Can You Get Off the Floor?

Last summer I was at a cookout at a buddy’s house. His daughter was about four, and she decided I was a jungle gym. So I sat down on the grass with her for twenty minutes, building a fort out of pool noodles.

When it was time to get up, I put a hand on the ground. Then a knee. Then the other hand. Then I sort of rolled to the side and pushed myself up like a guy getting out of a canoe.

Nobody noticed. I noticed.

I’m in decent shape. I lift. I walk. My bloodwork was fine. And I could not get off the ground without using three points of contact and a small grunt.

That bothered me enough to start digging. What I found is that the way you get up off the floor isn’t a party trick. It’s one of the better predictors of how the next twenty years of your life are going to go.

And nobody checks it. Your doctor checks your cholesterol, your blood pressure, your A1C. Those matter. But almost nobody measures whether you can still do the things that keep a man independent: get up, carry, push, grip, climb.

So this week, we test.

Most of us think about health as a set of lab values. Good numbers on paper, you’re fine.

But there’s another set of numbers that tracks with how long you live, and maybe more important, how well. They’re about what your body can actually do.

A few of them:

Getting off the floor. A 2025 study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology followed 4,282 adults for about 12 years. The people who scored worst on a simple sit and rise test had about six times the risk of cardiovascular death of the people who scored best. Ten year survival was 97 percent for a perfect score and 73 percent for the lowest scores.

Push-ups. A Harvard study of 1,104 firefighters found that men who could do more than 40 push-ups had a 96 percent lower risk of cardiovascular events over ten years than men who could do fewer than 10.

Grip. The PURE study tracked almost 140,000 adults in 17 countries and found that every 5 kilogram drop in grip strength was tied to a 16 percent higher risk of death from any cause.

Stairs. Researchers presenting at the European Society of Cardiology found that climbing four flights of stairs in under about 45 seconds lined up with good exercise capacity. Taking a minute and a half or longer lined up with poor capacity.

Now, a quick dose of honesty. These studies show links, not guarantees. Doing more push-ups doesn’t magically clean your arteries. The tests work because they’re windows into what’s happening underneath: muscle, balance, heart, lungs, and how well all of it works together.

But that’s exactly why they’re useful. They’re cheap, they’re fast, and they tell you the truth without a lab order.

Pick a Saturday morning. Wear something you can move in. Grab a notebook or your phone. It’ll take you about 30 minutes.

One rule before you start. If you have a heart condition, a recent injury, joint replacements, or anything your doctor has told you to be careful with, check with him first. If anything hurts in a sharp way, stop. This is a measurement, not a competition.

Stand barefoot with a little space around you. Cross your feet at the ankles. Now sit down on the floor, cross legged, without using your hands, knees, or anything else for support. Then stand back up the same way.

Start at 10 points. You get 5 for sitting and 5 for standing.

Take off 1 point every time you use a hand, a knee, a forearm, or the side of your leg for support. Take off half a point if you wobble or lose your balance.

A perfect 10 means you went down and came up with nothing but your feet. Score yourself honestly. Do it twice and keep the better score.

What it tells you: this is leg strength, hip mobility, balance, and coordination in one move. It’s also the move you’ll need at 80 if you ever end up on the bathroom floor alone.

Standard push-ups. Hands under your shoulders, body in a straight line from head to heels, chest within a fist of the floor, arms fully straight at the top.

Do as many as you can with good form. When your hips sag or your chest stops getting low, you’re done. Count only the clean ones.

Write the number down. Be honest. Nobody else is watching.

What it tells you: upper body strength, core stability, and a decent read on your general conditioning.

You can do this two ways.

If you have access to a grip dynamometer, which a lot of gyms and physical therapy offices do, squeeze it as hard as you can with each hand, three tries each, and write down your best.

If you don’t, find a pull-up bar. Hang from it with both hands, arms straight, feet off the floor, and time how long you last.

For a working target, a lot of strength coaches use something like 60 seconds as a solid baseline for a man in his 40s and 50s, and 90 seconds or more as strong. If you’re under 30 seconds, that’s a flag.

What it tells you: grip is a proxy for overall strength, and it’s one of the first things to go as we age. It’s also what keeps you holding on when you slip.

Grab two heavy things. Dumbbells, kettlebells, two full five gallon water jugs, two bags of concrete mix. Pick them up, stand tall, and walk.

The target I like: carry half your bodyweight total, split between two hands, for one minute without setting them down. If you weigh 200 pounds, that’s 50 pounds in each hand.

What it tells you: grip, shoulders, core, and legs, all working at once. It’s also the most real life test on this list. Groceries. Luggage. Your kid asleep in the car. Your wife’s suitcase that somehow weighs 70 pounds for a three day trip.

Find a staircase with four flights, about 60 steps. Walk up at a brisk pace without running and without stopping. Time it.

Under 45 seconds is a good sign. Between 45 and 90 seconds, you’ve got work to do. Over 90 seconds, put this at the top of your list.

Then grab a tape measure. Measure your waist at the belly button, relaxed, not sucking it in. Divide it by your height in inches.

The UK’s health guidance body, NICE, recommends keeping your waist to less than half your height. So if you’re 70 inches tall, the target is under 35 inches. Over that, you’re carrying the kind of weight around the middle that drives a lot of the problems your bloodwork will eventually catch.

Write all six numbers on one page. It should look something like this:

Now circle the worst one. Not the one that bugs you most. The one that’s furthest from where it should be.

That’s your focus for the next nine weeks.

Most guys want to fix everything at once. That’s how you end up fixing nothing. Pick the weakest link, work on it a few minutes a day, and retest on January 1. You’ll be surprised how fast the weakest numbers move when you actually aim at them.

You don’t need a new program. You need to practice the test. Here’s the short version for each one.

If your floor score is low: Get on the floor every day. Seriously. Watch TV sitting on the floor instead of the couch. Practice getting up and down five times each morning, using less support every week. Add deep bodyweight squats, holding the bottom for 20 to 30 seconds. Within a few weeks most guys pick up 2 or 3 points just from doing it.

If your push-ups are low: Grease the groove. Pick a number that’s about half your max. Do that many, several times a day, spread out. Never to failure. If your max is 12, do sets of 6 when you wake up, before lunch, mid afternoon, and before dinner. That’s 24 a day without breaking a sweat. In six weeks your max will look different.

If your hang or grip is low: Hang from a bar for a few short sets every time you pass it. Carry your groceries in from the car in one trip instead of three. Use heavier dumbbells for farmer’s carries at the end of your workouts. Grip responds fast because almost nobody trains it.

If your carry is low: Two or three times a week, finish your workout with three carries of 40 to 60 seconds. Add 5 pounds per hand every week or two. That’s it.

If your stairs time is slow: This is your engine. Take the stairs every time you see them. Add two or three brisk 30 minute walks a week where you can talk but not sing. Once a week, find a hill or a staircase and do six to eight hard climbs with full recovery in between.

If your waist is over half your height: This one’s mostly the kitchen and the bar, and the next nine weeks are the hardest of the year for it. Don’t try to diet through the holidays. Just hold the line. Protein at every meal, a walk after your biggest meal of the day, and two or three nights a week without a drink. If your waist is the same on January 1 as it is this weekend, that’s a win in December.

The good news is it doesn’t take much.

A big review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine pulled together 16 studies on muscle strengthening and health. People who did 30 to 60 minutes a week of strength work had meaningfully lower risk of death, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes than people who did none. The biggest bang came early. You don’t need two hours a day. You need two or three short sessions a week and some daily practice.

That’s the whole game. Not a transformation. A handful of minutes, done consistently, aimed at your weakest number.

Here’s a bonus I didn’t plan on.

When I ran these tests the first time, my nephew was over. He wanted to try. Then my brother in law wanted to try. Then it was a full blown competition in the garage, with somebody keeping score on a whiteboard and a lot of trash talk about who could hang the longest.

Do the floor test with your kids. They’ll get a perfect 10 without thinking about it, and they’ll be delighted to watch you struggle. Do the carry with your teenager. Put the scorecard on the fridge.

There’s something about a man who’s still testing himself in his 40s and 50s that kids notice. They’re watching whether you treat your body like something you’re maintaining or something you’ve given up on.

None of these tests are about looking good. They’re about staying useful.

You want to be the 75 year old who gets down on the floor to play with his grandkids and gets back up without a production. The guy who carries his own bags through the airport. The guy who climbs the stairs at the stadium and still has breath left to yell at the ref.

That guy isn’t built at 75. He’s built now, in the boring minutes nobody sees.

This weekend:

Then do a few minutes of work on that one weak number every day for the next nine weeks.

And next time you find yourself sitting on the floor with a kid, see if you can get up without your hands. If you can’t yet, you will.

Friday we’re getting back to the business. The best people in your market are already thinking about leaving their jobs. Most of them won’t do it until after their January bonus. We’re going to make sure you’re the one they call.

Refined. Relentless. Unapologetic.

Marcus