Range Scorethe mobility test you can take at home
The mobility test battery, composed: one 0–100 reading out of whatever you have measured, by the same arithmetic the app runs. Ground you have not surveyed is drawn as unsurveyed and left out of the mean — never filled in with a guess.
Five self-tests feed it — toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor, deep squat. Take them in any order, take as few as you like, and the reading says how much ground it covers every time it shows you a number.
Unmapped ground. Nothing here has been measured yet.
Nothing measured yet. Every station below is drawn open and every run between them is dashed, because that is what unsurveyed ground looks like on this map. There is no score, and there is no estimate standing in for one.
Take any of the five tests and come back — each one carries its reading here in the address. You do not have to take them in order and you do not have to take them all.
Spine stays unsurveyed, and it will. The only test that reads it is the seated thoracic rotation, which is test six of seven and is not available yet — in the app either. So the highest this survey can reach is four of five stations, and the app says the same thing on its own Range screen rather than quietly averaging four and calling it five.
0 of 5 tests taken. Every link here carries what you have already measured, so the readings travel with you from one instrument to the next.
Nothing on this site is stored and nothing is sent. Your readings live in the address bar and nowhere else, so a link is a survey and closing the tab loses it. Copy the address if you want to keep it, or take the same tests in Limber, where a reading is kept on the phone and measured against the one before it.
The five stations
The Range Score is the mean of these five and nothing else. Each one is the mean of its own areas that have a reading; each area is a weighted mean of the tests that feed it. Missing stays missing all the way up.
The five are score groups and the nine underneath them are areas. The line under the instrument is the app’s own caption, word for word, and it calls the groups areas — we have left it as the app writes it rather than tidying a quotation.
Hamstrings — · Glutes — · Lower Back — — Ankles
Calves & Ankles — — Shoulders
Shoulders — · Neck — — Hips
Hips — · Hip Flexors — — Spine
Upper Back — —
Which test feeds which area
This is the app’s own weighting table. Where a test has not been taken its weight is dropped rather than counted as a zero, so the remaining tests carry the area between them — and the middle column says so, giving each test’s designed weight and, in brackets, what it is actually worth with the survey you have.
| Area | Fed by | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Hamstrings | Toe touch 100% — not read | — |
| Glutes | Deep squat 100% — not read | — |
| Lower Back | Toe touch 50% — not read; Deep squat 50% — not read | — |
| Calves & Ankles | Knee-to-wall 100% — not read | — |
| Shoulders | Shoulder reach 60% — not read; Wall angel 40% — not read | — |
| Neck | Shoulder reach 100% — not read | — |
| Hips | Deep squat 50% — not read; Hip flexor 50% — not read | — |
| Hip Flexors | Hip flexor 100% — not read | — |
| Upper Back | Thoracic rotation 100% — not read | — |
Two of those rows are marked as proxies in the app and are worth naming here. The neck has no test of its own, so it borrows the shoulder reach. The glutes have no test of their own, so they borrow the deep squat. The app labels both as inferred rather than presenting them as measured, and so does this page.
Left against right
Three of the five tests keep left and right apart: the knee-to-wall, the shoulder reach and the hip flexor. Take both sides of any of them and the gap is stated here. Nothing is shown until then, because one side is not a comparison.
A difference between sides is normal and common. It is worth watching rather than worth worrying about: what makes it interesting is whether it stays the same across several readings, not what it is on any one day.
What this number is not
It is not a percentile. The anchors are Limber’s own scale. Nothing here tells you how you compare to other people, because we have not measured other people. The reading is not a grade and it is not a rank.
It is not a health measure. Range of motion is one property of a body among many, and a low reading is not a diagnosis, a risk score or a verdict. Movement screens predict injury poorly — Moran and colleagues showed as much in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 — and this one is no exception.
It is not comparable across different surveys. A score built from two stations and a score built from four are two different measurements that happen to share a scale. That is why the count is printed beside the number every time it is shown, here and in the app.
It is not kept. This page has no account, no cookie and no storage. What you measured is in the address bar and nowhere else, so the number cannot drift on you — and it cannot follow you either.
A mobility test for whom
For a baseline, anyone. The five tests need a wall, a bench and a ruler between them, they take about ten minutes in total, and none of them asks you to go anywhere near your end range. What you get out is a starting point you can repeat honestly in three weeks, which is the only thing a first reading of anything can give you.
For an older adult, take the floor test as well. This battery measures range, and range is not the thing that decides whether life stays easy after 65 — getting down to the floor and back up again is, and that is strength, balance and range at once. The sitting-rising test is the one on this site with published outcome evidence behind it, it is scored on its authors’ own rubric rather than ours, and it is a minute’s work. Two of the five tests here are taken on the floor: if you are at all unsteady on your feet, have somebody in the room, and leave a test untaken rather than risk a fall. Not taking a test is a legitimate answer and it is a better one.
For an athlete, read the gaps and not the composite. Three of the five tests keep left and right apart, and the difference between your own two sides is worth more than the number they average into, because comparing you to yourself removes almost everything that varies between people. What this cannot do is tell you whether you are about to get hurt — Moran and colleagues pooled the movement-screen literature in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 and found composite screen scores did not predict later injury — and it does not read the range you can hold under load, which is what a sport asks for.
