Relative Squat Strength and Injury Risk

Relative strength is a valuable metric to examine and have for conversations discussing performance and durability.

A recent article, Barbell Squat Relative Strength as an Identifier for Lower Extremity Injury in Collegiate Athletes, by Case et al. published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research shared some interesting findings suggesting specific relative strength threshold that lowers the susceptibility of lower extremity (LE) injury in college athletes.

“Male athletes with relative squat strength below 2.2 and female athletes below 1.6 in these sports could be more susceptible to LE injury over a season. Strength professionals should consider using body mass normalized 1RM back squats as a screening tool for seasonal LE injury risk in college athletes.”

This insight provided from examining football, volleyball, and softball athletes provides practitioners with great talking points and reason to express the value of relative strength, even over absolute values in some cases.

It's important to understand the value of both absolute and relative as they relate to program design and athlete centric conversations.  BridgeAthletic allows for one click solutions to analyze absolute vs relative strength levels. Check out the video below to see the process from start to finish - how to program squats and then later analyze the relative performance of each athlete.