In This Article
The short answer: A Functional Movement Screen rates seven basic movement patterns on a 0 to 3 scale for a total score out of 21. The idea that a composite score of 14 or below predicts injury comes from a single 2007 study of 46 professional football players on one team, where it worked strikingly well. Larger systematic reviews published in 2017 pooled many more athletes across many more sports and found the composite score cutoff is a much weaker and less consistent predictor outside that original setting. The score is still a useful coaching tool, but it works best as a way to flag specific movement patterns worth a closer look, not as a single number that tells you who is about to get hurt.
- What FMS Measures
- How Scoring Works
- The Original Injury Study
- Why the Evidence Changed
- The Common Misconception
- How to Use It Well
- FAQ
- Key Takeaways
- References
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What a Functional Movement Screen Actually Measures
The Functional Movement Screen, usually shortened to FMS, was described by Gray Cook, Lee Burton, and Barbara Hoogenboom in a two-part 2006 paper series in the North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy. It is a standardized set of seven movement patterns that a trained screener watches an athlete perform without warming up first, scoring each one on how cleanly the athlete can control their own bodyweight through a basic range of motion.
The patterns were chosen because they combine mobility and stability in ways that show up in everyday athletic movement: squatting, stepping over something, lunging, reaching overhead, raising a leg, holding a plank position, and rotating the trunk while stabilizing the hips. None of the tests require special equipment beyond a dowel and a low hurdle, which is part of why the screen spread quickly through strength and conditioning programs.
Lower body and mobility
Deep Squat, Hurdle Step, In-Line Lunge, Active Straight-Leg Raise
Test hip, knee, and ankle mobility together with the balance and control needed to move through a full range under bodyweight load.
Upper body and trunk
Shoulder Mobility, Trunk Stability Push-Up, Rotary Stability
Test shoulder range of motion and the ability of the trunk to stay stable and transfer force while the limbs move.
How the Score Adds Up and What a Low Score Means
Each of the seven patterns is scored from 0 to 3 by a trained screener, then the seven scores are added into a single composite out of 21. The scoring criteria are the same across every pattern, which is what makes the composite number possible to compare between athletes.
Score of 3
The athlete completes the movement pattern with no visible compensation, using the full range the test asks for.
Score of 2
The athlete completes the movement but has to compensate in some way, such as shifting weight, losing balance, or reducing range.
Score of 1
The athlete cannot complete the pattern at all, even with compensation.
Score of 0
The athlete reports pain anywhere during the pattern. A pain report on any single test overrides the rest of that score.
A composite score of 14 or below out of 21 became the most cited cutoff in the field, mainly because of how it performed in the study that follows. Whether that cutoff means the same thing for a recreational lifter, a college athlete, or a soldier is a separate question, and it is the one the research has spent the last decade trying to answer.
What the Original Injury-Prediction Study Actually Found
Kevin Kiesel, Phillip Plisky, and Mark Voight published the study that made the 14-point cutoff famous in 2007 in the North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy. They screened 46 professional football players on one team before the season, then tracked which players landed on injured reserve for at least three weeks during that season.
The result was a strong statistical association. Players who scored 14 or below had an odds ratio of 11.67 for a serious injury compared with players who scored above 14, with a specificity of 0.91 and a sensitivity of 0.54. In plain terms, the low-scoring group in that one team, one season sample was roughly eleven times more likely to end up seriously injured.
Kiesel, Plisky, and Voight (2007): One-Team Pilot Study
That sensitivity number is easy to miss in a headline about an elevenfold odds ratio, but it matters just as much. A test that catches only about half of the injuries it is meant to flag, in a sample of 46 players from a single roster, is a promising early signal rather than a settled diagnostic tool. The researchers themselves framed it as an identifiable risk factor worth further study, not a finished screening protocol.
Why Later Reviews Found a Much Weaker Picture
Once the FMS spread into college athletics, the military, and general strength and conditioning, researchers had far more data to test the 14-point cutoff against. Two systematic reviews published in 2017 are the most useful summary of what that larger body of evidence actually shows.
Nicholas Bonazza, Dallas Smuin, Cayce Onks, Matthew Silvis, and Aman Dhawan, in a 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, pooled the available reliability and injury-prediction studies. They reported that a composite score of 14 or below was associated with a significantly higher likelihood of injury across the pooled data, but they also flagged real concerns about the internal and external validity of the underlying studies, meaning the pooled result should be read with caution rather than treated as a settled cutoff for every population.
Robert Moran, Anthony Schneiders, Jesse Mason, and John Sullivan, in a 2017 systematic review with meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at the same question by population rather than pooling everyone together, and the picture split apart. For an in-depth look at how population-specific evidence changes what a general training rule actually means for you, see how training frequency should be read through your own recovery data rather than a single blanket number.
Military personnel
Moran and colleagues found strong evidence of an association between a composite score of 14 or below and later injury, but the effect size was small (pooled risk ratio 1.47), nowhere near the elevenfold odds ratio from the original football study.
Soccer
The review found moderate evidence recommending against using the FMS composite score as an injury prediction test in soccer players specifically.
American football, basketball, running, and other groups
Evidence was rated limited or conflicting, meaning the studies available did not agree closely enough to draw a firm conclusion either way.
Put together, the two 2017 reviews say roughly the same thing from different angles: the composite score carries some signal, but it is small, inconsistent across sports, and much weaker than the original single-team result that made the 14-point cutoff popular in the first place.
The Common Misconception
The most common misread is treating the composite score, on its own, as a diagnosis: below 14 means an athlete is at serious injury risk, above 14 means they are cleared. That framing generalizes a single 46-player, one-season, one-team result into a rule applied across sports where the pooled evidence does not hold up nearly as well, and it also treats a screening test built to flag movement quality as if it were a medical clearance.
