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If it’s not obviously weak, it’s probably not a problem

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Healthy people do not suffer from obvious strength deficits, but subtle weakness is rarely clinically significant, and maybe never. There is little or no overlap between a strength deficit that isn’t obvious and a clinical problem that is.

And most rules have exceptions. For instance, I wrote in my last post about Lee et al., a study that demonstrated a non-trivial injury risk from hamstring weakness that probably wasn’t obvious without careful strength testing. So is that an exception? A case of non-obvious weakness that actually is a problem? Perhaps. But it was also very much “just one study,” and contradicted by others.

Even if true, the point is that it’s still an exception, a rarity.

PainSci Member Login » Submit your email to unlock member content. If you can’t remember/access your registration email, please contact me. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher