Single-leg stand, eyes open
Standing on one leg with your eyes open, the first half of the balance station. It is the balance behind putting on trousers or socks standing up.
- Method
- Timer · best of 3 · 45 s cap
- Equipment
- A wall within reach
- Attempts
- 3, best counts
- Reference
- Clinical norm
Protocol
Stand barefoot next to a wall, arms crossed over your chest, eyes open and fixed on a point ahead.
Lift one foot so it does not touch the standing leg. Pick the leg you prefer and keep it every quarter. Start the timer.
Stop when the lifted foot touches down, the standing foot moves or your arms uncross. Stop at 45 s; that is the cap.
Safety. Keep a wall or counter within reach. Rest 30 s between attempts.
How it is scored
Scored against Springer 2007’s eyes-open means from 60. Under 60 most people reach the 45-second cap, so the result is read against the cap and your goal line, not a percentile. This is the same station as the eyes-closed stand; do it first.
Clinical norm
Scored against a published reference table for your age and sex, with the table named.
Reference table
- Year
- 2007
- Sample
- 549 people
- Who
- 549 screened volunteers aged 18–99 at a US military medical centre
- Sexes
- Women and men
Eyes-open means by age group, best of three, 45 s cap: 44.7 (18–39), 41.9 (40–49), 41.2 (50–59), 32.1 (60–69), 21.5 (70–79), 9.4 s (80–99). Below 60 the test hits its cap, so percentiles start at 60. No sex difference was found.
Reference lines shown with the result
- Araújo pass line: 10 sAraújo 2022 (Br J Sports Med; 1,702 adults aged 51–75): those who could not hold 10 seconds had 1.84 times the all-cause mortality. Their stance differed (foot on the back of the other leg), so this is a related test, not the same one.
Change that is just noise
No published repeatability figure exists for this test, so the app does not call a change real or noise, and it shows no likely range around a percentile.
Limits of the reference
What the source cannot tell you, and where the app has had to make a choice the source did not make.
- Under 60 most people reach the 45-second cap (Springer’s means are 41–45 s), so there is no percentile below 60. The result is read against the cap and your goal line.
- Springer published means only. The spread around each mean, which turns a time into a percentile, is the app’s estimate.
- The 10-second line comes from Araújo 2022, whose stance differed (the lifted foot behind the other leg). It is a related test, not the same one, and the app says so.