The SportsFit Return to Sport Testing Battery

What the testing battery is for

After an ankle sprain, a hamstring tear, a knee reconstruction or a hip injury, the hardest question is usually timing. You feel fine walking. You feel fine jogging in a straight line. Then someone asks you to cut off that leg at speed and you find out it isn't the same leg it was six months ago.

The SportsFit return to sport testing battery is a set of measurable tasks we run at our Five Dock and Gladesville clinics to compare your injured limb against your uninjured one, and against the demands of the sport you're going back to. It doesn't make the decision for you. It gives you and your physio numbers to argue with instead of a vague feeling.

Why we compare left to right

The most common measure in this space is the Limb Symmetry Index: injured limb score divided by uninjured limb score, expressed as a percentage. Most published hop test protocols use 90% as the threshold, meaning the injured side is within 10% of the other.

One caveat worth understanding before you start. After a long rehab, the uninjured leg is usually weaker than it was pre-injury too, because you've been off full training. That inflates your symmetry score. It's why we look at absolute values, bodyweight-relative strength and sport-specific numbers alongside the ratio, rather than treating 90% as a finish line.

The five tests

1. Single leg sit to stand

You start seated in a standard chair, arms crossed, and stand up on one leg as many times as you can without the other foot touching down. It's a capacity test more than a power test, and it exposes quad endurance and hip control that a single max-effort rep will hide.

Pass criteria we use: both sides equal, with a minimum of 25 repetitions.

2. Single leg leap

The first of the power tests. Stand on one leg, leap forward as far as you can, and land on the same leg under control. A landing you stumble out of doesn't count. Three attempts per leg, record the best.

Pass criteria: within 10% between sides.

3. Single leg triple hop

Same idea, three continuous hops on one leg for maximum total distance. The extra hops add a reactive element. Your leg now has to absorb force and produce it again immediately, which is much closer to what happens in a game than a single leap from standstill.

Pass criteria: within 10% between sides.

4. Single leg crossover hop

Three hops again, but zig-zagging across a line on the floor. The lateral component loads the knee and ankle in a direction the first two tests don't. Plenty of athletes pass the straight-line hops and drop several percent here, which tells us where the next block of rehab should go. Three attempts per leg.

Pass criteria: within 10% between sides.

5. Box hop

A speed and fatigue test. Mark two lines 20 cm apart, then hop side to side between them on one leg for 30 seconds, counting contacts. Rest properly between legs, because a fatigued second effort gives you a symmetry number that means nothing. One set per side.

Pass criteria: 60 hops in 30 seconds.

What else we look at

Hop testing on its own is a narrow view. In a full return to sport assessment we also work through:

• Strength testing. Isolated quadriceps and hamstring strength, calf capacity through single leg heel raises, and hip abduction. A limb can hop symmetrically while still being meaningfully weaker, because athletes compensate through the hip and ankle.

• Landing and cutting mechanics. How the knee tracks on a drop landing and a deceleration, and whether that changes once you're tired.

• Running load. What volume, speed and change of direction you've actually completed in training, not just how you feel.

• Psychological readiness. Fear of reinjury is a real barrier and it's measurable with questionnaires such as the ACL-RSI. Athletes who score well physically and poorly here often need a different next step to those who score the reverse.

• Time since surgery or injury. Biology sets a floor that testing can't override. In the Delaware-Oslo ACL cohort study published by Grindem and colleagues in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2016, reinjury rates were lower among athletes who returned later and who met discharge criteria.

We also run testing through our Pitch Ready partnership, which uses the same objective testing framework applied in professional sporting environments, so your results sit in a consistent format across retests.

What a session looks like

Budget around an hour. Wear the footwear you play in. Come in without a hard training session in the previous 24 hours, because fatigue shifts the results.

We start with history and a physical assessment of range, swelling and strength, then a proper warm-up before any of the hop tests. Testing runs in a fixed order so the numbers are comparable at retest. You get your results on the day, including which specific tasks fell short and by how much.

If you don't meet the criteria, that's a programming problem, not a verdict. A 78% crossover hop score with good straight-line numbers points towards frontal plane control and lateral loading work. A low sit to stand count with strong hops points towards endurance. We'd usually retest after four to six weeks of targeted work.

When to book testing

A useful trigger is the point where you're jogging comfortably, your swelling has settled, and you're being asked to start training with the team. Testing at that stage gives you time to fix gaps before selection pressure arrives. After a knee reconstruction, most surgeons and physios will want serial testing rather than a single session, often starting around the three to six month mark and repeating.

Meeting every pass criterion doesn't remove the risk of reinjury. It means you've demonstrated a level of capacity on tasks that resemble the ones your sport will ask of you, which is a better basis for the decision than time on the calendar alone.

If you would like it assessed, you can book a free injury assessment.