When my back gets totally cramped up, the first thing the PT always ends up doing is straightening my hips.

When your hips (or any other part of your core) are ou tof alignmnet, your body has to compensate by holding different muscles tight. THose with TOS often already have either muscles that are way too tight up top, or way too weak (from not being able to use them) to help us compensate for any misalingment.

Your body IS a whole system. When one nerve is stuck is can easily affect how much your other nerves can glide around. They are all supposed to be able to move freely. when you stretch your arm or your leg and feel pain, if moving your head can change the amount of pain in the stretch, many cliniicans and PT's attribute the pain to nerves being stuck...not tight muscles. I had read about the slump test on my own, and one day (i didn't talk to her about it) my PT did it during a session. She said it clearly showed that the nerve compression in my upper body was contributing to pain in my legs. She now has me doing nerve glides with my feet

So whoever can argue that they aren't related, it may not be TOS directly that causes my leg pain, however, it certainly is related. Any PT or doctor who treats TOS like all it affects is the neck and shoulder is not going to get you better, either. Your whole body has to be aligned to have good posture, and bad posture is what got most of us here...at least to some extent. That is certainly why Dr Sanders and others sends people to feldenkrais practitioners.

Try the slump test and decide for yourself if nerve compression is contributing to your hip pain....

best,
Johanna

*including the new link for slump test site*
http://www.spinalphysio.net/