Limber
Station 1 of the five-test battery

Toe touch test

Fold forward, note where your hands stop, and read a 0–100 score off the same five bands Limber scores the test with. It takes a minute and needs nothing but floor.

Measures Posterior chain Kit Nothing. Floor and standing room. Time About a minute Open No account, nothing stored

How to take the reading

  1. Stand with your feet hip-width apart, knees soft — unlocked, not bent.
  2. Fold forward slowly and reach for the floor. Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain.
  3. Hold at the bottom and breathe out. Note where your hands are.
  4. Come up slowly and choose the band below that matches what you saw.

Take it the same way every time: same knee softness, roughly the same time of day, and either always warm or always cold. Range drifts with warmth and with the hour, so a reading taken after a run and a reading taken out of bed are not the same measurement and should not be compared as if they were.

Where did your hands stop?

Choose the band that matches what you saw. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent — press Keep this reading and the result lands in this page’s address, which you can copy, bookmark or send.

Toe touch Band 1 of 5
10

The five anchors of this test, 0–100. A band test has no values in between — there is nothing you could report between fingertips and knuckles that would survive a second attempt.

More than 20 cm from the floor. The first of five bands.

A hand-span or more of air under your fingertips. This is a common first reading for someone who sits for most of the day, and it is where a lot of people start. It says where you are, not what you are.

Hamstrings this test, all of it Lower back half — the deep squat is the other half Posterior group 1 of the 5 groups the Range Score averages

Which is why a single reading is a reading and not a Range Score: this one figure is one whole area, half of a second, and a fraction of one of five groups.

Toe touch Band 2 of 5
35

The five anchors of this test, 0–100. A band test has no values in between — there is nothing you could report between fingertips and knuckles that would survive a second attempt.

Fingertips to my shins. The second of five bands.

You are past the first band and reaching your own leg. The step from here to fingertips-on-the-floor is the one most people close first, and it is usually the one that shows up soonest on a re-test.

Hamstrings this test, all of it Lower back half — the deep squat is the other half Posterior group 1 of the 5 groups the Range Score averages

Which is why a single reading is a reading and not a Range Score: this one figure is one whole area, half of a second, and a fraction of one of five groups.

Toe touch Band 3 of 5
60

The five anchors of this test, 0–100. A band test has no values in between — there is nothing you could report between fingertips and knuckles that would survive a second attempt.

Fingertips to the floor. The middle band of five.

Fingertips down with soft knees is a common adult result and the point where the fold stops being about the hamstrings alone. Above here, more of the movement has to come from the hips and the upper back.

Hamstrings this test, all of it Lower back half — the deep squat is the other half Posterior group 1 of the 5 groups the Range Score averages

Which is why a single reading is a reading and not a Range Score: this one figure is one whole area, half of a second, and a fraction of one of five groups.

Toe touch Band 4 of 5
75

The five anchors of this test, 0–100. A band test has no values in between — there is nothing you could report between fingertips and knuckles that would survive a second attempt.

Knuckles to the floor. The fourth of five bands.

Knuckles down is a genuinely long posterior chain. Range gained from here tends to arrive slowly, and the honest expectation is smaller steps between re-tests, not the same jump you got at the start.

Hamstrings this test, all of it Lower back half — the deep squat is the other half Posterior group 1 of the 5 groups the Range Score averages

Which is why a single reading is a reading and not a Range Score: this one figure is one whole area, half of a second, and a fraction of one of five groups.

Toe touch Band 5 of 5
95

The five anchors of this test, 0–100. A band test has no values in between — there is nothing you could report between fingertips and knuckles that would survive a second attempt.

Palms flat on the floor. The top band of five.

There is nothing above this on the toe touch, which means the test has stopped measuring you: everything past palms-flat reads the same 95. If this is your band, the useful readings are elsewhere in the battery — the wall tests give centimetres, and centimetres keep going.

Hamstrings this test, all of it Lower back half — the deep squat is the other half Posterior group 1 of the 5 groups the Range Score averages

Which is why a single reading is a reading and not a Range Score: this one figure is one whole area, half of a second, and a fraction of one of five groups.

