Manual muscle test assessment

[alinguyen]

Such tests are very physio specific and do not have good inter rater reliability, although intra rater reliability is fine. In this case, it goes down to the individual experience of a physio. What you should more look to is a comparison to the 'normal' side, or if there are no 'normal' sides, then it's more whether the patient can constantly push as hard as they can throughout range, which is considered a grade 5. Otherwise, manual muscle tests are largely irrelevant I find, and I preferably use 'functional' measures myself, such as the number of squats, heel raises, bicep curls, shoulder raises etc to fatigue, where what you look for is the point where quality of movement becomes distorted/shaky/compensated etc.

[physioaz]

In fact it's very dificult to assume a 4 or a 5 sometimes.
But as the other PT says, put more attention on functional, because maximal test only give you a peak torque in a momentum, does not mean everytime you have an optimal force to function.