At HIDEF not only do we work with you in order to rehab from your injuries, but we work hard to help limit the chances of future injury.
Gridem et al. (2016) found that athletes who were able to pass their return to sport (RTS) test battery demonstrated a 84% lower injury rate as compared to those that did not.
Toole et al. (2017) found that amongst athletes that were already cleared to return to sport, only 14% actually met the cutoff for every test in their battery.
While don’t rely on one single metric to make these decisions, quadriceps strength was the component that was found to be the strongest predictor of reinjury. They found that for every 1% of improved symmetry, there was a 3% reduction in injury rate!
Strength is traditionally measured with manual muscle tests (MMTs). These tests were originally developed to assess people who suffered spinal cord injuries, and can’t detect differences unless they are larger than 15-25%!
At HIDEF we test our patient’s quadriceps strength using a handheld dynamometer. This allows us to get an objective reading of his quadriceps strength so that we can accurately determine symmetry. In the picture we are testing our patients s/p ACL-R using a rigid setup to make the test as reliable as possible.
As you can see from the data, he demonstrates a significant deficit of 26%, but considering he’s only 12 weeks out from surgery that’s actually pretty good!
With all of our patients, we test their strength regularly to ensure that our programming is effective in reaching our goals. We aim for at least 75-80% symmetry before running and at least 90% symmetry before fully returning to sport.
Comments