by It takes just five seconds to find out how well you’re aging.
Stand up. Stretch. And get ready to run as fast as you can.
The 6-meter walk test has become an important vital sign for clinicians working in health care. life extension clinics used worldwide to monitor the condition and lifespan of their patients.
Dr. Sara Bonnes, medical director of the Healthy Longevity Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said her team tests all patients who come to the clinic with 20-foot walking tests “as a measure of their functional performance.”
“It tells me how well people are functioning, how well their muscles are moving and working together,” Bonnes told Business Insider. “We can do complex tests to measure how fit people are, but this is a smaller, simpler version that still tells me: Are you moving well and getting around well for your age?”
Clinicians can also perform longer versions of the same test. There is a 6-minute walk test that many clinicians perform, but it requires a fair amount of runway.
“You need a relatively flat, open, straight space so people aren’t walking in circles and getting dizzy or tripping over obstacles,” Bonnes said.
Fortunately, researchers have discovers that both the results of the 6-meter walk test and the results of the 6-minute walk test are reasonably reliable indicators of an individual’s functional fitness.
This is how the 6-meter walking test works:
Six meters is almost 20 feet. Sarah Andersen / Business Insider
- Measure a 6-meter strip of straight, level ground.
At the Bonnes clinic, they use a hallway and mark the beginning and end of the path with orange cones. But if you estimate this at home, 6 meters is about 19.68 feet. You can use a tape measure or the measuring tool on your phone.
- Take about 2 meters to warm up before the starting line so you can get up to speed.
This test is designed to measure your fastest walking pace, so give yourself a little head start and get going.
- Have a friend with a stopwatch or timer time your 20-foot walk.
They should only measure the time of the test, not the warm-up.
Record your time so you can refer to it later.
I tried it
Time to walk! Dr. Bonnes kept time for me on her phone. Sarah Andersen / Business Insider
I performed the test with Bonnes as my timekeeper.
She told me that I run at 3.14 meters per second because I completed the test in 1.91 seconds. That’s faster than average for my age group, and certainly more lighthearted than most of her patients in their 60s, 70s or 80s.
Still, she said there are things I can do to protect my body from unnecessary damage.
“A sedentary job, arthritis and all those things can affect the way we move and how well we function,” Bonnes said.
Working on running speed can help offset those effects. Scientists believe that brisk walking can even help to better repair the protective caps on the ends of our DNA chromosomes, called telomeres. And while the old 10,000 steps a day rule is little more than a marketing gimmick, it is true that more walking is associated with better healthto a certain extent.
The 6-meter walk test is “really better for older patients,” Bonnes said. But if someone has a low score for their age, “then we work on exercises and build that muscle mass.”