A full write-up of this test is in progress. What follows is the working summary the platform uses; it will be expanded with the protocol detail, the cooling parameters and the interpretation guidance.
Arthrogenic muscle inhibition is the reflex loss of voluntary activation that follows joint injury or surgery. The muscle is not weak in the sense of being atrophied — the drive to it is being suppressed — which matters clinically, because inhibition and true weakness call for different work.
Focal joint cooling is used as a diagnostic for it. Cooling applied to the joint reduces afferent output from the joint receptors thought to drive the inhibition, and where inhibition is present the muscle can produce more force afterwards than before.
What the test asks
A patient performs n maximal isometric trials, focal cooling is applied to the joint, and the same limb is reassessed. The question is a simple one:
Did force go up after cooling?
A rise is consistent with inhibition having been present and partially released. No meaningful change is consistent with the deficit being something other than inhibition. The test does not distinguish those on its own, and it is one input among several rather than a diagnosis.
How ForceIQ runs and reports it
The preset builds two blocks on one limb, identical in joint, action and angle, with a pause between them for the cooling. Nothing times the pause — only the clinician knows when the intervention is finished.
Pre and post are one assessment compared against itself, so the result is a within-limb comparison rather than the left-versus-right symmetry the rest of the platform reports. The card shows post as a percentage of pre, with both means plotted, and reads it as increased, decreased or no meaningful change against a ±5% band — repeated maximal trials vary a few percent between efforts, and a threshold at zero would report that as a finding.
The pre-cooling trials also count as an ordinary maximal assessment for that joint and action, since they were taken before any intervention. The post-cooling trials do not, because a value measured under cooling does not belong on the same longitudinal line as untreated ones. Either default can be overridden per session.
ForceIQ reports the change. The interpretation is yours.