Strength Testing -- Fixed Dynamometry

Today we're going to be doing isometric knee strength testing using a crane scale as a cheaper alternative to a lot of those expensive handheld dynamometers and things like that. So we'll get you the links for all the products that we're using here, but we just have a strap that goes from the table to the crane scale, and then the crane scale hooks on to an ankle strap. So once you get all those things set up the big things that you want to do, you want to make sure that that strap is attached to a table or a steady surface that isn't going to move or slide or anything like that. And then you want to make sure it's in a nice straight line, lining up with the ankle and then hooked up to that ankle strap. So once you get into this position, before you do the strength testing, you want to make sure that they've done a little bit of a warm up and gotten the knee loose and things like that before getting into it. And then when we do the testing, we also do a warm up kind of built in with the testing, so they get a feel for what they're going to be doing. So once you get them in this position, everything's strapped, you're going to find about 60 degrees of knee flexion. So have you row I'm going to have you kick out just a little bit. So you want to get that full tension on the strap and then make sure that we're sitting at 60 degrees. We want to keep everything standardized. So whatever you do on the very first time, you want to make sure you're doing the same thing each time. So we're going to keep it standardized at 60 degrees to get our score. And then we'll repeat the same thing on the opposite side. Next time that we want to do this test, whether that be in a few weeks, in a month, six months down the road, we just want to make sure no matter what you do, you're keeping that same setup all the time. So once we get in this position, you want to make sure that hip is nice in a neutral position. We're going to put fists on top of the thighs. Good. We're going to go through a little bit of a practice. So what I want you to do is I want you to push with about 25% effort. Good. And relax. Any pain there? So we'll give him a few seconds in between each rep. This time we'll go 50 to 75%. Good. Then we're going to go 75 to 100% whenever you're ready. Good and relax.  Each time give them some time in between. Make sure that that hip stays in a nice straight line, and we don't get too far out to the side. Give them a little bit of time. I like this particular crane scale because it holds the greatest value that they hit. So then we can continue to repeat the reps until they kind of max out or plateau. So we're going to try again whenever you're ready. Good kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick and relax. So on that rep he got better. So we would continue to do that until we saw that score plateau or not increase any more. For the second time we're going to go ahead and switch and do the other side.