Knee to wall test
Measure how far your foot can sit from a wall with the knee still touching it and the heel still down. It is the one standard ankle test that reads in centimetres, it takes two minutes, and it needs a wall and a ruler.
How to take the reading
- Face a wall in a half-kneeling stance, front toe touching it.
- Drive that knee to the wall with the heel down, then walk the foot back until the knee only just touches. Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain.
- Keep the heel down. Measure from your big toe to the wall.
- Round to the nearest centimetre, then do the other side.
Three things decide whether two readings can be compared. The heel stays flat — the moment it lifts you are measuring something else. The knee tracks over the second toe rather than falling inward. And the foot stays square to the wall, because turning it out makes the same ankle read further.
Take both sides every time. This is a per-side test in Limber and the two sides are stored separately, because an ankle that gives 9 cm and an ankle that gives 4 cm is not a body with a 6.5 cm ankle.
What each centimetre scores
| Toe to wall | Score | What the scale is doing |
|---|---|---|
| 0–2 cm | 15 | Floor — flat below here |
| 4 cm | 35 | Anchor |
| 6 cm | 55 | Anchor |
| 8 cm | 70 | Anchor |
| 10 cm | 85 | Anchor |
| 12 cm and over | 95 | Ceiling — flat above here |
Between two anchors the score is worked out in a straight line, so 7 cm reads 63 and 9 cm reads 78. That is honest here and nowhere else in the battery: this test produces a measured length, and a length can sit between two marks. The band tests cannot, and the app does not pretend they can.
Outside the anchors the scale goes flat on purpose. Nought, one and two centimetres all read 15, and everything from twelve upward reads 95. A scale that kept climbing past the point where the test can still tell two people apart would be adding precision it does not have.
What the wall is actually measuring
Ankle dorsiflexion with the knee bent — the shin travelling forward over a planted foot. That is the movement you use walking downhill, going down stairs and getting to the bottom of a squat, which is why this reading turns up in squat depth and in running gait rather than only in ankle problems.
It is a weight-bearing test, so it reads the joint, the calf and the soft tissue at the back of the ankle together. A restriction you can feel as a pinch at the front of the ankle rather than a stretch at the back is usually not a calf-length problem, and stretching harder is not the answer to it. Bennell and colleagues reported good repeatability for this test in the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy in 1998 — good enough to compare your own readings over time, which is all we use it for.
Two ankles on the same person routinely differ. What Limber does with that difference is not judge it: at 12 points or more of gap the plan adds one extra move for the side that reads lower, and stops adding it once the gap falls under six.
0 of 5 tests taken. Every link here carries what you have already measured, so the readings travel with you from one instrument to the next.
Nothing on this site is stored and nothing is sent. Your readings live in the address bar and nowhere else, so a link is a survey and closing the tab loses it. Copy the address if you want to keep it, or take the same tests in Limber, where a reading is kept on the phone and measured against the one before it.
Stop at a stretch, never at sharp pain. A stretch felt low in the calf or at the back of the ankle is the test working. A pinch at the front of the ankle is not — ease out of it rather than pushing through.
See a clinician rather than a web page if the ankle is swollen, if it gave way or was injured recently, if you cannot put weight through it, or if pain wakes you at night. This test does not diagnose anything and Limber does not treat anything.
What is a normal knee to wall measurement?
Published figures for healthy adults usually cluster somewhere around 9 to 11 cm, but they move with how the test is set up — where the tape is anchored, whether shoes are worn, how hard the knee is driven forward — so a single published average is a weaker guide than it looks. On Limber's scale 6 cm reads 55 and 10 cm reads 85. The scale exists so the distance between two of your own readings means something, not so you can rank against a published average.
Why does one ankle measure further than the other?
Because ankles differ, and most people's two do. Old sprains, footwear habits, which leg leads on stairs and plain anatomy all contribute. A difference is not automatically a problem. In Limber a gap of 12 points or more between sides is called an imbalance, and the plan responds by adding one extra move for the side that reads lower until the gap falls under six.
Does my heel have to stay down?
Yes, and it is the single thing that decides whether the reading is repeatable. The moment the heel lifts you are measuring a different movement, and the number can gain several centimetres without any change in the ankle. Keep the heel flat, the foot square to the wall and the knee tracking over the second toe, and take it the same way every time.
Why do 0, 1 and 2 cm all score the same?
Because the scale goes flat below its first anchor. Under 2 cm the test has stopped separating readings — the knee is barely clearing the toe — and a scale that kept descending there would be adding precision the measurement does not have. The same is true above 12 cm, where everything reads 95. The app clamps at both ends and this page shows the clamp rather than hiding it.
Does this test measure my calves?
It measures ankle dorsiflexion with the knee bent, which is the calf, the joint itself and the soft tissue at the back of the ankle taken together. It cannot separate them. A restriction felt as a pinch at the front of the ankle rather than a stretch at the back is usually not a calf-length problem at all, and stretching harder is not the answer to it.
How often should I retake it?
Not daily. Range moves slowly and drifts with warmth and the hour, so day-to-day differences are mostly noise. Limber's default re-test cadence is 21 days, adjustable to 14 or 28, and the same interval works here: write the number down with the date and take it again in three weeks.
The composite. Whatever you have measured, rolled into one 0–100 reading and drawn as an elevation profile — with the ground you skipped left dashed.
Deep Squat TestThe whole lower body as one screen — depth, heels and whether the bottom of the squat is somewhere you can rest.
Toe Touch TestPosterior chain — hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Five bands, one 0–100 reading.
- Bennell KL, Talbot RC, Wajswelner H, Techovanich W, Kelly DH, Hall AJ. Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of a weight-bearing lunge measure of ankle dorsiflexion. Australian Journal of Physiotherapy 1998;44(3):175–180. doi:10.1016/s0004-9514(14)60377-9
- Powden CJ, Hoch JM, Hoch MC. Reliability and minimal detectable change of the weight-bearing lunge test: A systematic review. Manual Therapy 2015;20(4):524–32. doi:10.1016/j.math.2015.01.004
- Macrum E, Bell DR, Boling M, Lewek M, Padua D. Effect of limiting ankle-dorsiflexion range of motion on lower extremity kinematics and muscle-activation patterns during a squat. Journal of Sport Rehabilitation 2012;21(2):144–50. doi:10.1123/jsr.21.2.144
Each address was followed to the record it names before it was written down. Where a paper could not be resolved that way, the page names it in the prose and leaves it unlinked rather than guessing at an address.
One reading is a point. Two are a line.
This page scores one test. Limber runs five — toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor and deep squat — rolls them into a single 0–100 Range Score, cuts that first score as your datum, and measures every later reading from it. The two wall tests are read in centimetres, the per-side tests keep left and right apart, and areas you never tested stay drawn as untested rather than filled in with a guess.
It works offline and needs no account: your readings stay on the phone.
Limber is in build. There is no store listing yet, so there is no download button here — when there is one it will be a link, not a promise.
A self-test, not an assessment. It tells you where one joint is today, on a scale you can repeat, so that the same test in three weeks means something.
Its reading feeds the Range Score, which is the composite of the whole five-test battery. Nothing else happens to it: no account, no cookie, nothing stored and nothing sent.
Where the scoring comes from.
The bands and anchors on this page are the app’s own range_math
table — the same one the product scores a real test with, not a scale invented
for the web. If a number moves in the app it moves here.
Every paper this instrument leans on is listed at the foot of the page, with a DOI or a PubMed record for each one.