14 Apr Using Technology to Measure Strength

Your Physical Therapist should be getting objective and concrete measurements of your strength by assessing the force output of key musculature. The standard method of assessing muscle strength, also known as Manual Muscle Testing in the rehab world, is subjective at best and does not do a great job at identifying the true strength of a muscle or picking up asymmetries side to side. Subtle asymmetries in strength can be the difference between completely overlooking an aspect of your rehab and finding the key that unlocks the solution to optimizing your movement patterns.

Studies have shown that hand-held dynamometry has excellent reliability and validity for most measures of lower limb strength and power.*

At Athletic Lab, we use the Tindeq Progressor to measure our patients’ strength. This provides us with concrete numbers that we can measure initially and then remeasure throughout rehab in order to track progress.This allows us to see real-time force output of each muscle group tested, identify muscle imbalances between limbs, compare the data to age-related norms, and create a program that targets exact weaknesses or imbalances.

Strength measurements should not be a guessing game.

*Mentiplay et al. Assessment of Lower Limb Muscle Strength and Power Using Hand-Held and Fixed Dynamometry: A Reliability and Validity Study. PLoS One. 2015 Oct 28;10(10)