

The Ely’s Test is an orthopedic muscle length test to assess the flexibility of the rectus femoris muscle which runs from the anterior inferior iliac spine (AIIS) to the tibial tuberosity, thus crossing the hip and knee joint. Peeler et al. (2008) evaluated the test’s intra-and inter-rater reliability. When the test was scored as either positive or negative intra-rater k was 0.52, with an inter-rater k of 0.46, which means that the reliability is moderate. When a goniometer was used, the intra-rater ICC was 0.69 and the inter-rater ICC 0.66, so slightly better.
To perform the test, the patient is in prone lying position. Then, the examiner passively flexes the patient’s knee maximally.
This test is scored positive, if the the patient spontaneously flexes the hip upon maximal knee flexion to compensate for a shortened rectus femoris at the knee or experiences pain during the test
Other common muscle length tests are: