The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a standardized system of seven movement tests designed to reveal how well your body handles basic physical patterns like squatting, lunging, and stepping over obstacles. Developed by physical therapist Gray Cook and athletic trainer Lee Burton, it scores each movement on a 0-to-3 scale for a maximum composite score of 21. The screen is used across sports, military, and occupational settings to spot compensatory movement patterns, essentially the workarounds your body has developed to get around stiffness, weakness, or instability you may not even notice.
The Seven Movement Tests
Each of the seven tests targets a different combination of mobility, stability, and coordination. None require peak strength or athletic skill. They’re designed to be simple enough that limitations become obvious.
- Deep squat: Evaluates overall body control and the combined mobility and stability of your shoulders, spine, hips, knees, and ankles.
- Hurdle step: Tests single-leg stability and hip, knee, and ankle mobility by having you step over a hurdle while standing on one leg.
- In-line lunge: Assesses hip, knee, ankle, and foot stability along with spinal control in a narrow, tandem stance.
- Active straight leg raise: Measures hamstring flexibility and hip mobility while revealing potential contributors to back pain.
- Shoulder mobility: Checks range of motion and how your shoulder blades coordinate with your upper and mid-back.
- Trunk stability pushup: Gauges core strength and stability alongside upper-body flexibility and strength.
- Rotary stability: Tests coordination and the ability to stabilize your core, shoulders, and pelvis during a combined upper- and lower-body movement.
Three of these tests (shoulder mobility, trunk stability pushup, and rotary stability) include “clearing” movements specifically designed to check for pain. If pain appears during a clearing test, that movement automatically receives a zero regardless of how well you performed it.
How Scoring Works
Each of the seven movements is scored from 0 to 3. A score of 3 means you completed the movement with optimal form and no compensation. A score of 1 means you couldn’t complete the movement pattern even with modifications. A score of 0 is reserved for any test that produces pain. The seven scores are added together for a composite score out of 21.
A widely cited threshold in the research is a composite score of 14 or below, which has been proposed as a marker for increased injury risk. A meta-analysis of 12 prospective studies found that people scoring at or below 14 had roughly 1.86 times the odds of subsequent injury compared to those scoring higher. However, the same analysis noted substantial inconsistency across studies and concluded the evidence is not definitive. The populations studied varied widely in sport, age, and how “injury” was defined, making it difficult to draw a clean line at any single number.
What the Screen Is (and Isn’t) Designed For
The FMS was built as a screening tool, not a diagnostic one. It identifies that a problem exists in a movement pattern but doesn’t explain why. If you score poorly on the deep squat, the screen tells the professional your squat is limited. It doesn’t tell them whether that’s because of tight ankles, weak hips, or a spinal mobility issue. Figuring out the root cause requires a deeper clinical assessment.
Cook and Burton also developed a companion tool called the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA), which is specifically designed for people already experiencing pain. The FMS is intended for pain-free individuals. The SFMA deliberately uses movement to provoke symptoms and trace them to their source, while the FMS simply flags patterns that need attention before pain develops.
It’s also worth noting that the FMS was not designed to measure or predict athletic performance. Studies attempting to link composite FMS scores with sport-specific performance metrics have generally come up short. A high score means you move well through fundamental patterns. It doesn’t mean you’re a better athlete than someone who scores lower.
Reliability Between Testers
One practical concern with any movement-based screen is whether two different professionals would give you the same score. Research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that overall inter-rater reliability was good, with intraclass correlation coefficients of 0.89 and 0.87 across two sessions. Individual raters were also consistent with themselves over time, scoring between 0.81 and 0.91 for intrarater reliability.
That said, not all seven tests are equally reliable. Shoulder mobility was the most consistent movement to score (ICC of 0.96 to 0.98), while the hurdle step was the least reliable (ICC of 0.30 to 0.35). This means two qualified testers watching the same person do a hurdle step might disagree on the score more often than you’d hope. When interpreting your results, the individual test scores matter, and some carry more certainty than others.
Where the FMS Falls Short
The biggest criticism of the FMS centers on its composite score. Multiple studies across youth athletes, elite athletes, military personnel, and collegiate dancers have questioned whether adding seven different movement scores into a single number produces a meaningful measure of overall “movement quality.” Researchers have found evidence against the idea that a single summed score captures something unified about how a person moves. Two people can score 14 in completely different ways, one with perfect upper-body patterns and poor lower-body mobility, the other with the reverse.
The screen also struggles with populations that require extreme ranges of motion. A study of collegiate dancers highlighted that the FMS cannot distinguish between “appropriate” and “excessive” mobility. For dancers, gymnasts, or other athletes who need flexibility well beyond normal ranges, the screen’s ceiling may actually mask important differences. Someone with dangerous hypermobility and someone with ideal flexibility might receive the same score.
The injury prediction question remains unresolved. A systematic review with meta-analysis concluded that the strength of association between composite FMS scores and subsequent injury does not support using the screen in a purely predictive capacity. This doesn’t mean the screen is useless. It means using it as a standalone crystal ball for injury risk oversells what the evidence supports.
Who Uses It and Why
The FMS has found a home well beyond professional sports. Fire departments, military units, and law enforcement agencies use it to evaluate recruits and active personnel. The National Fire Protection Association has recommended that firefighters demonstrate competency in functional movements like squatting, lunging, and overhead reaching to safely perform their duties. Research tracking firefighter recruits from the academy through active-duty status found that composite FMS scores improved significantly over the course of training, suggesting that occupational skill development itself can improve fundamental movement quality.
In fitness and rehabilitation settings, the screen serves a more practical purpose than injury prediction. It gives trainers and therapists a standardized starting point. Rather than guessing which exercises a client needs, they can identify the lowest-scoring movement patterns and build a corrective exercise program around those specific limitations. The system is designed to create a baseline, track changes over time, and prioritize which patterns to address first. For someone returning from injury or starting a new training program, that structured approach can be more useful than the composite number itself.