In the world of health and fitness, the abundance of performance metrics has revolutionized the way we analyze client and athlete data, but determining which metrics truly matter in risk reduction and performance enhancement can remain a challenge. 

Muscle strength ratios are a testing metric that has gained significant attention from health professionals in recent times and are commonly assessed during pre-season fitness evaluations, general client management, and post-operative testing batteries.

Ratios are single-value metrics made up of two parts: a numerator and a denominator. Essentially, a ratio quantifies the relationship between two quantities, showing how many times one value contains or is contained by another. In sports science, when we talk about symmetry, we're usually comparing metrics between different sides or muscle groups. When looking at ratios, particularly with strength testing we are often looking at the relationship between agonist/antagonist muscle...

The ICC T20 World Cup is underway and thousands of throwing actions will take place over the next 4 weeks.

Did you know, at peak rotation, maximum humeral internal rotation velocity during throwing may reach 7500 to 7700 degrees per second (Seroyer et al 2010)? That’s approximately 4 times faster than a helicopter's rotor spins.

It’s no wonder then that some of the cricketers taking part in the ICC T20 World Cup this month need to have strong and functional rotator cuff muscles to generate and tolerate the forces involved in throwing.

How do the rotator cuff muscles work when throwing?

The above from Oyama 2012 illustrates the complexity of the throwing action and the demand on the tissues.

From this we can see that the shoulder forces acting on the shoulder work in a deceleration - acceleration - deceleration pattern. It may also be surprising to see that the rotator cuff works mostly to compress the shoulder joint and provide stability during these movements,...