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Brought into the limelight by Industry giants Gray Cook and Mike Boyle, the JBJ approach to assessing an individual proves the fact that our joints are connected and in an ideal world, each joint will do what it is supposed to do. If a joint is meant to be stable and “in place” but due to certain muscular dysfunctions it isn’t stable and instead goes “mobile”, then other joints will compensate for it and will also not function as they are supposed to. All this leads to a chain of dysfunctions from joint to joint and hence, we assess the body Joint-By-Joint to check whether there are any compensations happening and we can fix them.
In the below image, you will understand which joint is meant to be stable and which one mobile. Based on this, you can assess whether your own joints are working ideally or not. In the coming paragraphs I will also highlight common dysfunctions and joint compensations.
Let’s go through each of these one by one:
1. Cervical – Of course it needs to be stable to keep the head in place. Motion of the head – nodding, rotating, happens at the cervical spine that is a part of the thoracic spine which is mobile.
2. Shoulder/Glenohumeral (GH) Joint – If you notice, you can bring your arms overhead, sway them behind your back, rotate them and bring them forward. All this happens at the shoulder or GH joint and thus, it needs to be mobile.
3. Thoracic Spine – The movement of the scapulae, rounding of the upper back, rotation of the upper torso, all these happen at the thoracic spine. Hence, this needs to be mobile.
4. Core/Lumbar spine – If you notice closely in the above figure of the human skeleton, upper torso is protected with the ribcage, pelvic region has a big bony structure for protection, whereas, the mid-region, the core and lumbar spine is just an empty bone surrounded by nothing. All this equates to is the fact that it needs protection to make the body stable while it performs an activity. Hence, core stability is a buzz word in fitness because those who can strengthen their core, can perform way above those who can’t. Thus, Core/lumbar must be stable.
5. Hip Joint – Similar to the shoulders, the legs move back(extension), in front(flexion) and rotate internally and externally along the hip joint. Thus, the more mobile the hip joint is, the more freely an individual can move.
6. Knee Joint – All the motion in the lower body, happens through the hip, ankle, and toes. To fully realize a movement like a squat or a running step, the knee must remain intact, thus, stable.
7. Ankle – Again, like the hips, the feet rotate and flex/extend (move to the front and back) along the ankle. Thus, ankle needs to be mobile to make motion happen through the feet. If you have noticed, most people with tight ankles aren’t able to squat deep, nor run faster because the foot needs to move fully along the ankle to make these movements possible.
8. Foot – Ever heard the words “stable feet”? Indeed, foot needs to be stable to stomp on the ground and express power and make movement and performance happen.
9. Toe/Fingers – Towards the end of any movement, the toe and fingers remain in contact with the ground and exert force to transfer the weight to the other foot (for example, in walking), to effectively perform a motion, big toe and fingers have to be mobile to let the feet express their function fully.
Let me take an example of a common compensation that happens with most of us and that is “Knee pain”. The common occurrence of knee pain is due to a role reversal of joints which means the joints that are meant for mobility are getting stiff or stable and vice versa.
In this case, due to dysfunctional lifestyle patterns like a lot of sitting daily, the hips tend to lose mobility or free movement. The hip flexors or psoas which connect the lumbar spine to the front thigh, get tighter, the piriformis, the inner hip muscle responsible for hip external rotation, also gets tighter due to which the overall mobility of hips goes away. This is what happens above the knee joint.
If we move below the knee joint, due to prolonged sitting and not getting into primal patterns like squat and lunge plus always being in a cast which is our footwear and not being able to move our toes and fingers which are meant to be mobile, our ankles must get tighter or stiff or stable to keep our body moving/walking.
This role reversal of hips and ankles causes the poor knee joint, which is meant to be stable, to make movement happen, this causes knee pain. The knee starts to take the brunt of the load due as the hips and ankles are literally struggling to move out of jail :D.
Another compensation pattern is seen with respect to the hip joint. Hip joint sandwiches between the lumbar spine/core and the knee. Now, if core/lumbar spine (above the hip) isn’t stable which it is supposed to be and the knee (below the hip) isn’t stable, guess what is going to get stiff then – the Hip! This causes hip tightness which is among many factors contributing to the same cause.
Thus, it is extremely important to understand these compensation patterns that are happening from head to toe and thus it is usually very important to assess the movement patterns in an individual to figure out what’s up with the joints and then get a starting point in creating a program for that client.
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