I used and taught to baseball pitchers for many years, so I’ve done it thousands of times.

Eyes closed, not so much. I had never attempted that before. I’m 52.