The Quick Board

Why are most exercises in training and rehab single task when sports and life demand more?

To maximize performance and recovery, we need to combine upper and lower extremity function. This is exactly how the body works in the real world, and it is how we should be training it.

In this video, I am doing a Foot Fire exercise on the QuickBoard sensor board while using our companion app capability. I am reacting with my hands to two iPads mounted on the squat rack.

The Drill: Keep the feet firing, react only to the iPad that turns RED 🔴, and ignore the GREEN 🟢.

While I am doing this, the sensor board provides real-time feedback:

✅ Total touches

✅ Ground Contact Time (GCT)

✅ Progress bar showing if I am ahead or behind my personal best

Why this matters:

This setup requires intense external focus and dual-tasking. Motor learning and neuroplasticity research shows both of these are highly beneficial for training and rehab across all populations.

We already have studies proving that QuickBoard’s external focus and proprioception demands improve agility test performance. The companion capability takes this cognitive load further. We are currently working with universities to design studies to measure and prove its effectiveness.

Streamlined Data for Clinicians and Coaches:

To distinguish this from other technologies, the data from the sensor board and the companion devices are saved together. This completely streamlines data collection and progress tracking. It makes it incredibly easy for professionals to measure dual-task demands and track patient or athlete improvement over time without juggling multiple apps.

We will be posting many more companion exercises soon.

Two reactive drills (Go 🔵 ). One gave us full data. One did not. Quick Board ran both.

Drill 1: Discrimination task paired with Foot Fire. One athlete, sensor board, iPad. Rapid alternating foot touches while reacting to the lit sensor. QuickBoard tracks touch count, ground contact time symmetry left to right, and reaction time per sensor location. Coach gets numbers in real time.

Drill 2: Single-leg reactive hops to perimeter targets. Three athletes, three rubber dot arrays, one iPad. The screen cues which dot to hop to. Athlete hops out on one leg, returns to center before the next target appears. Right leg, then left. No sensor board. No accuracy data. No metrics collected.

The tradeoff: no athlete feedback on Drill 2 (they glance down to check placement), and no symmetry data for the coach. What you get instead: QuickBoard handles the cueing for all three athletes simultaneously, and the coach is free to watch movement quality.

Galpin et al. (2008) found a 4-week QuickBoard protocol cut laser-timed change-of-direction time by 0.45 seconds in an active college student population. The 4 weeks of training transferred to real-world movement. That transfer starts in sessions like Drill 1, where every rep provides real-time movement feedback without looking at your feet (external focus). It’s how the body works.

QuickBoard works as a data tool and as a cueing coach. Which mode you run depends on what the session needs.

Sports PTs and ATCs: how do you balance individual data collection with group throughput in your reactive training?

“Athletes are eager to get back to playing but when they are challenged with these drills, it really exposes their deficits and how many of them are not as ready as they think they are.” Mike St. George PT, DPT - well said…
•
Neuro cognitive Array Patterns
•
Advancing reaction time on the Quick Board drills challenges the athlete to return back to speeds and demands that simulate in game situations. With injuries like ACL tears, it can be some time before the athlete moves fast again. Neuromuscular deficits, strength deficits and Kinesiophobia can all play a part in this.
•
Athletes tend to forget just how fast they need to move for sports performance when being away from the sport for some time.
•
The drills shown here are reaction drills with faster flash times and shorter delay times. We’re talking .5 of a second differences. They are in an array pattern which means the athlete has to find the designated color amongst other colors.

This brain processing of finding the designated color, finding its location and hitting it within the time helps to restore the brain to muscle connection of natural response efforts. The faster processing helps to train for “athletic readiness”.
•
There are also crossover drills to challenge the brain to muscle connection of each leg doing a different pattern simultaneously and then a foot fire reaction drill to challenge simple reaction time when fatigued.
•
Athletes are eager to get back to playing but when they are challenged with these drills, it really exposes their deficits and how many of them are not as ready as they think they are.
•
These training drills help to improve confidence and demonstrate to them which movements and patterns they need to work while also providing the clinician with insight on how to curtail the treatment plan for these goals.

Criteria-based return to sport, not timeframe-based. Most criteria lists include hop test symmetry, quadriceps strength ratios, and pain scores. Three good columns. Still one short.

Jiménez-Martínez et al. (2025, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living) followed ACLR athletes through completed rehabilitation programs, measuring cognition preoperatively, postoperatively, and at the end of rehab. On Multiple Object Tracking, athletes improved early in recovery, then improvement stalled. At discharge, they still showed deficits compared to healthy controls. The gap never closed.

Getting quads firing is the right focus early. Isokinetic testing confirms the muscle is there. Force testing confirms symmetry. But open-skill sport asks for more than isolated output. It asks the athlete to track multiple players, read a defense, and process spatial cues while moving. That capacity remained impaired at the completion of their rehabilitation programs.

