I am a big fan of teaching people how to measure the Navicular Drift and drop. However, the evidence is that for clinical use they are not that reliable, so that does limit the usefulness of these clinical tests in clinical practice.

Having said that, I still think we should be teaching how to do it, but in the context of the unreliability of them. The reason for this is that the concept behind navicular drift and drop does have implications for foot orthotic prescribing. What learning how to do the tests gives clinicians is an appreciation of the relative movements of the midfoot in the sagittal and transverse planes. Navicular drop measures the sagittal plane motion of the midfoot and navicular drift measures the Transverse Plane motion of the midfoot. Learning how to do the measurement of these two gives an appreciation of the relative motion of that midfoot in the sagittal and transverse plane. Once that appreciation and understanding is grasped, then there is probably no need to do the measurements on a routine basis in clinical practice. You can just observe it and note how much drop there is compared to how much drift there is. Are the about the same or is there more of one compared to the other?

My impression is that the amount of navicular drift should be about the same as navicular drop. If drop is greater, then that means that there is more movement in the sagittal place compared to the transverse plane. This means there is more arch collapse, when means that the foot orthotics need to have more support in the midfoot. If the drift is greater, then that means there is more movement in the transverse plane compared to the sagittal plane. This means that there is more movement of the midfoot medially rather than arch collapse. This means that foot orthotics need more medial and lateral support to control that midfoot Transverse Plane Motion.