Those Forgotten Muscles...........

It’s easy to focus on the “popular” muscle groups and work away at stretching and strengthening them, whilst ignoring “lesser” muscle groups which both perform important functions themselves and have to be regarded in terms of their balancing off another muscle group.

And so, I would contend, it is for the Adductor muscle group.

Often overlooked, rarely worked on specifically, and not really considered in terms of their effect on other muscle groups and how that might cause injury and discomfort.

First of all, let’s start with a quick anatomy lesson. Here’s a diagram showing the 5 adductor muscles;

As can be seen, they all start somewhere along the lower edge of the pelvis and attach alongside the inside of the thighbone (femur), the exception being the gracilis muscle which attaches below the knee.

So what are the primary functions of these muscles? Most people will probably know that they are the muscles which pull the leg back into the “middle”. So, if you stand with your legs apart, and then bring one leg back in to meet the other, the adductor muscles will be at work. Additionally, some of those muscles are involved in pulling your leg backwards.

However, as I mentioned above, we also need to consider the  “opposite” muscles – in this case, we’re particularly looking at the Glutes – gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus – all of which play a vital part in stabilising both the hip and the knee.

Unfortunately, because we don’t tend to do a lot of work on our adductors and tend to not stretch them out, they are prone to becoming overtight and shortening.

The effect of this is that, because these muscles are effectively turned “on” all of the time, they will be inhibiting the function of the outer leg muscles noted above and this will have an adverse effect on, potentially, both hip and knee stability.

The uncomfortable truth is that, given a choice between hip or knee, the problem will tend to affect the knee because it is the weaker joint and, therefore, having tight, short adductors could easily cause the knee to track incorrectly, which can lead to a whole host of other problems.

So what can we learn from this and how can we correct it?

Well, perhaps the first thing to acknowledge is that we DON’T do much work on our adductors but that we need to! We all stretch quads, calves and hamstrings. We need to add adductors to that list.

It’s certainly a topical subject for me this week. Doing most of my running on hills these days, I tend to take small strides and therefore don’t stretch out the adductors much. On Saturday, I ran over 18 miles on roads and hard tracks, and at (for me) a decent pace, and I have suffered considerably from over-stretched adductors since then. A warning sign that I need to work on them myself, methinks!

So, what can we do to help the adductors;

1)      Stretches

There are various stretches that can be done, but here are a couple for starts;

a)      In a standing position, with legs just over shoulder-width apart, lean to one side, so that a stretch is felt along the inside of the opposite leg. The diagram below demonstrates;

b)      Seated on the floor, bring the soles of your feet together and then, gripping your feet, press down on thighs or knees with your elbows. Try to maintain a good spinal alignment.

2)      Strengthening

It may also be worth doing some exercises to strengthen the adductors. There are a couple of easy ones worth doing;

a)      Lying on the floor, with knees raised and soles of the feet on the floor, place a soft ball or towel between the knees and then squeeze the legs together

b)      Basically, the same as above, but with the legs flat on the floor.

c)       Additionally, the use of resistance bands can be good for adductor strengthening – look them up!

3)      Sports Massage

It can be very easy for the adductors to be overlooked when doing sports massage, in favour again of work on the “major” muscle groups. But they shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, the fact is that work on the adductors can feel fairly uncomfortable, but as we have seen, the affects of them being overtight are significant and therefore it’s worth putting up with some discomfort!

Hopefully that has given a decent insight into the effects of the adductors and the reasons why they can cause problems and should not be ignored. It’s certainly always something to look at if you feel your running posture isn’t good. And it’s perhaps a wee reminder to us all that we shouldn’t overlook those “lesser” muscle groups because of the effect they have in other areas. I think a few more blogs on similar muscle groups are needed in the future........