Athletes require a strong foundation in a diverse range of athletic qualities in order to tolerate the progressively advanced training loads and competitive demands of their chosen sport. The improvement of foundation movements that underpin these athletic qualities early in the athletes’ development pathway is one of the key recommendations of long term athlete development models.1,2 The foundation movements typically involve variations of squatting, lunging, jumping, pushing, pulling and bracing.3‐6 Typically these movements are objectively assessed using some form of functional movement assessment criteria in order to screen athletes for dysfunctional movement patterns in an attempt to alleviate injury risk through addressing incorrect movement patterns.7 The Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) by Cook7 is by far the most popular screening tool used to provide an objective assessment of movement in sports performance research and is typically synonymous with the term “functional movement”.8‐10 The FMS™, however, was developed as screening tool for determining if someone is safe to exercise.11 The need still remains for a level of assessment that accounts for sporting demands and movement under load. To further highlight the need for an athletic assessment, a recent survey of sports performance practitioners working in high performance sport revealed that the majority of these practitioners preferred to implement their own version of movement assessment rather than the FMS™.12 This suggests that the FMS™ protocol may not meet the perceived needs of the practitioner working in high performance sport.

McKeown has suggested that there are movements that underpin athletic performance which should be used in assessment of movement capabilities in athletes.12 In order for movement assessment to be effective the assessment must not only assess dysfunction across a standardized set of movements, but also identify differences in performers ability to execute these movements. Questions have been raised over the ability of the FMS™ to characterize meaningful changes in movement quality over multiple testing sessions and the relationship of FMS™ scores and sports performance improvement.9,13,14 The FMS™ was originally developed to assess normal function of fundamental movement skills of daily living.7 Sports performance requires more demanding fundamental movement ability in areas such as total body control under increasing load, single leg jumping and landing abilities, and other complex movement challenges that underpin sport performance. Practitioners therefore use tools they consider more appropriate for the athletic populations they are working with.12 Practitioners may also feel the movements used in the FMS™ do not, in their experience, align adequately to their coaching approach and therefore would not be useful in informing coaching decisions. There is limited evidence to support the conjecture of these notions in the literature; however this study is the first step in the scientific process to present an alternate assessment of movement ability and discuss it’s impact on subsequent physical performance and also training resilience. In order for the movement assessment process to be included in more performance science literature and considered in future research, alternative methods must be discussed and examined.

In this study the authors’ propose an alternative assessment tool that addresses the need for movement assessment specific to athletic populations. The Athletic Ability Assessment (AAA) is not to be used as a clearance screen in order to begin training safely, as is the suggested use of the FMS™,11 but as an assessment methodology that can be utilized as athletes travel along their sporting pathway and require increased movement competency under load and under greater levels of movement complexity. The assessment criteria presented in this study illustrate the first level of assessment on the continuum of athletic development; future assessment levels should be progressed accordingly. One of the key differences of the AAA is that the exercises used to assess functional movement are more closely aligned with the foundation movement skills underpinning sports performance in that particular environment,3,15 including the use of load and complexity of movement. These movements are still assessed in a way that highlights movement dysfunction, but have the advantage of providing a more focused exercise progression template that is well aligned to performance enhancement. In addition to the different exercises used in the movement assessment, the scoring system for each exercise is designed to examine the key components of each movement individually. This provides more information of separate functional qualities across exercises. By examining key components such as trunk control, range of motion, and lower body alignment across a range of exercises, commonalities of dysfunction can be highlighted that provides more insightful feedback to inform the program prescription and coaching process.

The authors’ propose that the AAA be used as an assessment tool for athlete profiling, as well as be used to assess changes in functional movement ability over time (by making multiple measurements on the same athlete following a training intervention). In order to confidently assess changes in an individual it is necessary to obtain an estimate of the measurement error that might arise solely from the tester(s). The specific objectives of this study were to determine the absolute error with one tester rating the same movements one week apart (intra‐tester reliability) as well as determining the error associated with different testers scoring the same performance (inter‐tester reliability). A secondary objective of this study is to investigate the differences between real‐time assessment and video‐based assessment using the same tester.