The Longevity Researcher
Give your health a home MOT.
Eleven simple measures. Around 20 to 25 minutes. A practical snapshot of cardiovascular fitness, body composition, strength, balance, mobility and cognitive performance that you can repeat over time.
Before you begin
Set yourself up once, then follow the tests in order.
Resting measures come first and the treadmill test comes last. Try to use similar conditions each time you repeat the MOT so changes are easier to interpret.
Used only in your on-screen and printed summary.
This tool is built around adult reference bands starting at age 18.
Required because several supplied reference bands and the Navy circumference formula are sex specific.
Set automatically from your device.
Please enter your age, choose the reference sex and confirm you have read the safety note.
Test 1
Resting heart rate
Sit quietly for a few minutes first. Find your pulse at the wrist or neck and count beats for a full 60 seconds, or use a resting reading from a smartwatch or fitness tracker.
Resting heart rate is not a blood pressure reading. A normal pulse does not rule out raised blood pressure, so periodic cuff-based checks still matter.
If you cannot take this measurement reliably, use “Skip / I’m not sure”. Your final composite will be marked provisional.
Test 2
Bodyweight and tape measurements
These measurements calculate waist to height ratio and an estimated body fat percentage using the US Navy circumference method.
Tape just below the larynx, sloping slightly downward at the front.
At the navel for men, or the narrowest point for women. Measure after a normal exhale without sucking in.
Women only. Measure at the widest point of the buttocks with feet together.
One or more measurements are mathematically inconsistent for the circumference formula. Check your waist, neck, height and hip values.
Body fat is an estimate, not a DEXA measurement. Measurement technique and body shape can affect the result.
Test 3
Sitting-rising test
From standing, lower yourself to sit on the floor, then stand back up using as little support from your hands, knees or forearms as possible.
If floor transfers are painful or unsafe, skip this test. A missing result is preferable to an injury.
Test 4
One-leg stand
Stand on one leg with hands on hips and the other foot raised without touching the standing leg. Stop when the foot touches down, your hands leave your hips, or you reach 45 seconds. Try both legs and record each time. The tool uses your better result.
Test 5
Press-ups to failure
Use standard or knee modified press-ups, whichever you can perform with good form. Continue without a time limit until you cannot complete another clean repetition or your form breaks down.
The supplied workbook uses the same score bands either way, so this is recorded only as context.
Test 6
Toe-touch reach
Stand with feet together, slowly bend forward and reach towards your toes without bouncing. Measure from your fingertips to the floor.
Short of your toes is negative, for example -8 cm. Past your toes is positive, for example +5 cm.
The source protocol identifies toe-touch reach as one of its less rigorously evidenced measures and not directly comparable with a clinical sit-and-reach box test.
Test 7
Dead hang
Hang from a pull-up bar with straight or slightly bent arms and your feet off the ground. Stop when you need to drop. Your raw time is adjusted by bodyweight using the same method as the workbook.
Raw seconds x bodyweight / 84 kg for men, or / 70 kg for women.
Test 8
Ruler catch
Rest your forearm on a table with thumb and finger open at the 0 cm end. Ask someone to drop the ruler without warning and catch it as quickly as possible. Complete three attempts. The tool uses your best, meaning shortest, distance.
Test 9
Animal naming
In 60 seconds, say as many different animals as you can. Count only unique, valid answers.
An isolated low score is not diagnostic. Language, education and other factors can affect verbal fluency.
Test 10, always last
VO2max from a Bruce treadmill test
Complete the treadmill section only after the other tests. Use the standard Bruce protocol with incremental speed and incline every 3 minutes, aiming for a challenging but sustainable effort rather than running to complete exhaustion.
Enter the estimate from the treadmill's fitness test, standard Bruce tables or a qualified gym professional.
The supplied scoring model gives VO2max a 20% weighting, the largest single domain in the Home MOT.
Final check
Review what you entered.
You can go back and change anything. Blank tests are allowed, but your composite score will be labelled provisional if all 11 scored domains are not available.
Your Home Longevity MOT
Your results
A weighted snapshot of the domains you completed today.
Priority areas
Where to focus first
The source workbook ranks every Average or lower domain by severity and evidence weighting.
Your full domain breakdown
The categories below reproduce the age and sex reference bands in the supplied Home MOT workbook.
How the score is calculated
Each completed domain is classified as Optimal, Good, Average, Needs Attention or Serious Issue. Those categories are worth 4, 3, 2, 1 or 0 points. Each domain then contributes its share of the original workbook weighting. VO2max carries 20 points, SRT 15, resting heart rate 10, body fat 10, waist to height ratio 10, dead hang 8, one-leg stand 8, press-ups 6, toe-touch reach 5, ruler catch 4 and animal naming 4.
If all 11 domains are complete, the weighted total is the workbook's 0 to 100 composite. If one or more tests are missing, this page normalises the completed weights to 100 and labels the result provisional. That keeps missing tests from being silently treated as poor performance.
Evidence and important limitations
The scientific literature supports the relevance of several underlying tests, but that does not mean every cut-off in this Home MOT has been independently validated as a clinical threshold. The score bands here reproduce the supplied workbook. The workbook itself identifies dead hang and toe-touch reach as reasoned approximations rather than validated normative scales.
- Sitting-rising test and all-cause mortality, Eur J Prev Cardiol, 2014
- 10 second one-leg stance and survival, Br J Sports Med, 2022
- Resting heart rate and mortality, systematic review and meta-analysis, 2017
- Waist to height ratio and cardiometabolic risk, systematic review and meta-analysis, 2012
- Cardiorespiratory fitness and long-term mortality, JAMA Network Open, 2018
- Animal naming normative data, Arch Clin Neuropsychol, 1999
- US Navy circumference body composition method, Hodgdon and Beckett reports summarised by NCBI