What each band scores

BandWhere the hands stopScore
1 More than 20 cm from the floor 10
2 Fingertips to my shins 35
3 Fingertips to the floor 60
4 Knuckles to the floor 75
5 Palms flat on the floor 95

The anchors are Limber’s scale, not a population percentile. They are spaced so that the distance between two of your readings means something — the app measures every later score from the first one you cut, which it calls your datum. Nothing here tells you how you compare to strangers, because we have not measured strangers.

What a forward fold actually measures

All of it at once: hamstrings, glutes, calves, and how much flexion your lower back and hips are willing to give. Two people can stop at exactly the same height for different reasons, and limb proportions alone move the result — long femurs and a short torso make the floor further away at identical tissue length.

That is a limit of the test, not a flaw you can correct for at home, and it is the reason the score is only useful against itself. A 60 today and a 75 in six weeks is a real change in one body. A 60 and someone else’s 75 is two different bodies and two different sets of levers.

Your survey so far

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.

Toe touch — this page —
Knee-to-wall — not read yet — Shoulder reach — not read yet — Hip flexor — not read yet — Deep squat — not read yet —
The Range Score

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.

If it hurts

Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. Mild stretch — four to six out of ten — is the target. Anything sharp, electric or numb is not a stretch: ease out of it.

See a clinician rather than a web page if pain radiates down a leg, 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. This test does not diagnose anything and Limber does not treat anything.

Questions
What is a good toe touch score?

Fingertips to the floor with soft knees reads 60 on this scale, and that is a common adult result. Below it, the two lower bands read 35 and 10; above it, knuckles read 75 and palms flat read 95. The scale is Limber's own anchor set, not a population percentile — it is built so the distance between two of your own readings means something, not so you can rank against strangers.

Does this test measure my hamstrings?

Partly. A forward fold is the whole posterior chain plus the spine: hamstrings, glutes, calves, and how far your lower back is willing to flex. Two people can stop at the same height for different reasons. In Limber the toe touch is the only test feeding the hamstring reading and half of the lower-back reading, and the app names the areas it is inferring rather than pretending one fold measured five things.

Should I bend my knees?

Keep them soft — unlocked, not bent. Locking the knees back changes what the test reads and makes the number jump between attempts. Soft, and the same softness every time you take it, is what makes two readings comparable.

Why are there only five bands and no centimetres?

Because you cannot read a centimetre off your own fingertips while folded over. The five landmarks — a hand-span short of the floor, shins, fingertips, knuckles, palms — are things you can report honestly without a helper or a ruler. Two of Limber's five tests are measured in centimetres against a wall; this one is not, and pretending otherwise would add decimal places to a guess.

Is it bad that I cannot touch my toes?

It is a reading, not a verdict. Reach is shaped by limb proportions, spine and hip anatomy, warmth on the day and time of day as well as by tissue length, and none of that makes a low band a health problem on its own. What it does tell you is where you are starting from, which is the only thing a first reading can honestly tell anyone.

How often should I retake it?

Not daily. Range moves slowly and drifts with the hour and the temperature, so day-to-day differences are mostly noise. Limber's default re-test cadence is 21 days, adjustable to 14 or 28, and the same interval works here: take it, put the number down with the date, and take it again in three weeks.

Read about it
Mobility vs flexibility: what the two words actually measure Mobility, measured: what the words mean How to touch your toes, squat and get the splits
The rest of the case
Range Score

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.

 Deep Squat Test

The whole lower body as one screen — depth, heels and whether the bottom of the squat is somewhere you can rest.

 Knee to Wall Test

Ankle dorsiflexion in centimetres, left and right kept apart. One of two tests in the battery that produce a real measured number.
Sources
  1. Mayorga-Vega D, Merino-Marban R, Viciana J. Criterion-Related Validity of Sit-and-Reach Tests for Estimating Hamstring and Lumbar Extensibility: a Meta-Analysis. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine 2014;13(1):1–14. PMID 24570599
  2. Weppler CH, Magnusson SP. Increasing muscle extensibility: a matter of increasing length or modifying sensation?. Physical Therapy 2010;90(3):438–49. doi:10.2522/ptj.20090012

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.