The Squat: An Excellent Final Phase Knee Rehabilitative Assessment Tool

Abstract

Bongani T Qumbu, Terry J Ellapen, Mariëtte Swanepoel and Juandre Williams

During the last 30 years, physiotherapy therapy and biokinetic rehabilitation have moved away from traditional isolated assessments to integrative functional screenings, viewing joint stability from a dynamic multi-planar perspective. An integrative functional final-phase knee rehabilitative assessment is needed to determine the quality of the rehabilitative progress; hence the authors’ proposed the squat as this assessment tool. The squat is a popular closed kinetic chain exercise that has been judiciously applied in the double stance closedkinetic-chain rehabilitation of knee injuries. However, it is postulated that the squat can extend as a final-phase-rehabilitative tool to assess whether the patient is ready to commence with open-kinetic chain-exercises.

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