Fitness and longevity statistics, Singapore and the world

In the Catalyst Healthspan Audit of over 1000 Singaporeans, people who report more weekly strength sessions also score higher, in a consistent step up from 4.0 at zero sessions to 7.6 at four or more.

The pattern is consistent across every frequency band with no plateau. We are careful here: this is an association in a single snapshot of self-reported data, not proof that training caused the higher scores, and part of the relationship is expected by design, since strength training feeds directly into one of the four scored pillars. Read honestly, it still points the same way as the wider resistance-training evidence.

Among over 1000 Singaporeans who took our Healthspan Audit, just over half landed in the two lowest readiness bands despite being motivated enough to seek the audit out.

This is the finding that ties the page together, and the self-selection makes it stronger, not weaker. These are not random Singaporeans; they are people engaged enough to measure themselves, and just over half still scored in the bottom two bands. If the health-curious end of the market looks like this, the people who never measure are unlikely to be in better shape.

In the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, over half of Singaporeans do one weekly strength session or none, with 37 percent doing zero.

Set against the previous finding, this is the heart of the data: the single biggest healthspan lever is the one most people are not using. Self-report most likely flatters the real picture, since people tend to round their training up. The gap is not about motivation, because these people sought out an audit; it is about structure and guidance.

Across the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, cardio is the strongest pillar on average while strength and body composition score lowest, essentially tied, the two pillars that decay fastest with age.

The ordering is consistent across the sample and tells a clear story about what Singapore's active population trains and what it neglects. Strength and body composition sit within a point of each other, close enough that we read them as a shared weak point rather than ranking one below the other. Scores are normalised to each pillar's own maximum, so this is about relative neglect, not an absolute physiological ranking.

About 18 percent of Catalyst Healthspan Audit participants, close to one in five, have strong cardio but weak body composition, the classic under-muscled profile.

This is the clearest sign of mis-allocated effort in the data: cardiovascularly fit, but carrying too little muscle relative to their frame. Because the audit scores composition separately from cardio, it surfaces a risk that a bathroom scale and a fast 10k both miss. We flag this as a screening signal, not a diagnosis, and the thresholds are our own.

In the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, the median Healthspan Score eases from 5.3 in the under-40s to 5.1 in the over-60s, a shallow step down of about a fifth of a point across four decades.

The striking thing is how flat this is. A two-tenths spread across four decades is far gentler than the usual fear narrative, and it is small enough that we treat the ordering as directional rather than a measured decline. Older audit-takers are also a more health-engaged slice of their age group, so the true population curve is almost certainly steeper than this one. Read forward, it says the decade you are in matters far less than what you do in it.

In the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, strength is the most common weakest pillar in the 50s, at 40 percent of that group, while stability overtakes it at 60 and beyond.

The right work is age-dependent: a 55-year-old's biggest gap tends to be force, a 65-year-old's tends to be balance, the pillar most tied to fall risk. The 40s are the honest caveat, because there body composition and strength sit within a few points of each other, with body composition edging ahead, a gap too narrow to call. We read this as a shift in relative weakness, not as strength mattering less with age, and the oldest group is the smallest, so we hold it as a signal rather than a settled fact.

In the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, women most often have strength as their weakest pillar while men most often have body composition.

The overall score gap is modest and partly reflects how the composite weights pillars, so we do not lean on 'men are fitter'. The useful finding is the divergence in weakness: women most often need strength work, directly relevant to bone density and the menopausal transition, while men most often need body composition, with stability close behind it and the two near enough that we read them together.

Around one in four Catalyst Healthspan Audit participants carries a screening flag for elevated sarcopenia risk, the age-related loss of muscle.

Muscle-loss risk showing up in a quarter of health-curious adults is a genuine signal, and it ties the dataset together: low strength training, weak body composition, and sarcopenia risk are the same story told three ways. These are screening flags from a self-report instrument, not clinical diagnoses, and the small share who need professional care are routed accordingly.

Using Asian-specific BMI cutoffs, about two in three Catalyst Healthspan Audit participants sit above a healthy weight.

These figures use the lower Asian cutoffs (overweight at 23, obese at 27.5), so they are not comparable to obesity rates quoted on standard cutoffs. BMI is a blunt screening proxy that cannot separate muscle from fat, which is exactly why we pair it with the body-composition pillar; read together, the high overweight share and the low body-composition scores point the same way.

The top reason people take the Catalyst Healthspan Audit is to live longer, well ahead of looking better.

Longevity, not aesthetics, is the dominant driver among people seeking out a healthspan audit, which fits a healthspan-first positioning over a transformation-first one. There is selection at play, since an audit framed around healthspan attracts longevity-minded people, so this describes our audience, not all of Singapore.

About a third of Catalyst Healthspan Audit participants enter exact figures rather than estimates, a proxy for tracking themselves with a smart scale, wearable, or lab data, and that share peaks in the 40s.

This marks a distinct, addressable persona: data-literate, mid-life, and ready to act on numbers. It is an inference from how people answered rather than a verified device-ownership survey, so we treat it as a strong proxy, not a measured fact. It also tells us this audience respects evidence, which is how we communicate anyway.

Cardio is the highest-scoring pillar in the Catalyst Healthspan Audit and the weakest pillar for only about one in fourteen people, by far the rarest weak point.

The market is over-invested in the pillar it already does well and under-invested in the two that decay fastest. We are not knocking cardio, which is genuinely protective; the point is allocation. The risk is that a strong cardio number gives people false reassurance about a picture the audit shows is weaker elsewhere.

Completed Catalyst Healthspan Audits more than doubled from May to June 2026, then held roughly flat into July.

The honest read is a step change rather than a climb: interest jumped to a new level and stayed there, instead of compounding month on month. Three months is still a short run, and some of the June jump reflects marketing reach rather than pure organic pull, so we do not extrapolate a trend line from it. What holding the level does show is that the June figure was not a one-month spike. We track this monthly and update it as more complete months land.

The largest single age group taking the Catalyst Healthspan Audit is under 40, and they post the highest scores.

A healthspan-framed instrument pulling its largest audience from under-40s says longevity thinking is moving earlier in life, which supports a forward-framed '30s and beyond' positioning that starts before decline sets in. As a self-selected online audience this skews younger and more digital than a walk-in market, so we read it as where the interest is, not the full picture of who needs the work.

Among over 1000 Singaporeans who took the Catalyst Healthspan Audit, cardiorespiratory fitness was the lowest-scoring of the four pillars for only 8 percent of them. Strength, body composition and stability accounted for the rest, splitting it almost evenly at roughly 31, 31 and 30 percent.

This is the individual view of the pillar ranking above, and the two agree: cardio scores highest on average, so it is rarely anyone's personal weak point. The reading is not that cardio does not matter, it is that in a population which already runs and cycles, the binding constraint sits somewhere else. Read it as an association in a single snapshot of self-reported answers, and note that a near three-way split means the weak point is genuinely individual rather than predictable from demographics.