A meta-analysis of 923 athletes and a reliability review of 14 studies put the scapular clearing and prone shoulder flexion tests in their place: repeatable descriptions of movement, not injury forecasts.

The story that muscle weakness causes movement faults is tested best at the hip and knee. Three syntheses show a real but task-specific, contested link - and why strength is only half of technique.

Forward shoulders respond to a rowing-and-opening programme across 22 pooled studies, but in an eight-week cohort of shoulder-pain patients the blade position and the symptoms moved independently. Screen it, train it, do not oversell it.

How to measure active and passive shoulder rotation, which device to trust, what a throwing-side internal rotation deficit means across 819 overhead athletes, and what 16 trials say about fixing it.

Testing ankle dorsiflexion with the knee straight isolates the gastrocnemius in a way the bent-knee lunge cannot. Here is how the straight-knee test is performed, why it is paired with the bent-knee version, and how reliable the numbers are.

Two fists reaching toward each other behind the back, measured against the person's own hand length. The FMS shoulder mobility test, its scoring, its reliability, and what it does and does not tell you.

Half of young athletes are not psychologically ready to return a year after ACL surgery. What goal setting does for rehabilitation, and why fear of reinjury has to be treated alongside the knee.

A tucked pelvis and flattened lumbar curve are easy to spot and hard to interpret. What the measurement research says about accuracy and norms, and what the posture-pain evidence says about acting on it.

Lifting a straight leg from the table is the classic hamstring test. The set-up that makes it reliable, the numbers from the validation studies, and the ankle detail that turns it into a nerve test instead.

Pressing the upper body off the floor with the hips down is the standard passive spinal extension test. How it is measured, how reliable it is, and why it tests the spine more than the rectus abdominis.

Supine, arm at 90 degrees, scapula pinned, goniometer on the forearm. How passive external rotation is measured, why the scapula must be held, and what the throwing-shoulder research says the numbers are for.

The piriformis rotates the hip outward, so passive internal rotation is the stretch test. How the standard manoeuvres are done, why the hip angle changes the answer, and why a tight piriformis is not a diagnosis.

Lying supine and letting the arm fall back is the standard check for a tight pectoralis major. How to run it, what the reliability studies show, and why the numbers are only comparable when the same person measures.

Up to 174 people per 100,000 break an ankle each year. Whether it needs surgery comes down to one question - is the ring stable? - and after fixation, loading within two weeks now beats waiting. Here is the anatomy, the classification and the evidence.

Only about 5% of long-head biceps tendon problems occur in isolation; the rest travel with rotator cuff and labral pathology. Here is the mechanism, the three-stage progression, what conservative care involves, and what the surgical trials show when it fails.

Roughly nine in ten acute back episodes have no identifiable structural cause, most improve within weeks, and the evidence favours reassurance and activity over rest and imaging. Here is how clinicians classify an acute low back injury and what the trials say about early management.

After a knee injury or surgery the quadriceps do not just weaken - the nervous system stops letting you use them fully. Twenty to thirty millilitres of joint fluid can halve voluntary activation. Here is the evidence on how common it is, and which interventions restore activation.

Ciprofloxacin and its relatives carry a small but real risk of Achilles tendinopathy and rupture, typically around day 11, higher with age, kidney disease and steroids. Here is what athletes should know before, during and after a course.

In 1,228 collegiate athletes, light exercise started within two days of a concussion nearly doubled the odds of recovery and cut it by about three days, while waiting more than a week did the opposite. Here is what that means for the athlete - and what still belongs with a clinician.

Acute compartment syndrome is limb-threatening and surgical. The chronic exertional form is a reversible pressure rise inside a tight fascial sleeve - diagnosed by pressure testing, treated first with gait retraining, and released by fasciotomy in roughly four out of five. Here is the evidence.