VBG or FMS? Would you prefer toe touch or overhead squat?
Questions that are being discussed in various performance centers. These screenings are intended to be used to identify the injury risk of athletes. But are these tests really valid enough, worth the time and money to implement them in the long term?
While the idea of using a battery of tests to determine the risk of injury sounds romantic, we cannot currently predict injuries. The complexity of injury parameters and the biological adaptation processes of our musculoskeletal system cannot be covered by a single set of specific movement sequences.
Of course, these tests can give an indication of the athlete's condition in certain movement patterns, but an experienced coach can gain the same insights about the athlete by observing the movements in a gym setting or team training. Also, these tests do not incorporate genetic components (parental susceptibility to injury) or previous injuries.
Even the original inventor of the FMS said in 2018 that these movement patterns should never be considered a complete "injury prevention" test battery, but unfortunately they are used that way today. The factors that lead to an injury are many complex causal chains. The arbitrary movement screenings that exist to date can only give us a minimal picture of the current biomechanics in some patterns.
Things that we should measure and which, in contrast to the VBG (which is even partly wrongly subsidized by health insurance companies), are evidence-based with regard to injury prevention, are, for example, tests for VO2Max or heart rate.
I often hear that training is useful because athletes improve in screening. Everyone improves in a movement pattern if they do it more often than before. But does the player get injured less? Or can we use it to identify injuries based on evidence?
No, unfortunately not.
My recommendation is therefore as follows:
Tests factors that are scientifically related to injury prevention (or health - sports medicine aptitude tests) and trains with the basics that have been proven to help athletes get injured less for 40 years and will continue to do so in the future. Makes athletes stronger, more enduring and faster and they automatically become less prone to injury.
I learned from Daniel Kadlec that it can still make sense to select some tests and use them as baseline tests. For example, there is a correlation between ankle mobility (tested with Knee to Wall) and ankle ligament ruptures. If you test mobility in this test once every few months, you have a good indicator of where the athlete needs to be in the event of an injury.
The quality of a coach also lies in knowing an athlete's vulnerability and in knowing the athlete and his or her history. This cannot be guaranteed by a general battery consisting of a handful of tests. In addition, the time we have as athletic trainers with our athletes is precious and should therefore be used with scientifically based performance-improving measures.
I look forward to other suggestions in this discussion!
Always remain critical.