The same trap shows up in how people read passive versus active movement quality more broadly. A related point applies to the difference between flexibility and mobility: a single number rarely captures whether someone can actually control the range they are being asked to move through, and control is usually the more useful thing to train.
Misconception: a composite score below 14 predicts injury the same way in every sport. The elevenfold odds ratio that made that cutoff famous came from one team of 46 professional football players. Larger 2017 reviews found a much smaller effect in military personnel and evidence against using the cutoff at all in soccer, so the same number does not carry the same meaning everywhere.
How to Use a Movement Screen Without Turning It Into a Scorecard
Look at the individual patterns, not just the composite total
Two athletes can land on the same composite score for completely different reasons. A left-right asymmetry on a single pattern, or a pain report on one specific test, is a more actionable signal than the total number.
Do not use a single low score to bench someone without other context
Given how weak and sport-specific the predictive evidence is, a low composite score is a reason to look closer, not a standalone reason to pull someone out of training or competition.
Retest over time instead of treating one screen as a verdict
A movement pattern that improves after targeted work is more informative than a single snapshot score, and it gives you a way to check whether the corrective work you are doing is actually changing anything.
Weigh a screen against training history, not instead of it
Recent training load, prior injury history, and how you are tracking progressive overload tell you more about current injury risk than a single movement screen taken in isolation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Functional Movement Screen exactly?
It is a standardized set of seven movement patterns, described by Gray Cook, Lee Burton, and Barbara Hoogenboom in a two-part 2006 paper series, that a trained screener scores from 0 to 3 each for a composite total out of 21. It is meant to flag movement patterns worth a closer look, not to diagnose an injury.
Does a composite score of 14 or below mean I am going to get injured?
No. That cutoff comes from a 2007 study of 46 professional football players on one team, where it was linked to an elevenfold higher odds of serious injury. Larger 2017 reviews found a much smaller effect in military personnel and evidence against using the cutoff at all in soccer, so a low score on its own is not a reliable individual prediction.
Why did the original FMS study show such a strong result if later research did not confirm it?
The original study was a single team of 46 players, which makes a striking result more likely to happen by chance and less likely to hold up when tested on larger, more varied groups. That is a common pattern in early sports science findings, and it is exactly what the 2017 reviews by Bonazza and colleagues and Moran and colleagues were designed to test.
Should coaches use the FMS to decide who plays or trains?
Using it as the sole reason to hold an athlete out of training is not well supported by the pooled evidence. It works better as one input among several, alongside training load, injury history, and how specific movement patterns change over repeated testing.
Is the FMS the same thing as a general mobility or flexibility test?
No. It measures active, loaded movement patterns rather than passive joint range of motion. It has more in common with a control and stability assessment than with a stretch test.
What should I actually do if I score low on one of the seven patterns?
Treat it as a specific pattern to work on rather than a global injury sentence. Targeted mobility or stability work on that one pattern, followed by a retest, tells you far more than the composite number ever will.
What to Remember
- →The Functional Movement Screen scores seven movement patterns from 0 to 3 each for a composite total out of 21, described by Cook, Burton, and Hoogenboom in 2006.
- →The widely cited 14-point cutoff comes from a 2007 study of only 46 professional football players on one team, where a score of 14 or below carried an odds ratio of 11.67 for serious injury.
- →A 2017 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Sports Medicine (Bonazza et al.) found the cutoff associated with injury overall but flagged real validity concerns in the underlying studies.
- →A 2017 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Moran et al.) found only a small effect in military personnel (risk ratio 1.47) and evidence against using the cutoff in soccer.
- →Individual movement pattern scores and asymmetries carry more useful signal than the single composite number.
- →Use a low score to prompt targeted work and a retest, not as a standalone reason to hold someone out of training.
Related on Protocol
Mobility vs. Flexibility: What Your Body Actually Needs
Why active control through a range of motion matters more than a passive number
How to Track Progressive Overload in Your Training
Using training history and load trends alongside any single screening result
Tempo Training: The Underrated Lever for Strength, Control, and Tendons
Building the control that a movement screen is trying to measure in the first place
Track the training load behind your movement, not just a one-time score
Protocol tracks your training load and recovery together, so a movement screen becomes one input among many instead of a single number deciding your risk.
Get started freeReferences
Key Researchers
- Gray Cook Co-developer of the Functional Movement Screen and lead author of the 2006 paper describing its seven test patterns.
- Kevin Kiesel Lead author of the 2007 study of 46 professional football players that established the widely cited 14-point composite cutoff.
- Robert Moran Lead author of the 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis that split the injury-prediction evidence by sport and population.
Key Studies
- Cook, Burton, and Hoogenboom (2006) North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, 1(2), 62 to 72, and 1(3), 132 to 139. The original two-part description of the seven Functional Movement Screen test patterns and scoring system.
- Kiesel, Plisky, and Voight (2007) North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, 2(3), 147 to 158. Single-team study of 46 professional football players finding an odds ratio of 11.67 for serious injury at a composite score of 14 or below.
- Bonazza, Smuin, Onks, Silvis, and Dhawan (2017) American Journal of Sports Medicine, 45(3), 725 to 732. Systematic review and meta-analysis finding the composite score cutoff associated with injury overall, alongside notable validity concerns in the underlying studies.
- Moran, Schneiders, Mason, and Sullivan (2017) British Journal of Sports Medicine, 51(23), 1661 to 1669. Systematic review with meta-analysis finding a small effect in military personnel (risk ratio 1.47) and evidence against using the composite score cutoff in soccer, with limited or conflicting evidence in other populations.
