Skip to main content

Adductors of the thigh. What are they?

 Adductors are more commonly known as you inner thigh muscles.  On my inner thigh I can describe the area as the meaty/squishy part of the leg on the inside of the thigh.  The adductor muscles are responsible for bringing you legs together.  Wherever you are right now, squeeze your legs together, as if you are trying to make yourself into a merperson and only have a single tail.  You should be able to feel the muscles of the inner thigh activate making this pulling together, squeezing motion. 

The inner thigh is made of 5 large muscles, I have always thought it is strange for a part of my body that I don't really feel I use a lot to have so many muscles.  The muscles are called adductor longus, adductor brevis, adductor magnus, gracilis and pectineus.  

The adductor muscles stabilize your pelvis whilst you to walk, run and jump.   They are generally really important for healthy movement and a pain free pelvis.  So why don't we talk about them as much as our glutes? (glutes are included in the abductors) I think it could be because you cant get a bubble bum from working your adductors and popular culture is responsible for many of the things we focus on. 

It is relatively common for the adductor muscles (inner thigh) to be weak.  This can show up when we do a large pelvic tilt exercise. 

For the large pelvic tilt you start laying on you back knees lifted towards the ceiling, feet on the mat and hip width apart.  Inhale, exhale engage your core (What do I think about when I engage my core?) and lift your pubic bone up towards the ceiling until your lumber spin has imprinted into you mat, then continue to peel you spine from the mat one vertebra at a time until you reach a bridge position.  When you do this movement, if you feel that you knees want to open out away from each other, or your big toe wants to peel away from the mat it could be that your adductor muscles need some additional strengthening. To complete the large pelvic tilt movement, inhale, exhale engage your core and slowly imprint your spine back on the mat one vertebra at a time. 

As always please only attempt the exercises described if you are confident with what you are doing and are not in pain.  Please let me know if you have questions and enjoy knowing you adductors slightly better. 



Location: Bristol, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My feet are amazing! But how should I stand and why does this matter?

  Each of your feet are amazing, I know that I did not appreciate my feet until I had a accident and one of my feet stopped working as well as it used to.  My extreme sport of choice was piggy in the middle with my children on the beach, when I  kick a stone.  This has continued to impact my foot health for over 18 months (well I'm still recovering).   Each of your feet are made up of 26 bones, 30 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. Your feet are the most amazing mobile weight bearing structures around.  When anatomists write about the foot, they often refer to the "bony architecture" of the foot. Now start to think about the structure of your foot as "bony architecture" and you can start understanding how you foot is similar to a vaulted church ceiling. Lots of individual bones precisely placed to fit together in an amazing arched structure.  What is incredible about the foot is that there are three arches at work. You have t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Stabilize you shoulder girdle

Have you been in a Pilates lesson and been told to " stabilize  you shoulder girdle"?  What does this really mean? Well the shoulder girdle or pectoral girdle is a verbal reference used to describe the bones of the shoulder.  The shoulder bones are amazing because  they support all sorts of movement in all directions in the shoulder and the arms. Yet the three bones are only connect to the main boney structure  of the body at one point, the top of the sternum (breast bone).   Your shoulder girdle on each side of the body consists of a:  clavicle - also know as the collar bone and you can feel this through your skin along the collar  of your shirt.  It is the clavicle that connects to the top of the sternum (breast bone). scapula - you may know this as the shoulder blade.  It is a triangular shaped bone that is often  visible  on the back of the body.  It is good to remember the at the scapula is free floating a...
Post a Comment
Read more

What are my Abs?

  Abs are used to describe the front abdominal wall but this area of the body includes more muscles and other body structures than just your rectus abdominis.  There are three layers of muscle forming your abdominal wall.   The deep layer comprises of the transversus abdominis and the rectus abdominis.   Your transversus abdominis is a muscle that give you a big tummy hug.  It wraps all the way around you from your lower ribs to you pelvis across your middle (meeting at the linea alba (fibrous white structure that runs down the middle of the abdomen)) also attaching to the thoracolumbar fascia (a fibrous structure) in your back.  Your trans abs compress and support your abdominal contents.    The rectus abdominis is also in this deep layer of muscle, this muscles runs from the pubic bone to the sternum and if very well developed is responsible for the 8 abdominal muscles that can viewed on a bat man costume.  This muscle is respons...
Post a Comment
Read more