The human body does not function as a symmetrical machine. So why do we innately strive for an unachievable standard of symmetry as an indicator of our movement health and performance?

In this post, we will discuss circumstances where performance asymmetry may not indicate a deficit and how it should drive performance and injury prevention decision-making.

While limb asymmetry assessments are pillars of movement health and return to sport functional milestones, determining readiness to return to activity is multifactorial. Here are some actionable guidelines for leveraging asymmetry testing in your practice.

Reactive strength is a key strength and power ability driving athletic performance. Strength and power abilities include maximal muscle strength (how much force an athlete can generate irrespective of time) and rate of force development (RFD-how fast an athlete generates force). However, reactive strength is unique in that it involves the ability to couple movements that lengthen musculotendinous tissue (eccentric movement) followed those in which musculotendinous tissue shortens (concentric movement). These movements are called stretch-shorten-cycles (SSCs) and they occur readily in all kinds of human activities like running, jumping and change of direction movements. Movements that involve SSCs are often referred to as plyometrics and reactive strength and plyometric ability are sometimes used interchangeably.

A movement baseline is a series of activity-specific assessments that, when analyzed together, provide a snapshot of your movement patterns. It acts as an objective marker that allows you to set personalized goals and targets, measure meaningful change, and track and evaluate progress. Baselines are the foundation for performance, monitoring, and recovery plans.

At the end of the day, a practitioner is trying to figure out how a person is doing (progressing, regressing or sometimes just maintaining) and if there are trainable deficits that can be addressed with exercise and treatment.

Have you ever heard of the Hawthorne Effect? You should Google this term. It refers to the effects of taking a measurement on what we actually want to measure. Imagine you are a sociologist interested in the sexual behaviours of middle-aged men. How effective would it be to park your lab equipment in the bedroom of your study participants to understand what really happens? That’s the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect also impacts neuromuscular testing.

Movement maps show the movement of both feet along each of the six axes measured by our sensors, over the course of a step. They are unique to each person and represent a qualitative measure of movement dynamics.