If the hips are what you came for, the hip mobility test takes that station in one sitting: the same two scored positions, plus a left-against-right rotation compare that this battery does not include.
Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. Mild stretch — four to six out of ten — is the target on every test in this battery. Anything sharp, electric or numb is not a stretch: ease out of it and leave that reading untaken rather than forcing a band.
See a clinician rather than a web page if pain radiates down a limb, if you have numbness, pins and needles or weakness, if the pain followed a fall or an injury, or if back pain came with fever, unexplained weight loss, or any change in bladder or bowel control. These tests do not diagnose anything and Limber does not treat anything.
How is the Range Score calculated?
Each test scores 0–100. Each area is a weighted mean of the tests that feed it — hamstrings from the toe touch, ankles from the knee-to-wall, hips from the deep squat and hip flexor at half each, and so on. Each of the five score groups is the mean of its own areas that have a reading. The Range Score is the mean of the groups that have a reading. A test you have not taken has its weight dropped rather than counted as a zero, and a group with nothing in it is left out of the mean entirely.
What happens to areas I have not measured?
Nothing is invented for them. The station is drawn as an open mark, the runs either side of it are dashed, the area reads as an em dash, and it is left out of the composite. It is never interpolated from its neighbours — their mean would look exactly like a reading and would be a guess with a line through it. The count of surveyed stations is printed beside the score every time the score is shown.
Why can I only survey four of the five stations?
The Spine station is fed by one test, the seated thoracic rotation, and that test is not available yet — in the app either. So four of five is the ceiling for this battery, here and in Limber, and both say so rather than averaging four stations and presenting it as a complete survey.
What is a good Range Score?
The honest answer is that the question does not have a number in it. The scale is Limber's own anchor set, not a population percentile, and it is built so the distance between two of your own readings means something. A score is only useful against another score taken by the same person over the same set of stations.
Is this a good mobility test for seniors?
It is safe to take and it measures what it says — range of motion at five stations — but it was not built as an older adult's screen and it does not pretend to be one. What it cannot see is the thing that matters most after 65: whether you can get down to the floor and back up. That is a question about strength, balance and range together, and the test with published evidence behind it is the sitting-rising test, which is on this site and linked below. Take that one as well, and take both of them with somebody in the room if you feel at all unsteady on your feet. Two of the five stations here are floor tests, and not taking a test is always a legitimate answer.
Is this a good mobility test for athletes?
For a baseline, yes; for predicting anything, no. The useful part for a trained person is not the composite at all — it is the gap between your own left and right, which three of the five tests keep apart, because comparing you to yourself removes almost everything that varies between people. What this cannot do is tell you whether you are about to get hurt. Movement screens predict injury poorly: Moran and colleagues pooled the work in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 and found the composite score no use for it. It also does not measure the range you can control under load, which is what a sport actually asks for.
Are my readings saved anywhere?
No. There is no account, no cookie and no storage on this site, and nothing is sent to a server. Your readings live in the address bar: that is how they travel from one test to the next, and it is why closing the tab loses them. Copy the address if you want to keep the survey.
What does the app do that this page cannot?
It keeps the reading. Limber cuts your first score as a datum and measures every later reading from it, tracks each area separately with its own history, re-tests on a cadence you choose, and plans sessions from the station that reads lowest. This page can compose one survey. It cannot remember the one before it, because it stores nothing.
Posterior chain — hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Five bands, one 0–100 reading.
Knee to Wall TestAnkle dorsiflexion in centimetres, left and right kept apart. One of two tests in the battery that produce a real measured number.
Shoulder Mobility TestShoulder mobility as a chain — the reach behind the back, in hand-widths, with left and right kept apart.
Hip Flexor TestHip flexor length on each side, read against the bench line — the Thomas test, simplified so you can take it alone.
Deep Squat TestThe whole lower body as one screen — depth, heels and whether the bottom of the squat is somewhere you can rest.
Hip Mobility TestThe hips, in three positions: a squat hold and a hip flexor check scored on the app's own anchors, and a rotation compare that is read left against right rather than scored.
Sitting-Rising TestGetting to the floor and back up without support — the published 10-point sitting-rising score. Not one of Limber's five tests, and not part of the Range Score.
- Moran RW, Schneiders AG, Mason J, Sullivan SJ. Do Functional Movement Screen (FMS) composite scores predict subsequent injury? A systematic review with meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2017;51(23):1661–1669. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2016-096938
- Brito LB, Ricardo DR, Araújo DS, Ramos PS, Myers J, Araújo CG. Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 2014;21(7):892–8. doi:10.1177/2047487312471759
- Nuzzo JL. The Case for Retiring Flexibility as a Major Component of Physical Fitness. Sports Medicine 2020;50(5):853–870. doi:10.1007/s40279-019-01248-w
Each address was followed to the record it names before it was written down. Where a paper could not be resolved that way, the page names it in the prose and leaves it unlinked rather than guessing at an address.
One reading is a point. Two are a line.
This page scores one test. Limber runs five — toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor and deep squat — rolls them into a single 0–100 Range Score, cuts that first score as your datum, and measures every later reading from it. The two wall tests are read in centimetres, the per-side tests keep left and right apart, and areas you never tested stay drawn as untested rather than filled in with a guess.
It works offline and needs no account: your readings stay on the phone.
Limber is in build. There is no store listing yet, so there is no download button here — when there is one it will be a link, not a promise.