A functional approach, and a sensorimotor whole

Body-shape care, the notes begin, is a way of loosening a skeleton that has been deformed, or muscles that have grown stiff, through poor daily habits, so that the body as a whole can sit in a better form. Among the scholars who studied that work, they write, was Vladimir Janda, who spoke of a Janda approach and offered a more functional way of thinking about it. His theory of muscle imbalance, they add, has also been of much help in rehabilitation, and so has his system for a functional assessment of imbalance.

He did not think, they write, that work on muscle imbalance rested, as earlier studies had supposed, on the neurophysiological laws of motor development and motor control. He held that a sensorimotor system, made of a neural and a motor system, is not functionally separate, and he insisted on the importance of proper proprioception. An approach to muscle imbalance, they conclude, has to begin from the premise that the sensory and motor systems are integrated. Afferent information is processed in the central nervous system, and efferent information then draws out a motor response; the joints and the sense of movement send information back, and that information is sent, again as afferent input, to the central nervous system.

Three typical patterns: upper-crossed, lower-crossed, and layer

The three typical patterns Janda classified, they write, in connection with distinct chronic-pain syndromes, are upper-crossed syndrome, lower-crossed syndrome, and layer syndrome. Upper-crossed syndrome is, on the dorsal side, a crossing of tightness in the upper trapezius and the levator scapulae with tightness in pectoralis major and pectoralis minor. That imbalance, they write, can produce joint dysfunction at the atlanto-occipital joint, at cervical joints, and at the glenohumeral joint, among other places.

Lower-crossed syndrome is a crossing, on the dorsal plane, of tightness in the thoracolumbar extensors with tightness in the iliopsoas and the rectus femoris. A posture they describe uses more hip extension than a normal movement would, and shows a little hip flexion and knee flexion; such a movement, they write, can stiffen into lumbar segments, a kyphotic form, and a head held forward. Layer syndrome, also called stratification syndrome, is the two crossed syndromes combined. It is often seen, they write, in people whose surgery for a herniated disc has not succeeded, and in older people.

Six basic movement patterns, used as tests

The notes then list six basic movement patterns: hip extension, hip abduction, a sit-up, neck flexion, a push-up, and a form of movement with the shoulder abducted. Hip extension, they write, lets one see, through the activity and the angles of the hamstrings, the gluteus maximus, and the spinal extensors, which muscles and joints of the body are out of balance. Janda explains, they add, that when the hip is extended in a prone position, the hamstrings are activated, and then, in turn, the gluteus maximus, the opposite erector spinae, and the same-side erector spinae.

Ordinary hip abduction, they write, is a bending of the hip joint, inward or outward, without rotation, while the trunk and the pelvis remain stable. And when neck flexion is done lying in a straight, correct posture, a chin that comes forward can be read as a problem in the neck muscles or in the jaw. Those tests, and the three patterns, are left as the notes describe them; isolated, garbled asides in the source are not tidied into anatomy the notes do not actually give. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes’ account of Vladimir Janda’s approach, including the three crossed or layer syndromes and the six basic movement patterns they list

Last updated: 14 November 2026