Unlocking Safe Velocity: The Tommy John Formula Revealed

Dr. Kevin McGovern unveils a groundbreaking approach to understanding and preventing Tommy John injuries through what he calls "The Tommy John Formula." This mathematical framework identifies three critical mechanical flaws that lead pitchers toward catastrophic arm injuries—drift, drag, and shrug. Each component disrupts the natural kinetic chain and places dangerous stress on the throwing arm.

The formula stems from Dr. McGovern's fundamental principle that "movement is math"—meaning there's only one biomechanically correct sequence for throwing a baseball. Everything else represents compensatory patterns that increase injury risk. Using a building analogy, he explains how many coaches focus on advanced "penthouse" exercises while neglecting foundation movement patterns, creating an unstable structure destined for collapse.

Each formula component reveals specific mechanical breakdowns. "Drift" occurs when pitchers shift their center of mass forward too early rather than properly hinging and utilizing lower body power. "Drag" involves inappropriately anchoring the back leg, preventing natural sequencing and energy transfer. "Shrug" violates proper shoulder mechanics by elevating the glove-side shoulder, creating mechanical impingement before throwing even begins.

Most alarming is how these flaws particularly endanger adolescent pitchers aged 11-18 undergoing physical changes. Dr. McGovern contrasts injured pitchers with Aroldis Chapman, who despite unconventional arm action, maintains healthy mechanics through proper sequencing and downhill acceleration. The episode underscores that functional movement capabilities must precede pitching mechanics for arm health.

Ready to protect your arm or your player's future? Visit VelocityRx.org to learn more about the Tommy John formula and access virtual training options that prioritize both performance and long-term health. Your pitching career might depend on understanding these critical biomechanical principles.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to VelocityRx
• 2:09 Movement Is Math: The Pitching Foundation
• 3:50 The Tommy John Injury Formula Explained
• 11:06 Shoulder Biomechanics and The Shrug
• 14:50 Safe Mechanics vs Popular Teachings
• 18:40 Preventing Injury: Help for Young Pitchers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey everybody, it's Dr Kevin McGovern. It's time for another VelocityRx podcast and I got a special one for you today. But first I need you to like and subscribe, and our sponsor, which is me, need you to visit VelocityRxorg for all of the knowledge that you need to be a healthy baseball pitcher. So I have finally put down in words all of the knowledge that you need to be a healthy baseball pitcher. So I have finally put down in words, or really, a mathematical formula. So I believe that movement is math, right, and what I mean by that is we all went to college.

Speaker 1: 0:47

If you went to college, you had those communication majors who, would you know, study for their test at the last minute because it was essay and they could BS their way around and get a good grade. But when you're in the sciences, there's really only one right answer. You either know it or you don't. So we can all go back to remedial math class and know that when we got the right answer right, we can go two plus two is four, but if our work was incorrect, we would never get full credit. Well, the human body works exactly the same way. All right, there's only one right answer and everything else the body is compensating to get that right answer. It's always going to do what you tell it to do good or bad. But how it gets there and what it does, that's where there could be issue. I talk about the human body as being a building as well. Right, and everything I see on social media everyone's in the penthouse, he's great, fancy exercises, clean jerks, plyo balls, water bags all of these things that are very, very, very, very high level movements. But guess what? If you don't have a solid parking garage or foundation, that building is coming down. That athlete's going to come down. That athlete's going to come down in the way of a lack of performance or, god forbid, there's going to be some catastrophic injury. That's just the facts.

Speaker 1: 2:09

So when we get back to the formula of movement, movement starts proximal to distal. Okay, that means from the spinal cord to the extremities. That is undeniable, right? That's a neurological sequence. All right, you, there's no paraplegic in the world that has a crushed spinal cord and has complete movement of their extremities. All right, it's impossible, right, because at the spinal cord is just like the fuse box of your house. That's the energy, the from your brain to the spinal cord and out, just like from the outside wire to the fuse box, out to the plugs. So you've heard me talk about things that are bad late arm and all this, all these things.

Speaker 1: 2:57

So I decided to really put this down into a formula, all right, and the formula I'm going to share my screen here. So the formula is essentially this Drift plus shrug plus drag, or drift plus drag plus shrug plus drag, or drift plus drag plus shrug. Any one of those parts is the Tommy John injury formula. So please visit my website, velocityrxorg. I clearly define what each component is, what each part of the equation is and why. I give you the why, why it is an issue.

Speaker 1: 3:49

So as we scroll up, well, let's talk about drift. Now here is a picture and everyone talks about oh, you're just taking a picture in the motion, you know, not looking at the whole thing. Well, what's a video? A thousand pictures combined, right? So if one part or one picture, or two pictures or one half of a second is wrong, the whole thing is wrong.

Speaker 1: 4:15

So drift Drift refers to the moving of one center of mass forward as their very first move to home plate. So they don't get into a hinge. There's no um drop and drive. You know, most kids can't even do a good one-legged squat, so they just kind of drift. So now there is drifting, okay, because the mound is slanted. But if your first move is to drift or I've even seen the hip bump out, right where they bump out their hip towards home plate and tilt their spine back If that is your first move to home plate, you will end up like this young man here, center of gravity, completely forward and nowhere else to go. So when he turns and this gentleman here in this picture has all three and we'll get to him, but he's got all three drift, drag and shrug, all right. So what happens during the drift? Well, the arm will be late, it never recovers.

