Sit-to-stand power: a daily readiness signal most teams never measure
How fast an athlete stands up from a seat, measured by load cells, tracks neuromuscular readiness. Daily readings turn a one-off test into a trend staff can act on.
Standing up from a seat is a lower-body power movement. It recruits the quadriceps, glutes and hip extensors, it is bilateral, and it happens many times a day whether or not anyone is measuring it. That makes it a useful proxy for neuromuscular readiness, and one that can be captured without a test protocol.
How the seat measures it
Four load cells sit under the Casana Pro ring. As an athlete stands, the force through the seat changes over a fraction of a second. From that force-time curve the system derives sit-to-stand power, along with seated weight and the share of load carried by each side.
Because the posture and the surface are the same every time, day-to-day readings are comparable in a way that gym tests rarely are. Casana's 2026 work on deriving sit-to-stand power from a single seat recording is on the research page, alongside the earlier peer-reviewed validation of the ECG and pulse signals.
Why daily beats monthly
A countermovement jump on a force plate is a better measurement of power than a sit-to-stand on a seat. It is also a test that happens on a schedule, in a facility, when staff and athlete are both available. The seat reading is less precise and far more frequent.
| | Force plate test | Seat reading | |---|---|---| | Precision | High | Moderate | | Frequency | Weekly or monthly | Daily, often twice | | Athlete effort | Scheduled test | None | | Where | Facility | Home, travel, rehab | | Best use | Confirming a change | Noticing one |
The practical pattern is to let the seat flag the drift and the force plate confirm it. A fall in sit-to-stand power over three or four consecutive mornings, with no change in the training plan, is a prompt for a conversation, not a diagnosis.
What a change can mean
Staff who have worked with daily power readings tend to watch three things:
- A gradual decline across a block, which often tracks accumulated fatigue and recovery debt.
- A sharp drop with a symmetry shift, where one side carries noticeably more load on the way up. This is the pattern most worth a look from a physical therapist.
- A slow return during rehab, which gives a day-by-day picture between appointments rather than a before-and-after.
None of these is an injury prediction. They are early, cheap observations that let a medical team choose where to spend a precise test and a conversation.
Casana Pro is a wellness product, not a diagnostic device, and it is designed to support clinical judgement rather than replace it.