Getting Started
Setting up a force assessment
Most of what decides whether a force measurement is usable happens before the patient pulls. Position, stabilisation, cuff placement, and what you say in the three seconds before the effort move the number more than anything downstream of it does. These articles cover the physical setup and the instruction, then the protocols built on top of them.
Adding patients
Two ways to get patients into ForceIQ (one at a time from the patient list, or in bulk from a CSV) and a map of which fields actually drive behavior downstream. The fields you might be tempted to skip are usually the ones that quietly turn metrics off elsewhere in the app.
Browser and device support for live Capture
Capturing directly from a dynamometer uses Web Bluetooth, which only runs in Chromium-based browsers on desktop or Android. This article covers what works, what does not, and why, so you can set up a machine that pairs on the first try.
Clinic and team setup
How the clinic profile, member roles, and seat counts fit together, and what each piece of information is used for. The clinic profile drives report branding; member roles drive permissions and patient access; seat count drives billing. Get the owner / admin / clinician split right early because it controls who can do what across the platform.
Pre-test checklist
A condensed printable companion to the full isometric knee extension protocol. One page, scannable, what to do before the patient sits down, while you're setting up, in the cueing minute, during the trial, and between trials. Print it, post it next to the testing station, and use it as a reference rather than a memory aid.
Preparing the patient for their first MVIC
A short, plain-language script for the minute before the test starts. What the strap will feel like, what pre-loading means, what the cue is and why it matters, what happens between trials. Most first-session quality issues are explainable here, not on the chart.
Reading the dashboard
The dashboard has two states. With no patient selected, it shows a clinic-wide view of activity, recent patients, and anyone flagged for follow-up. With a patient selected, it shows that patient's most recent visit, their longitudinal trends per metric, and the LSI radar. This walks through what every tile, table, and chart on those views is actually telling you.
Running an MVIC, and choosing the knee angle for your device
A maximal isometric contraction is only as good as its baseline. Which knee angle you test at depends on whether your dynamometer can account for limb weight. This article explains why 90 degrees is the pragmatic default on hand-held and tension-gauge devices.
Setting up a reliable isometric knee extension assessment
The clinically validated protocol for measuring isometric knee extensor strength, from positioning to cueing to what the curve should look like, including why RTD wants 90 degrees on a tension-gauge device even though peak torque is anchored at 60. Get the setup right and ForceIQ inherits the rigor; get it wrong and the metrics inherit the slop.
Taring the dynamometer and what a good baseline looks like
Taring the device and the platform's baseline-correction step are two different operations on the same problem. This walks through what each does, why a small amount of resting pretension is actually favorable on tension-gauge dynamometers (it makes countermovement visible), and when to retare mid-session.
The Athletic Shoulder (ASH) Test
Isometric shoulder strength in three prone positions — I, Y and T — profiling force across the range rather than at a single angle. What the positions are, why the range matters, and how the preset runs.
The Focal Joint Cooling Test (FJCT)
Maximal trials, focal cooling applied to the joint, then a reassessment of the same limb. Force rising afterwards is consistent with arthrogenic muscle inhibition releasing. What the test asks, and how ForceIQ reports it.
Translating published metrics to what ForceIQ shows
When a paper reports RFD at 50 ms or CV at 20% MVC or Yank in N/s, how does that map to what the platform shows on the metric tile? A practical bridge for clinicians reading the literature, with the most common units, window conventions, and normalization differences spelled out.
When a device won't pair or stays disconnected
Troubleshooting flow for the most common BLE pairing problems (device-on-but-not-discovered, pairs-then-drops, auto-shutoff between sets). Device-agnostic guidance organized around what the symptom actually is, not which dynamometer you have.
Your first session
Most ForceIQ sessions are captured live over Bluetooth, not uploaded from a file. Pair your device once, set up the protocol, and the metric suite is on screen the moment the contraction ends. File upload still works for offline data, but Capture is the path that produces the cleanest result with the least friction.