Adductors are the insides of the thighs, and they are driving me crazy! They are tight on a whole slew of clients, so here’s the scoop on where they are and what they do.
In this case, my 14 year old client Emilia was complaining of knee pain. When I had her try a single leg squat above, it was pretty obvious why her knee hurt.
Look at her foot position versus her knee position. Foot straight ahead, knee rolled in. Ouch!
Here’s another example with my client Shannon above. If you again compare her foot position with the knee position, you can see the pull inwards that the muscles on the insides of the thighs- the adductors- are creating. Sometimes they cause a twist, and sometimes a pull. In this case, they are pulling that thigh bone in.
Adductor tightness even shows up in babies. This is sweet baby spider Zion (he showed us his crawling pattern in an earlier blog) and you can see how powerful the insides of the thighs are by the way his legs relax. He’s in pediatric physical therapy to correct the way his feet hit the ground.
Below is a video explaining the anatomy so you can see exactly where the muscles are (and keep an eye out for the adductor magnus- it’s a monster and you’d never know it was hiding under these other muscles!)
The big question: What can you do?
What can you do if you see yourself in any of these photos? Easy enough! At the end is an exercise that will jog your memory on how to get these powerhouses back under control and give their antagonist – our friend the glute – a chance to balance them out! Let me know how it goes in the comments below.
That was an awesome awesome tutorial and I love the exercise. I’m going to do it now before I run. Thanks Laura!!
Hi Janelly, Thank you so much for writing and I am glad you put it into use right away! That is the goal- to make this blog useful and helpful!