02/12/2026
Passing hop tests doesn’t mean ready to play.
The results below are not groundbreaking. Frankly, it’s common sense. Reactive hops are more demanding and more relevant to sports than standing hop tests. This is how athletes should be tested.
Now there’s peer-reviewed research to back it up. The findings align with ongoing research showing correlations between ACL-RSI psychological readiness scores and QuickBoard performance.
Relationship between Quick Board Reaction Time and Standard Functional Tests (Chmielewski et al., 2024 - International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy)
25 ACL reconstruction patients completed 20 hours of advanced neuromuscular training with pre/post testing on both traditional hop tests and Quick Board visuomotor reaction tests.
What they found:
Traditional hop tests showed large improvements (d=0.9–1.3).
Quick Board reaction tests showed smaller improvements (d=0.5–0.9). Error rates on Quick Board did not improve at all. Speed got better, but accuracy under cognitive load stayed compromised.
Patients who passed return-to-sport criteria (≥90% limb symmetry on all four hop tests) performed no better on QuickBoard reaction tests than patients who failed.
The authors call this “neurocognitive reliance,” where patients can execute physical tasks but require abnormally high neural effort to do so.
Traditional testing can’t see it. Add cognitive demands and it shows up immediately.
Why this matters:
Standard rehab addresses physical deficits but fails to resolve the neurocognitive deficits that may contribute to high ACL re-injury rates.
QuickBoard serves as a diagnostic tool to capture what a tape measure misses: reaction time and accuracy under load.
Strong quads are mandatory, but not sufficient. To reduce re-injury risk, we need to test the brain’s ability to command the body under pressure.
QuickBoard identifies athletes who look physically ready but remain neurocognitively vulnerable.
