10/21/2026
Coaches and parents, I can't stress this enough.
Testing is NOT injury prediction.
We've had a lot of coaches and organizations reach out wanting us to test their athletes to figure out who's most likely to tear their ACL or get hurt.
I love that more people care about objective testing. But I think we're missing the point of why we test in the first place.
You can't take an athlete, run them through a handful of tests (some they've never done before), and confidently say who's going to get injured. Some measures are linked to injury across large groups of athletes. That's not the same as predicting it for the kid standing in front of you.
There are too many variables. Without context, the numbers can be really misleading.
Does that mean testing is useless? Absolutely not.
We test every single day. We use it to set baselines, find strengths and weaknesses, track trends, and understand the individual in front of us. Test them the same way over time and the data starts to mean something.
One data point is a snapshot. Trends tell the story.
The goal isn't to predict the future. It's to use what we know to make better decisions moving forward.
If we're going to use objective data, we have a responsibility to understand its limits just as much as its value.
Coaches, parents, clinicians โ what's been your experience with testing? Drop it below.
