Pre-Season Football Screening: What Should You Actually Test?
Pre-season football screening has changed.
Traditionally, athletes were often put through a collection of strength, flexibility and movement tests with the idea that the results could identify who was likely to become injured during the season.
That is not something we can do reliably.
Football injuries are influenced by too many interacting factors for a single squat, jump, strength score or flexibility measurement to accurately predict the next injury.
That does not make screening useless.
It changes the question.
Instead of asking:
“Can we predict who will be injured?”
a more useful question is:
“What does this player currently have the physical capacity to do, and what might be worth developing before the season becomes more demanding?”
Our Football Physiotherapy and Sports Physiotherapy services use physical testing in exactly this way: to build a profile, identify useful training priorities and establish a baseline for future comparison.
What Is Football Pre-Season Screening?
A football screening is a structured assessment of physical qualities that are relevant to the game.
Depending on the player, this may include:
- Previous injury history.
- Current pain or limitations.
- Quadriceps strength.
- Hamstring strength.
- Calf strength and endurance.
- Adductor strength.
- Single-leg strength.
- Jump performance.
- Reactive strength.
- Landing tasks.
- Sprinting exposure.
- Change-of-direction capacity.
- Current training volume.
The exact battery should reflect the player rather than simply performing every available test.
A junior player entering their first competitive season has different needs from an adult returning after ACL reconstruction.
Screening Should Profile the Player, Not Predict the Future
This distinction is important.
Modern research into injury prediction continues to show that football injuries are complex and difficult to predict accurately at an individual level.
Previous injury, training exposure, age, strength, movement characteristics and many other factors may all contribute to risk, but combining those factors into a reliable prediction for one individual athlete remains difficult.
A screening test can therefore tell us:
“This athlete currently produces this amount of force.”
It cannot tell us:
“This athlete is going to tear their hamstring in six weeks.”
A Better Way to Think About Screening
A useful football screen creates a physical profile.
We can then use that profile to guide training, monitor progress and compare the athlete with their own previous results.
The aim is to improve capacity, not attach an injury probability to every test score.
Previous Injury History Comes First
Before measuring jump height or muscle strength, it is worth knowing what the player has previously injured.
Previous injury is one of the most practically useful pieces of information in football.
We want to know:
- What was injured?
- How long ago did it occur?
- Was rehabilitation completed?
- Did the player restore strength?
- Did they return to sprinting?
- Did they return to cutting and change of direction?
- Are they still experiencing pain, stiffness or apprehension?
An athlete who returned from injury but never completely restored physical capacity may enter the next season with a very different profile from the rest of the squad.
Quadriceps Strength Testing
The quadriceps play a major role in acceleration, deceleration, jumping, landing and kicking.
They are particularly important after knee injury.
Strength testing can help quantify whether one leg remains meaningfully weaker than the other or whether both limbs remain below where we would expect them to be for the athlete's goals.
This is particularly useful after an ACL or significant knee injury.
Our ACL & Meniscus Rehabilitation pathway uses objective testing alongside running, jumping and sport-specific progression rather than relying only on time since injury.
Hamstring Strength Testing
Hamstring injuries are a major problem in football, particularly because sprinting exposes the hamstrings to very high force and rapid lengthening.
Hamstring assessment may consider:
- Maximal force production.
- Between-leg differences.
- Knee-flexion strength.
- Hip-extension strength.
- Previous hamstring injury.
- Recent sprint exposure.
Nordic hamstring testing is one practical field-based option, although no single hamstring test captures every quality required during sprinting.
The test is useful because it gives us information we can track.
It should not be interpreted as an injury-prediction machine.
Adductor and Groin Strength
The adductor muscles work hard during kicking, sprinting, reaching and rapid changes of direction.
For footballers with previous groin pain, measuring adductor force can be particularly useful.
Testing may involve an adductor squeeze or more specific force measurement.
Where a relevant deficit exists, training can include progressive adductor strengthening and football-specific kicking exposure.
If groin pain is already present, our Hip & Groin Physiotherapy service can help distinguish between the different structures and presentations that can cause symptoms in this region.
Calf Strength and Endurance
The calf complex is sometimes overlooked in football testing.
That is surprising when we consider how frequently players:
- Accelerate.
- Sprint.
- Jump.
- Land.
- Push off to change direction.
Calf testing may include force production, repeated heel raises or more demanding single-leg tasks depending on the athlete.
It becomes especially important following ankle, Achilles or calf injuries.
Our Foot & Ankle Physiotherapy service uses these measures as part of rehabilitation where appropriate.
Jump Testing
Jump testing can provide information about how an athlete produces force quickly.
A countermovement jump, for example, can give us information about overall lower-limb power.
Single-leg jump tasks can provide additional information about side-to-side performance and how the player manages unilateral force production.
Depending on the equipment available, we may look at:
- Jump height.
- Peak force.
- Impulse.
- Rate of force development.
- Between-limb differences.
- Reactive strength.
These measures are especially useful when repeated over time.
A single value in isolation is less interesting than knowing whether an athlete is improving, maintaining capacity during a season or restoring performance after injury.
What About Hop Tests?
Hop tests are commonly used during rehabilitation because football involves repeated single-leg take-off, landing and propulsion.
Tests may include:
- Single-hop distance.
- Triple-hop distance.
- Repeated hopping.
- Side-to-side hopping.
- Timed hop tasks.
Again, the purpose is not simply to achieve symmetry.
