Shoulder mobility test
The Apley scratch: one arm over the shoulder, the other up behind the back, and the gap between your hands measured in hand-widths. Two minutes, both sides, and a 0–100 score off the same five bands Limber scores it with.
How to take the reading
- Reach the arm on this side over your shoulder and down your back.
- Bring the other arm up behind your back and reach the hands toward each other. No forcing. Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain.
- Hold there. Note the gap between your hands.
- Come out slowly, swap arms, and read the other side.
Measure the gap in your own hand-widths — the distance across your knuckles. It is a rough unit and that is the point: it is a unit you have with you, it scales with your own body, and it is repeatable without a helper. A ruler held behind your back by someone else is a more precise reading of a differently performed test.
The side is the arm that goes over the top. Name it the same way every time or your two readings will swap places between sessions.
What each band scores
| Band | Where the hands stop | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | More than two hand-widths apart | 10 |
| 2 | One to two hand-widths apart | 30 |
| 3 | Less than one hand-width apart | 55 |
| 4 | Fingertips touch | 75 |
| 5 | Fingers overlap | 95 |
The anchors are Limber’s scale, not a population percentile. They are spaced so the distance between two of your readings means something. Nothing here tells you how you compare to strangers, because we have not measured strangers.
What the reach behind the back measures
Three joints at once, and the test cannot tell you which one is short. The top arm is doing shoulder flexion and external rotation; the bottom arm is doing extension and internal rotation; and the shoulder blade has to slide on the rib cage for either of them to travel. A restriction anywhere in that chain closes the gap between your hands, and so does a stiff upper back.
Sides differ more here than almost anywhere else in the body, and the difference is not automatically a problem: a throwing arm, a racket arm and a carrying arm all read differently from their partner in people with no symptoms at all. What Limber does with a gap of 12 points or more is add one extra move for the side that reads lower, and stop adding it once the gap falls under six.
The honest limit of this test is that it is a screen, not a diagnosis. Moran and colleagues showed in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 that movement-screen composites predict injury poorly, and that finding applies to this reading as much as to any other. It tells you where a shoulder is today. It does not tell you what will happen to it.
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.
Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. A pinch at the front or the top of the shoulder as the arm goes up, or pain that arrives at a particular point in the arc and goes again, is not a stretch — come out of the position rather than pushing to reach the next band.
See a clinician rather than a web page if the shoulder is painful at night or when you lie on it, if the arm feels weak, if there is numbness or pins and needles down the arm, or if the pain followed a fall or a wrench. This test does not diagnose anything and Limber does not treat anything.
What is a good shoulder mobility test score?
Getting the hands within one hand-width reads 55 on this scale and is a good adult result; fingertips touching reads 75 and overlapping fingers read 95. Below that, one to two hand-widths reads 30 and more than two reads 10. The anchors are Limber's own scale rather than a population percentile — they are spaced so the distance between two of your own readings means something.
Why is one shoulder so much worse than the other?
Sides differ more at the shoulder than almost anywhere else, and a difference is not automatically a problem: throwing arms, racket arms and carrying arms all read differently from their partner in people with no symptoms. In Limber a gap of 12 points or more is called an imbalance and the plan adds one extra move for the side that reads lower, until the gap falls under six.
Which side am I measuring?
The arm that goes over the top of your shoulder. Name it the same way every time or your two readings will swap places between sessions. Limber stores left and right separately for exactly this reason.
What does the Apley scratch test actually measure?
Three joints at once, and it cannot tell you which one is short. The top arm is doing shoulder flexion and external rotation, the bottom arm extension and internal rotation, and the shoulder blade has to slide on the rib cage for either to travel. A stiff upper back closes the gap between the hands as surely as a stiff shoulder does.
Should I measure with a ruler instead of hand-widths?
A hand-width is deliberately rough. It is a unit you always have with you, it scales with your own body, and you can use it without a helper — which means you can repeat the measurement honestly, and repeatability is the whole point of a self-test. A ruler held behind your back by somebody else is a more precise reading of a differently performed test.
Can this test tell me if I have shoulder impingement?
No. It is a range screen and it does not diagnose anything. Movement screens predict injury poorly — Moran and colleagues showed as much in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 — and pain at the shoulder is a question for a clinician who can examine you, particularly if it wakes you at night, if the arm feels weak, or if there is numbness down the arm.
The composite. Whatever you have measured, rolled into one 0–100 reading and drawn as an elevation profile — with the ground you skipped left dashed.
Toe Touch TestPosterior chain — hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Five bands, one 0–100 reading.
Deep Squat TestThe whole lower body as one screen — depth, heels and whether the bottom of the squat is somewhere you can rest.
- 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
- Kibler WB, Ludewig PM, McClure PW, Michener LA, Bak K, Sciascia AD. Clinical implications of scapular dyskinesis in shoulder injury: the 2013 consensus statement from the 'Scapular Summit'. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2013;47(14):877–85. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2013-092425
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.