The responsiveness of the muscle is gauged as the tester withdraws across or along the fibers, relaxing the stretch while still staying at the same depth. The tester senses how rapidly or slowly the muscle returns after it has been stretched and is being released. If the muscle lags behind or returns more slowly than it is being released, it is hypo-responsive to some degree. If the muscle pushes or wants to return faster than it is being released, then it is hyper-responsive. If it returns at the same rate as it is released, then it is said to have a neutral response, denoting resource or flexibility.
Additional information is obtained from other properties of the muscle.
Muscles that have higher degrees of hyper-responsiveness are limited in the amount they can be stretched, and this can be sensed. Muscles that have higher degrees of hypo-responsiveness do not fully follow the testers fingers all the way back to the point from which the stretching started. This can be both sensed and seen. How the responsiveness is depicted. To display this visually different degrees of responsiveness are represented by different colors.