In the early days of the Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps we spent a lot of time on the supination resistance test and the concept of supination resistance, as the concept was so new to so many, but as time went by less time was spent on it as the test has become so widely used and quite pervasive when it comes to prescribing foot orthotics.

The test was first described by Kevin Kirby, DPM and we have done a lot of work on it with a number of studies exploring the concept. Along with that research I used clinically and we did a lot of practical sessions on it in the boot camps – all of this lead to what I think was a good understanding of it and just how useful it was to use clinically when it came to the prescribing of foot orthotics in clinical practice. I think those who did the clinical biomechanics boot camps did get to agree with me just how important that the concept was for the prescribing of foot orthotics and understanding pathology. There are a lot of threads on Podiatry Arena on the topic that get updated regularly.

The supination resistance test is simply a test to estimate just how much force is needed to supinate the foot and then applying that knowledge to how much force is needed to come from the foot orthotic. If the force to supinate the foot is high, then the force needed from a foot orthotic needs to be high. No point using a soft flexible foot orthotic in those with a high supination resistance as the orthotic is probably going to do nothing. If the supination force is low, then a soft flexible foot orthotic is going to be adequate. Using a rigid inverted type of foot orthotic in a foot with low supination resistance is probably going to sprain the ankle.

For our research we used a device that we built to quantify it but that device really has no practical use in clinical practice, so the use of the hands and manually estimating is adequate. There are some devices on the market, such as the Keystone that can be used to put a number on it.

What I used to like saying to people who were unfamiliar with the test is to just do it. Get a feel for it. Find those feet that are high or low and see how that might relate to the pathology that the patient has. Get a feel for how people with different levels of supination resistance respond to different foot orthotic designs. You soon start to see patterns.