The Scapula and Pelvic Connection to Pitching

A pitcher’s arm shouldn’t need a full-body emergency to finish a throw, yet that’s exactly what we uncovered when a minor leaguer reached out about thoracic outlet symptoms, a past elbow fracture, and a velocity drop that got worse as outings wore on. The video told the story: a sharp pelvic pop at release, weight shifting back to the heel, and a short, guarded finish. The surprise was where the problem really started—not in the legs, but in the shoulder, where scapular rhythm had broken down and the upper traps were doing the wrong job at the worst time.

We walk through the Game Test we use to map neurological sequence and then break down the shoulder coordination screen that revealed the truth. Above horizontal, his upper traps fired hard and early, the shoulder blades stalled and protracted, and the middle and lower traps—the true decelerators—went missing. When the scapula can’t glide down and in, the brachial plexus gets crowded and the arm can’t decelerate, so the nervous system recruits the pelvis to slam on the brakes. That protective pattern may save the joint but it steals velocity, consistency, and health. We dig into why “you can only accelerate what you can decelerate” isn’t a slogan; it’s the organizing rule of high-velocity throwing.

Then we share the simplest fix most pitchers never try: isometric scapular depression. Supine, arms up, shoulder blades tucked down and toward the spine, five-second holds for high-quality reps. After 100 reps, our athlete threw and felt an immediate difference—clearer path, calmer finish, less stress, better carry. We also dispel a persistent myth that scapular depression causes thoracic outlet signs, and explain why shrug-heavy cues and screen-strained posture feed the exact pattern that closes the outlet and crushes performance. If you coach pitchers, rehab throwers, or fight late-inning velo fade, you’ll learn how to spot the pelvic “brake,” test shoulder rhythm, and activate the right decelerators so the arm can finally move fast without fear.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Stakes And Setup
• 1:09 Thoracic Outlet And The Scapula Debate
• 2:53 The Game Test: Mapping Motor Sequence
• 4:06 Video Breakdown: Pelvis Pops And Arm Brakes
• 7:30 Pain Memory And Protective Patterns
• 10:12 Shoulder Coordination Test Findings
• 12:03 Lats, Traps, And Deceleration Truths
• 14:03 The Simple Fix: Scapular Depression
• 15:40 Results, Takeaways, And Next Steps

