Upgrading Rehabilitation and Performance Insights with the VALD Force Decks
- satyajit143
- May 12
- 5 min read
"If you're not testing, you're guessing!"
At Grafton Physio + Sport, we’re excited to offer VALD ForceDecks testing to bring clearer, more objective insights into your rehabilitation and performance. This technology measures how you move and produce force, helping us identify imbalances, track progress over time, and make decisions based on real data—not guesswork. Whether you’re returning from injury or aiming to improve athletic performance, VALD supports more tailored programs that match your goals and keep you moving forward with confidence.
For over the last many years, there have been few to no accurate and reliable ways to measure an individual's true strength. This leads to physiotherapists eyeballing their patients' function and effectively guessing if they are ready to progress in their rehab or return back to sport. This isn't enough anymore. With technology become cheaper and more accessible, it is imperative that clinicians start using precise, reliable objective data to accurately guide decision-making in rehab and athletic performance. And this is exactly what we, at Grafton Physio + Sport have done. We have obtained research-grade force plates and dynamometers to provide clear, actionable insights into muscle function and force output, helping users track progress and identify areas for improvement. No more "It's 3 months post-ACL surgery, so you must be ready to run!" or "Your shoulder looks to be stronger now, so you can get back to gardening!"
This post explores how these systems work, their benefits, and practical examples of their use in sports and rehabilitation settings.
Understanding VALD’s Force Decks System
What are The Force Decks? The VALD Force Decks system are portable force plates that measure ground reaction forces during movements like jumps, squats, and balance tests (you may have seen them in our gym underneath the squat rack). These plates capture data at high frequencies, providing detailed insights into an individual's power, symmetry, and balance.
Key Features of Force Decks
High sampling rate: Captures over 500 data points in one second for super accurate readings.
Portability: Lightweight and easy to set up in various environments.
User-friendly software: Displays real-time data and generates detailed reports.
Versatility: Suitable for testing jumps, balance, strength, and asymmetries.
How Force Decks Help Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation for a lot of injuries (for e.g. ACL tears, hamstring tears, Achilles ruptures) used to be time-based, which means that decisions on certain activities such as running or return to sport were being made purely on time since the injury/surgery. There was little to no importance being placed on the functional status of the patient. This is problematic as individuals may not be physically ready to tolerate the demands of an activity, even if the timeline suggests otherwise. This is where the Force Decks come into the picture. The plates allow us to measure force being exerted by the individual and decide next steps based on this, rather than an arbitrary timeline. If significant force deficits exist between limbs, the patient will not be allowed to move onto the next stage regardless of how much time has passed.
Due to being sensitive with forces, the force decks can also pick up deficits invisible to the naked eye. For example, after a significant lower limb injury, someone might look like they're squatting symmetrically to the naked eye, but the force decks will be able to detect side-to-side asymmetries that would generally go under the radar
How Force Decks Help Performance
Force Decks allow coaches and therapists to measure:
Jump height and power: By analysing force-time curves, users can calculate jump height and explosive power.
Maximum/peak force output: Seeing how much overall force an individual can output relative to their bodyweight
Rate of force development: This metric shows how quickly an athlete can generate force, critical for many sports.
For example, a basketball coach might use Force Decks to assess an athlete’s jump power, or a rugby coach might use them to assess an athlete's peak force before and after a training block. If the data shows improvement in force output and symmetry, the coach can be confident the program is effective.
Another key feature the Force Decks possess is normative data. Normative data (or “norms”) are information from a population of interest that establishes a baseline distribution of results for that particular population. Norms are usually derived from a large sample that is representative of the population of interest. Medical literature will often publish normative data with population sizes of around 50-100 participants. By contrast, VALD norms are based on data from over one million individuals. This means that we can still produce credible norms (i.e. 50+ samples) for extremely granular populations, such as European female teenage javelin throwers.
Another crucial use of the Force Decks can be fatigue monitoring. Athletes can be routinely monitored every week to two weeks over the duration of a season to check for neuromuscular fatigue. If an athlete's performance on the Force Decks looks like it's consistently dropping over the last few testing sessions, this might open up an opportunity to dive in deeper to discuss training load spikes or any other external loads that might be proving too much for the athlete to handle before an injury takes place, effectively trying to reduce risk of injury.
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