The Drift Protocol is a test developed for verifying an athlete's or a patient's 'dynamic stability' by having him/her carry out 4 tests one after another on one leg measuring his/her displacement (drift) on the vertical and horizontal axis.

Go to Test > Execute, choose an athlete and from the protocol list select 'Drift Protocol'.

In the Test field the following sequence is automatically filled-in:

• 5 jumps with RIGHT leg and feet PARALLEL to the OptoJump bars
• 5 jumps with LEFT leg and feet PARALLEL to the OptoJump bars
• 5 jumps with RIGHT leg and feet PERPENDICULAR to the OptoJump bars
• 5 jumps with LEFT leg and feet PERPENDICULAR to the OptoJump bars

Carry out the 4 tests reminding to press SAVE at the end of each test before moving on to the following test.

At the end of the protocol go to Results, select the option 'Protocols' from Display>Data and choose the protocol which has just been executed, with the symbol  ->

Double-click on the protocol to be analyzed (or click the button <Display>); a report will be displayed showing the average jump values divided into right and left leg and, what's even more important, two graphs allowing to quantify very rapidly the displacements and their direction.

Each jump is displayed as a yellow dot (if you can not see 10 dots per leg some might be superposed); the two large red and green dots (left and right) represent the athlete's tendency to move into a certain direction (e.g. upwards to the right), whereas the dotted triangle indicates the 'stability area'.

The position of the red and green dots with reference to the origin of the two Cartesian axes gives a first indication of the athlete's average landing point compared to the starting point. As these are average data, their position could be misleading: for example, given the absurd assumption that an athlete carries out a perfectly central jump, two completely to the right and two completely to the left with two displacements of exactly the same entity, the dot will be placed exactly in the center giving the impression that the athlete always jumped perfectly.

But in this case the rectangle with the dotted area representing the standard deviation of jumps can be helpful. The larger the displayed area, more has the athlete drifted (moving away from the point of origin) when landing, and as a consequence his dynamic stability is lower.