Transcript

Stakes And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everybody, this is Dr. Kevin McGovern, and it's another Velocity RX podcast. Please like and subscribe on YouTube and all social media. It helps our following. So today is by far the probably the most important podcast I've ever done. As a physical therapist, clinician, scientist, you should always be learning. Someone told me if you're not learning, you're dying. And I would say I definitely learn things every week. And last week I was literally blown away. I had a minor leaguer contact me, and he had his history was this he had an elbow fracture. Okay, some areas of his elbow were fractured. And he has been a long-term sufferer with thoracic outlet. And he contacted me because I'm constantly talking about you know the importance of scapular depression. We don't want our upper traps. And the reason, the only reason he probably contacted me is because literally, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, that was the opposite of what he was told to do. So he was told that scapular depression actually causes thoracic outlet, which just blows my mind. So for those at home, right, the most important thing about the shoulder is the scapula humoral rhythm. And basically, in layman's terms, that think of a seesaw. Okay, remember the old seesaw in the playground? And we want the fat guy to be on your shoulder blades. So when you lift your arms up, all intents and purposes, your shoulder blades should drop down, clearing away for motion of your shoulder, and more importantly, in his case, taking stress off the brachial plexus. So when we shrug, we activate our upper traps, which we're doing all day. We're on this silly device, we're we're sitting on the computers, we're getting you know protracted and elevated, and then you know, doing different arm paths, really fire up those upper traps, and that immediately will you know cause all kinds of things. Impingement, thoracic outlet, and it's so it just blows my mind that he would be told that depression causes that when the test for thoracic outlet, one of them you literally get the person's pulse and bring their arm up over their head, right? Which would raise the scapula and then test the pulse, and when the pulse diminishes, it's pretty much a test for thoracic outlet. But anyway, so when you you know sign up with me, the first thing we do is my game testing, which is a series of six tests, which really measures the neurological sequence of movement that everybody has. Okay, there's really one, only one way to neurologically move that goes A to B to C to D. Now there's a million different ways to move, but we have compensatory mechanisms that allow for that. And you're the better athlete you are, the more compensatory processes that you have. But neurologically, brain, spinal cord, out to the extremities. So this test measures that. Okay, I think I know why this is happening, and we're gonna need to run you through the game test to prove my hypothesis. So I'm gonna share my screen. So if you guys are listening to this, please you should watch this on my YouTube channel, and you'll have a better understanding of what I'll try to talk you through it. But so here is a his mechanics, okay. Um I didn't even usually I you know look at the arm and you know, are they releasing downhill? And you know, he's not, he's kind of you know accelerating uphill, right right there. It's the release of the ball uphill. He's not out here. Looks like he's turning that ball over. But that tells me, you know, essentially why he's having the problems that he's having. But you'll see I drew an arrow. I want you to key in on his I don't know if you want to key in his his butt, his belt buckle, and I'm gonna play this, and I want you to hopefully you see what I saw, right? Did you see it? Let me run it back. It's something that can you see how much his pelvis rides up, right? So and it's not coming from extending his knee, right? Because he's not he his knee is it's not the Justin Verlander jam into extension, but his knee is still in a you know lunge position and his back leg is back foot off the ground, very good. But watch how much his pelvic look at this, how his pelvic rose, right? Now, once you see that, then we want to look at well, what's his arm doing? Right? And then you'll see at the end right how he embraces his arm, right? And you'll see right there how he puts the brakes on his arm as well, right? So I I'm like, that's it. That literally that is the body compensating for you having a bad arm. So the the other thing, too, the other big piece of information, this is a guy who throws you know 96, 97 miles an hour, like all these young young bucks do. He would say the longer he pitched, his velocity would would would just drop, all right. And the reason for that is the body is this, right? So anyone who's ever had a a catastrophic injury, right? Like like I've like I tore my ACL back in 1986, coming down from a rebound, and my knee gave out, and that was, I can tell you, the last time I played basketball high school, after you know, all through college, not you know, not in college, but in a murals club, you know. I can tell you that June of 1986 was the last time I landed on my right leg. Even though it was repaired, I always landed on my left leg after that, right? And the reason for that is your body always wants to avoid pain, right? That's its job. It's never going to it's never gonna it's gonna try to keep you out of pain at all times. And that's why I do a lot of so it's never gonna want to be back to that spot where you got injured. And that's one of the big mental hurdles that athletes have to overcome is getting them back to where they were injured, right? The running back, right? To be able to cut again, the basketball player to be able to either take off or or or land, and the baseball pitcher to be able to throw and extend his arm, right? And not be like what I call the lobster claw, right? That it we're we're short arming it. And there's a little a little of that of that here. So if anyone who grew up in the 70s and 80s remember the half door, right? A lot of offices had half doors, right? They were split in half, and you know, you have this little counter. This is what this reminded me of that he got there, and this half door said, Nope, you can't go through. And and not only does the pelvis go up, I will argue if you look at his foot, you look at his heel, right? His left heel, so he's down, and then watch his left heel. See that how the weight comes back onto his heel, right? He's literally backing up, right? He's backing up, and I was just like blown away. And then when I brought this to his attention, he's like, that just makes unbelievable sense. And then I told him something that blew his mind. I'm like, well, this has nothing to do with your lower body, this has to do with your with your shoulder and your scapular humor rhythm. So we brought in or I had him do the game test, the shoulder coordination test, which measures the scapular humoral rhythm. So as we look here, and he's a very developed young man, as he lifts his arms up, his shoulder blades should turn into the spine and down. So his middle and lower traps should engage. But as we're doing this, I'll let this just run. You will see, especially when he gets above the horizontal, how much upper trap, look at this upper trap engagement he has, and his shoulder blades. Stop. Look, his shoulder, look how much protraction there is. And right here is the cause of why he's doing this. So this position here is the cause of this happening right here. They are directly related because he's not able to decelerate his arm well. So we can only accelerate. You know, the theory goes you can only accelerate what you can decelerate. Well, the scapula decelerators, all right, are are the middle and lower traps, right? Two of the decelerators, right? Not the upper trap. The upper trap is a decelerator for our noggin, right? We get into a whiplash injury, get thrown back and forth, and you know, that's the decelerator. And and you can see on the way down how his shoulders, like literally, he has no control. They just kind of they're very asymmetrical, okay, all over the map. And I'll do this in in regular speed, so you can you can see how when he comes down, they're kind of there's he can't really control them, they just kind of drop. So I brought this to his attention, and I said, This is why you have fractured your elbow. This is why you have thoracic outlet, you have way too much overfacilitated upper traps, you've got nothing in the uh middle and lower traps, and your body knows that. So you can't slow down your arm. So literally, your pelvis, your lat, okay, so your lat attaches has has two kinds of functions, right? It's got a shoulder blade function and a pelvic function, right? And the lat likes to have essentially likes it's like it's like it's like Switzerland. It doesn't want to have a war between the shoulder blades and the pelvis, it likes everything to be homeostatic. So if we've got a weakness somewhere, now the lat is confused. Well, you know, where do I go? Do I do the pelvis? Do I do the shoulder blades? And and it just sometimes then just kind of does nothing and shuts down. So, and you'll see here again, his lat is just I mean, it's just almost non-existent. It's not, I mean, there that's just not even there. So he's got to slow down his arm, so he's literally doing that. The lower body went into DEF CON 1, and DEF CON 1 is the highest, not DEF CON 5. That his lower body went into DEF CON 1, and he's literally slowing his body down and protecting his arm by literally stopping his pelvis, is stopping, is trying to stop all of this. So, fast forward, we we do the test, show him this. He goes out and and he and unfortunately, this is what drives me nuts. I give him an incredibly simple exercise of literally isometric scapular depression. So, guys who work with me, they have nightmares of doing scapular depression, but they know that it works. I have video of people doing a hundred scapular depressions, picking up a baseball and throwing it max effort without one warm-up pitch. Okay, why? Because it's warming up the muscles that you need to pitch, which are our scapular depression muscles, our laughs, our low back. So scapular depression, we're literally lying on your back, knees bent, feet flat, arms up, and he's just tucking his shoulders down and back, and he's holding for five seconds, and I had him do a hundred, and then I had him go out and throw. And I mean, I could I could figure out a way to show my phone, and maybe I'll show in a you know, in a post in a post podcast, I will show you the text that he said I did a hundred and I went out and throw through, and my arm has never felt this good. A hundred reps. But my point is he's been an organized ball, and they're teaching him to do just the opposite, right? So again, you learn something new every day. So I see this upward jump and literally weight back on the heel, stopping my arm with my lower body, and that is due to a failure of my shoulder coordination test, a poor scapular humoral rhythm, overfacilitation of the upper traps. That has led to elbow fracture, thoracic outlet, and decreased velocity. So we will certainly be following this young man and I will give updates. So if you're having similar problems, please visit my website velocityrx.org. Help me save one million arms. I hope I was able to educate you today because this is I had never seen this. I I needed to get this out. I had never seen this in 31 years. If you're listening to this, please go to YouTube and watch this. And once you once you see it, you can't unsee it. It just becomes the norm. So, again, thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next podcast.