Strength Testing & Performance Diagnostics

Most rehabilitation still makes decisions on time and symptoms: enough weeks have passed, the pain has gone, you are discharged. That is a well-documented reason re-injury rates stay high in the first two years after a significant musculoskeletal injury.

Pain resolves long before capacity returns. Strength deficits of 20% or more routinely persist in a limb that feels normal to the person standing on it, and asymmetry of that size is strongly associated with re-injury and with poor long-term function.

Testing replaces the guess. We produce numbers for strength, symmetry, power and load acceptance, compare them to your other side, your own baseline where we have one, and to published return-to-sport thresholds, then progress you on that basis.

Handheld dynamometry across the relevant muscle groups, quadriceps, hamstrings, hip abductors and adductors, calf, rotator cuff and neck, giving peak force and left-to-right symmetry.

ForceDecks dual force plate testing: countermovement and squat jumps, single-leg jumps and hops, drop jumps, and isometric mid-thigh pull or isometric squat where appropriate. These give jump height, rate of force development, reactive strength index, landing impulse and the exact share of load each limb takes on take-off and landing.

You receive a written report with your figures, a comparison to relevant benchmarks, and specific training targets. Retesting at intervals shows whether the programme is producing change, and it is the same data we use to sign off return to sport.

Testing is used by rehabilitating patients, athletes wanting a performance baseline before a season or a race build, and people returning to sport after surgery who want proof rather than reassurance.

Dynamometry gives repeatable peak-force values in newtons or kilograms, which turns a vague clinical grade into a trackable number and a limb symmetry index.

ForceDecks captures what the eye cannot: rate of force development, reactive strength index, braking and landing asymmetry, and fatigue-related decay across repetitions.

Where relevant, diagnostic ultrasound is used alongside testing so structural findings and capacity findings are interpreted together rather than in isolation.