Predicting which athletes will be injured using current screening tests is not as effective as previously thought according to a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
In their paper, Clarsen and Berge discuss two research articles that suggest current popular functional movement tests do not do a good job of predicting which athletes will get injured. These standardized musculoskeletal tests are a routine part of many sports physiotherapists’ assessments and are commonly used to target high-risk athletes with individualized prevention programs.
But don’t do away with the tests just yet!
Clarsen and Berge suggest that standardized musculoskeletal tests are still useful tools that can help physiotherapists:
- Identify current ‘under-the-radar’ injuries
- Assess the rehabilitation status of previous injuries
- Establish future return-to-sport benchmarks for healthy athletes
Want to learn about treating overuse injuries in sport? Check out our interview with Dr. Ben Clarsen.