How fit am I for my age? Here are 5 simple exercises to test your fitness - and see how well you're ageing

• Exercise and daily movement is an important part of looking after our bone density and muscle mass as we age.
• Measuring our fitness levels can help us understand where we feel strong and what areas need a bit of improvement.
• Fitness coach Caroline Idiens, who specialises in strength workouts has put together five simple tests you can do at home to check your movement.
• We’ve also shared the World Level Fitness test created by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology so you can see how you’re doing.

Keeping fit and healthy as we get older can be a challenge, especially as we have other priorities to focus on, but it’s important to make time for exercise and movement that will help look after our bones and muscles as we age.

Caroline Idiens, a fitness coach specialising in home strength workouts, recently explained in The Telegraph that we lose bone density and muscle mass from the age of 35-years-old onwards.

Idiens said: “Research repeatedly shows that exercise and daily movement are essential to combat this. Putting in the effort now, there’s no reason why we can’t be healthy in our later years.”

She continued: “Setting achievable goals inspires us, and there’s no reason why those in midlife onwards can’t feel fitter and stronger than we did in our 20s and 30s.”

Idiens has devised a set of five movements and exercises you can do from the comfort of your own home to help you test your fitness levels along with ways you can help improve your movement and stamina.

5 simple ways to test your fitness

Standing on one leg

Now famously known as the “old man challenge”, thanks to TikTok, standing on one leg may seem simple, but balance activities can reportedly help improve your physical fitness, with a study in 2022 finding that poor balance was associated with serious health outcomes.

To try the “old man challenge”, start in your bare feet, stand on one leg and put your sock and then shoe on the elevated foot, aiming to maintaining the pose until your laces are tied.

Planking

Planking is the ideal way to test your core strength, as well as work several muscles at a time. A strong core is vital for keeping mobile and also helps to protect against back pain. To plank, simply place your forearms and toes on the floor directly under your shoulders. Lift your body up, keep it in a straight line and distribute your weight to your feet and forearms.

You can test your progress by seeing how long you can stay in the plank position, building it up slowly as you begin to engage those muscles. 10 seconds is great for a beginner, with 60 seconds your overall aim.

Standing up from a seated position

Standing up from a seated position takes lower body strength. This exercise is easy to do, simply sit in an armless chair, with your feet planted on the ground shoulder-width apart and see how many times you can stand and return fully seated without using you arms in 30 seconds.

Idiens advises that for anyone aged 60 and younger, an average score would be 24-25 reps for women and 25-27 reps for men.

Squatting

Squatting engages several muscles groups and helps support our lower body and build core strength which improves balance and posture. We squat everyday without realising it, with the exercise a perfect example of functional fitness. You can also incorporate weights into your squat routine if you want to work your upper body.

Gripping a towel

It might sound simple, but gripping a towel helps to strengthen your wrist and forearms. Struggling to grip can be a symptom of muscle loss related to aging, so this is a good exercise to see if you need to focus on this area. All you need to do is hold a towel with both hands and twist it as if you were wringing water out of it.

How can you discover your fitness age?

The concept of a fitness age is a relatively new one. It was devised by Ulrik Wisløff, Ph.D., and colleagues, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and has been adopted by health authorities around the world, with the US recommending the calculator to work out how fit you really are.

You can discover your fitness age by using the fitness calculator they created at World Fitness Level. It will ask you a simple questionnaire, with questions on your height, weight, maximum heart rate and how regularly you exercise.

Your fitness age may be older or younger than your actual age so prepare for a shock if you are not regularly active, as this reporter can confess, I scored an age 8 years older than I actually am.

Have you found any of these exercises helpful or where you surprised about your fitness age? Share in the comment section below.