Occupants likely employ a variety of bracing strategies prior to a motor vehicle collision or impact event. However, physical and computational studies assessing the effect of bracing on occupant response typically treat muscle tone as a binary variable:​ relaxed or braced. It is unknown how different pre-impact bracing strategies may affect occupant responses post-impact. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyse the bracing strategies and bracing variability of small female and midsize male volunteers prior to low-speed frontal and frontal-oblique sled tests and to perform a preliminary analysis to determine whether the variability affected occupant kinematic responses. Each volunteer experienced four sled tests with distinct conditions and was instructed to brace with maximum effort prior to the start of the test. The forces generated at the subject-buck interfaces before the onset of sled motion showed considerable inter-subject variability and some intra-subject variability. An exploratory regression analysis indicated that differences in bracing were correlated with differences in occupant kinematics during the subsequent acceleration event. These correlations differed between the males and females. The results of this study demonstrate the need for future studies on the effect of different bracing strategies and levels on occupant response during motor vehicle collisions.