If the uninjured leg has also become weaker during rehabilitation, achieving 90% symmetry may still leave both legs underprepared.
Absolute performance, movement quality, the athlete's history and sport-specific demands all matter.
Is 90% Limb Symmetry Enough?
Not necessarily.
Limb symmetry can be useful, but it has limitations.
Imagine an athlete whose injured leg becomes weaker after surgery while the other leg also loses strength because training has been reduced.
The two sides may eventually look very similar without either side returning to a high level of performance.
That is why we consider both symmetry and absolute physical capacity.
Countermovement Jump and Force-Plate Testing
Force plates allow us to look beyond how high someone jumps.
Two players can achieve a similar jump height while producing that jump in different ways.
Force-time data may help us understand:
- How much force the athlete produces.
- How quickly force is developed.
- How they use the braking and propulsion phases of the jump.
- Whether meaningful asymmetries are present.
These results should still be interpreted in context.
The goal is not to turn every small difference into a problem.
Reactive Strength
Footballers frequently have very little time to produce force.
Reactive strength describes the ability to transition rapidly from absorbing force to producing it again.
This can be assessed using hopping or drop-jump tasks and measures such as the Reactive Strength Index.
It can be particularly relevant for athletes involved in repeated sprinting, jumping and rapid changes of direction.
Does the IMTP Have a Role?
The isometric mid-thigh pull, or IMTP, provides another way of measuring force production.
It can give useful information about maximal force and, depending on the equipment and analysis, how quickly an athlete develops force.
It is not a football-specific movement.
That does not make it useless.
Testing does not always need to look exactly like the sport. Sometimes a simple controlled test gives us a reliable way of tracking an underlying physical quality.
Movement Assessment Still Has a Role
A football screen does not need to consist exclusively of numbers.
Watching a player jump, land, decelerate and change direction can provide useful information about how they currently perform those tasks.
But we should be careful about interpreting movement.
A knee moving inward during one landing does not mean the player is destined to tear an ACL.
Instead, we might ask:
- Can they control the movement at higher speed?
- Can they absorb force effectively?
- Does fatigue change performance?
- Do they have enough strength for the task?
- Can they use different movement strategies when the situation changes?
Sprint Exposure Is Part of the Profile
A player can test strongly in the gym but still be underprepared for football if they have not been running fast.
High-speed running and sprinting should therefore form part of the broader preseason picture.
Useful questions include:
- How much football has the player recently completed?
- Have they sprinted during the off-season?
- Have they reached near-maximal speed recently?
- Are they returning from hamstring or calf injury?
- How quickly is sprint exposure increasing?
Our main guide to football injury prevention discusses sprint exposure, training progression, strength and recovery in more detail.
What About Asymmetry?
Humans are not perfectly symmetrical.
Football itself is asymmetrical.
Players often have a preferred kicking leg and a preferred support leg, and repeated exposure can create differences between sides.
Finding an asymmetry does not automatically mean it needs fixing.
We are more interested when:
- The difference is large.
- It developed after injury.
- It is associated with symptoms.
- It affects an important football task.
- It changes significantly compared with previous testing.
Testing Should Change the Program
A screening session is only useful if the findings influence what happens next.
If testing shows low calf capacity, we can train the calf.
If the quadriceps remain markedly weaker following ACL rehabilitation, the gym program should reflect that.
If adductor strength remains reduced after groin pain, that becomes a training priority.
If the athlete is strong but has not sprinted for two months, adding another strength exercise may not solve the most important problem.
A Good Football Screen Should Answer Three Questions
1. Where is the player now?
2. What does their football require?
3. What should we train next to close that gap?
When Should Footballers Be Re-Tested?
Testing does not need to happen only once before the season.
Repeating selected tests can help monitor whether the program is working.
Useful times may include:
- Pre-season.
- After a block of strength training.
- Mid-season.
- Following significant injury.
- During return-to-sport rehabilitation.
- Before full return to competition where appropriate.
The same tests do not need to be repeated every week.
The aim is to gather information often enough to guide decisions without turning the athlete's season into one endless testing session.
What Pre-Season Testing Cannot Tell You
No matter how sophisticated the equipment becomes, we need to be clear about its limitations.
A screening session cannot reliably tell you:
- Who will tear their ACL.
- Who will strain their hamstring.
- Who will roll an ankle.
- Exactly when an injury will occur.
Football contains too much uncertainty for that.
Testing is valuable because it helps us make better training decisions.
That is enough.
The Bigger Picture
Pre-season football screening should not be an exercise in searching for faults.
It should be a practical way of understanding the player in front of us.
Measure useful physical qualities.
Consider previous injuries.
Understand recent training exposure.
Identify where capacity can be improved.
Then train it.
For the broader strategies that help prepare players for a season, including strength, training load, sprint exposure, warm-ups and recovery, read our guide to How to Prevent Football Injuries: What Actually Matters?
If you want to establish a baseline, assess deficits following injury or build a football-specific physical preparation plan, our Football Physiotherapy and Sports Physiotherapy teams can help.
Research Informing This Article
- Assessment of Strength and Power Capacities in Elite Male Soccer: A Systematic Review of Test Protocols Used in Practice and Research.
- Testing in Football: A Narrative Review.
- Predictive models of injury risk in male professional football players: a systematic review.
- Return-to-Play Criteria Following Lower Limb Muscle Injuries in Soccer: A Systematic Review with Evidence Synthesis.