Speaker 1: 5:23

All right, you can look at a role this Chapman Now, a role this Chapman has, and we can slide him over here and pull him up. Let's see, we'll stop sharing that and now we will share Mr Chapman. Okay, so here he is in slow motion, mr Chapman. Okay, so here he is in slow motion. Now look at the drop, the drop, the drop, the drop, the drop, the drop, the drop, the drop. Here comes the drift. But look at his arm. His arm is way behind him. See how far behind. I would never in a million years teach that. But because so that the drop is so important in timing, so his arm is so far behind him. Right, you'd be like there's no way this guy can be on time. But watch, watch the blur. There he throws the ball downhill, his arm caught up because of his ability to drop down.

Speaker 1: 6:25

That is like vital, right? So many kids. The biggest thing I see they do is their first move is to drift right. And that goes to my whole plan of you. Have to be good at functional movement before you can be a good athlete, right? If you can't squat, you can't balance on one foot, you know your foot's wobbling all over the place. That all needs to be corrected. Or you can do pitching mechanical lessons until the cows come home. You're just wasting your money if you do not correct functional movement first. Right.

Speaker 1: 7:08

So as we get back here, so the arm will be late, too long of a stride, so in this gentleman here, way too long of a stride for his size. And again, once you get too long of a stride, it brings into a movement law called the length-tension relationship of the muscle. So what does that mean? Well, my bicep is really strong here, right, it's really really strong. Let me share my screen here. Strong here, right, it's really really strong. Let me share my screen here. So I'm real strong here, right, very strong. But when I straighten my arm out I'm not as strong out here. So I could probably, let's say, lift 50 pounds here, but when I go out here I can't. So if I'm too strided too far out, I can't turn my hips, my hamstring. This is why these guys are, you know, injured. How can a pitcher injure hamstring, glute, groin, because they're too strided too far and they go to make a turn and the muscle just gives. It's too far, all right. And the third, obviously, is injury. The center of mass will leave your body unable to rotate correctly and if you can't rotate, what's hanging out here in the breeze, the arm, and all of that strain will go to your arm. So that is the drift of the Tommy John injury formula.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Now the drag, all right, drag. This picture here, as we see, is of this young man. He is dragging People, teach drag, they literally will teach you to drag your back leg. Drag refers to the intentional or habitual of dragging the back leg. That is, a teach Drag or habitual of dragging the back leg. That is a teach, okay, it goes against the body's neurological inclination to walk right. As soon as you put one leg forward, the body wants to walk. It doesn't want to drag right. But, as we can see share my screen again, too many windows open here. All right, so share.

Speaker 1: 9:28

So you know, here's the drag. He's dragging his back foot and you know what? Guess who else dragged their back foot right? And guess who else drag their back foot right? Then guess who else has all three components of the tommy john formula? Oh yeah, tommy john himself. All right, so get back to that. Okay, there's our picture of Tommy John, all right? So, yes, tommy John has all three components dragging, drifting too far forward. So if you look at his belt buckle, which should be the next move here, right, His foot is like tying the boat to a dock and all the stress is going to go to his arm, it. It has nowhere else to go. So, again, the drag. Go back to the other. Share To my website. It's all my website, by the way, all right.

Speaker 1: 10:31

So the drag, it's a teach, all right. So what happens when you drag? Well, first of all, we have a loss of velocity. Right, you have to right. Your center of mass is not in sequence and synergy with the rest of your body. Hip, groin, hamstring injuries are due to unnecessary torque in those areas as you drag your back, leg, back and pelvis injuries and, of course, undue arm strain. All right, so the third, which is equally as important, is the shrug, all right.

Speaker 1: 11:06

So here is, uh, the classic teach. Right, no one ever picks up a ball and gets into this. T M, w, whatever you want to call it. All right, a little kid picks up a ball and throws it like a pie. No one gets into. This is a teach. Okay. So this is fine.

Speaker 1: 11:27

I mean, look at his, his glove side upper trap. It's literally hitting him in the nose. This goes to the law of the scapular humeral rhythm. That is, a movement law which says that every time that you elevate your humerus, your shoulder blade has to turn in and depress in towards your spine so that you clear your chromium process. Okay, and depending on what publication or textbook you read, I was always instructed it's a three to two ratio. Now I've seen it's a one to one ratio, and what that means is, when you first lift your arm, your shoulder blades have to drop down, have to drop down straight. You're lower and middle trap. But kids today, adults, adults, were so upper trap, dominant. We're, we're, we're video games, whatever we're doing, we're um, we're the. The upper trap is so, is so dominant.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So let me share another screen for you. This is my shoulder um coordination test, which measures this exact. So you could see, is the shoulder blades here, right? So let's just move them along. So even here, right, we have. Again back to movement. Is math, right? What's the first rule of algebra? One side of the equation has to equal the other.

