Resisted Range Of Motion (RROM) And Manual Muscle Testing (MMT) Practice Exam

In gravity-minimized manual muscle testing, the goal is to remove the arm’s weight from influencing the test so you measure the muscle’s pure ability to generate force. For shoulder horizontal abduction, the movement is powered mainly by the posterior deltoid (and some stabilizers), so you want the arm supported and the lever arm minimized. Positioning the arm with the elbow bent and the forearm resting on a table while the shoulder is abducted to 90 degrees achieves this. The arm remains in a horizontal plane, the weight of the arm is supported by the table, and the examiner can apply resistance at the forearm without gravity adding or subtracting torque. This setup isolates the muscle and provides a stable, gravity-minimized scenario, making it the best description of the gravity-minimized position for this MMT.