Functional movement screen™ - Normative values in healthy distance runners

Recreational runners have an estimated overuse injury incidence rate of up to 79% and 90% for marathoners. A pre-participation screening tool that can identify risk for injury may help reduce overuse injury in runners. The Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) is a reliable clinical tool used with athletes to help predict injury. To date, the FMS™ has not been used with endurance athletes. The purpose of this article is to establish normative FMS™ values for distance runners. 45 healthy runners performed the FMS™. Descriptive statistics were calculated; independent t-tests were performed to examine the effect of gender, experience and injury on scores. A Chi-square test was used to evaluate whether significant differences in scores exist for any component of the FMS™. The mean FMS™ score was 13.13±1.8. No significant differences in FMS™ scores were found between novice and experienced runners (p=0.71) or runners with a history of injury and those without (p=0.20). While male and female runners did not differ significantly in their total FMS™ score (p=0.65), significant differences were found in the deep squat (p<0.05), trunk stability push-up (p<0.001) and active straight leg raise components (p=0.002). This study provides normative values for FMS™ scores when testing uninjured distance runners.