That is the cognitive column most criteria lists are missing, and it is what Quick Board measures. Reaction time, visuomotor response accuracy, and bilateral asymmetry. Go/No-Go, Array, and Stroop tasks load inhibition, discrimination, cognitive flexibility, and decision-making, the same demands that open-skill sport places on a returning athlete.

The clip below takes it a step further. With Companion, the athlete reacts with hands and feet at the same time, upper and lower extremities working together, the way sport actually demands.

Criteria-based clearance is the right direction. The criteria list is not complete without the cognitive column.

What cognitive criteria are you currently using for return to sport?

The patient is watching the iPad. Not her feet.

That is not incidental to the exercise. It is the whole mechanism.

Davis Physical Therapy & Sports Rehab shared a video of an older adult performing the Stagger Step on Quick Board. Eyes on the screen throughout. External focus during a task most clinicians run without it.

The stagger step is a bilateral coordination drill. Alternating foot placement, both sides working in sequence, under full cognitive load. Attention stays on the screen. Balance and proprioception emerge as outputs.

When focus goes outward, the body organizes movement. She is focused on the iPad, not managing her feet, which increases likelihood of transfer to other tasks outside of the clinic.

Why? Because it is how the body works and the appropriate pathways are activated.

Kevin Wilk recommends neurocognitive training for every ACL patient in his 2024 IJSPT Clinical Commentary.

This is what that looks like in a real session.

30-second foot fire drill. Right knee ACL patient, six months post-op. Real-time ground contact times on the iPad. Attention on the screen, not the affected leg.

The asymmetry showed up in the data before the hop tests caught it. That is what Chmielewski et al. found in IJSPT 2024: physical clearance does not equal neurocognitive readiness.

Wilk also flagged upper extremity as underutilized. Shoulder, labral, and rotator cuff patients can run the same cognitive-motor protocols. Most clinics have not gone there yet.

What are you using to test cognitive-motor readiness before clearing an ACL patient?

Athletes balancing on one leg, quick-tapping sensors as they appear on the iPad screen. Eyes locked on the display. Not looking where they are reacting.

Most coaches watching this footage think: why so simple? Where is the complexity?

Here is what they are missing.

Two things make this drill transfer to sport in a way that flashier drills do not.

First: the stability leg stays fully loaded. The react foot taps the sensor and returns to neutral immediately. It does not push off. Weight does not shift. The challenge is maintaining full ground contact on the stance leg while the react leg works independently. That is single-leg stability under reactive cognitive load, not just balance.

Second: eyes stay on the iPad screen the entire time. The athlete does not know where the next sensor will light up. They process the visual cue and react without looking down. That is external focus during a reactive task.

This matters because external focus (keeping attention on the environmental target rather than on the body) is what produces motor learning that transfers to real tasks. Athletes do not look where they step in competition. They do not look at their feet when they cut, plant, or change direction. Training athletes to look at their feet builds a pattern that does not exist in the field.

Wulf et al. (2013, Journal of Motor Learning and Development) found external focus conditions consistently produced superior transfer compared to internal focus training. QuickBoard’s single-leg reactive protocols are built on this principle from the start.

The exercise is not flashy. That is the point. Clean mechanics plus correct attentional focus is what transfers.

Are you coaching external focus in your reactive training, or are your athletes still watching their feet?

Real falls happen during distraction. During reaction. During multitasking.

Standing on one leg in a quiet room does not predict what happens in a busy grocery store.

QuickBoard has a Balance Protocol designed for at-risk and neuro populations. It starts with limited active sensors (2 front sensors only) and slower stimulus timing, then progresses to all sensors active as the patient improves. The PT controls the difficulty. The patient trains cognitive-motor integration, not just static balance.

The progression matters: 2 sensors to 4 sensors to all sensors. Slower timing to faster timing. Single task to dual task. That is how you build real-world fall resistance.

Davis Physical Therapy said it well: The Quickboard is a great tool that integrates neurocognitive training into rehab advancing at each stage.

The Memphis Hick Law study (Downing) validated this principle on QuickBoard: more response options means slower processing. Starting a fall-risk patient with 2 sensors instead of 8 is not a limitation. It is clinically intentional. You match the cognitive demand to where the patient is, then progress.

Are you training your fall-risk patients to react under cognitive load, or just to stand still?

Baseline. Train. Retest. One number tracks the whole arc.

The QuickBoard Agility Rating produces a 0-to-10,000 composite score from four 10-second exercises.

Run it on day one. The system identifies the weakest dimension and recommends a specific workout to target that gap. Train. Retest. Compare.

Billable under CPT 97750. The auto-generated PDF includes Description and Purpose for billing documentation.

Customers use the Agility Rating for pre-season baselines, tracking rehab progress, and return-to-sport clearance with objective data.

Validation study coming soon shows strong correlation to agility field tests and force plate metrics.

Are you tracking cognitive-motor progress through rehab, or just physical milestones?