Speaker 1: 12:57

So this is a kid that went to physical therapy. He went to one of these velo farms and they said yeah, man, you're good to throw. I took one and he's been hurt. I told his father, I took one. Look at his back. I'm like I would never clear your son to throw. Yet how can you clear to throw if? Go back to the building.

Speaker 1: 13:17

The shoulder blades are the basis, support of the arms. We have incongruencies here. We've got a curvature of the spine here, okay, so, but as we watch his, as we watch this movement, right, right there. So there, the shoulder blades, he's, he's, not they up and then boom, upper trap is on. So what that is doing, that's opposite of how the body is supposed to work, right? So going back to you know, here, in this position, it's literally bone on tendon. You're literally causing a mechanical impingement before you even move. Okay, so now put them all together. That's what this picture looks like Drift, drag and shrug.

Speaker 1: 14:08

Now there are a multitude of reasons, because everyone's like, oh well, just you know, how do you correct it? Well, first of all, how do you correct the ability to do a one-legged squat, right? You can't do that in a day, right? So, parents, if your kid, if you're spending muscle money on lessons and your kid isn't getting better, it's not necessarily the coach who's trying or the kid's not getting the mechanics, it's because your kid doesn't move correctly. It just doesn't right. We're not learning movements. Kids aren't going out to play anymore, they're sitting in front of their phone and they're doing this. Right, they're not going out to play, they're not learning proper movements. But there are vital functional movements that have to be mastered before you can pitch.

Speaker 1: 14:57

Because, again, I say it all the time a bad hitting instructor. You can go 0 for 5 on the weekend, 0 for 6, 5 strikeouts. A bad pitching instructor could end you on an operating table, and that is. I'm sorry, that's just the truth, and guess what? Here's another thing that means absolutely nothing when talking about a pitching coach when you played, okay. So what you're saying is Roger Clemens or Greg Maddox would be the best pitching coach because they won over 300 games Completely false.

Speaker 1: 15:34

These trolls that are on the internet bouncing around oh, I did this, I did. What's your playing record? Blah, blah. Have they ever seen the inside of a body? Have they ever dissected a shoulder and see how it moves?

Speaker 1: 15:46

I saw an exercise the other day where a guy is literally holding a rope with I don't know 20 pounds, jamming his shoulder into external rotation, telling the world that this is a good exercise for the shoulder. 90 degrees, that's all the external rotation the body has. Beyond that, you have stretched the joint, okay, so let's just give 110, safely. Beyond that, how do they go? I mean, let's see if I've got. How do they go beyond? You know, lay back, where the arm is almost flat to flat to the ground, right, like what happens to that joint. Well, I will tell you what happens to that joint is it's killing the labrum. You know, hey, why does my kid have a little league shoulder or little league elbow? Because the body wasn't designed to jam itself back into you know.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Oh, here we'll just look at, I'll just put this one up here. Here's Jonathan Loizaga. Let's share my screen again here. So here's a guy off Tommy John surgery that they have done nothing to help, all right. But here's another guy right, he's got drift, drag and shrug.

Speaker 1: 17:10

The shoulder was not designed to be in this position. Okay, all right, dragging his foot, center of gravity way too forward over his body, okay, now you can get what I guess they call this layback, all right. But it's the cocking phase of throwing, okay. So the cocking phase of throwing doesn't mean that I jam my shoulder into external rotation. What it means is I cock my arm back like I'm going to throw a punch. So that means pec stretch, scapular depression, which was anti-shrug locking those shoulder blades down and thoracic spine extension. Now, my arm is cocked, all right.

Speaker 1: 17:50

And then, of course, when we get into the sequence of throwing, all of this leads to the, the, the drift, the drag and the shrug leads to a late arm, which leads to the hips turning first, leaving the arm exposed, accelerating uphill, which is against gravity, which is I just showed a roleldis Chapman. Let's see if we can pull him up again. Aroldis Chapman accelerating, which is key downhill, even though his arm path. So why has Aroldis Chapman been healthy? Well, this is why. All right, so don't look at his arm path, mirror this drop and drive, because it is fantastic. Okay, he does a little shrugging, okay, but because of that again, rotate, rotate, rotate, rotate. There's the blur of the ball, well, past 12 o'clock on a clock, and that is why he stays healthy. He throws the ball downhill. Now he's even gotten better mechanics since he has started with the Red Sox.

Speaker 1: 19:00

But that is the Tommy John formula. It's just facts. I mean your body has to be in sequence. You have to accelerate downhill. Why are tennis players able to serve 500 times a week? Because they're striking the ball downhill. It's the same movement Overhand spiking ball downhill, okay. So drift, drag and shrug in any order that you want to put it in. Adolescents ages 11 to 18 are they need an antidote for this? They are really susceptible to this. The pre, the pre and post pubescent pitcher is guaranteed to have this guaranteed because the body has gone through so many changes. There's no way it would be something I've never seen before that his arm would be on time. So for more information, please visit velocity rxorg. Visit the tommy john formula page. If you, you can direct message me, you can contact me through the website. You can contact me for help. We do virtual training. I will get your kid throwing better. I will get him throwing healthy. I'll get him more velo, okay, but with a healthy and safe arm. So thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.