Hip Exercises for Building Adductor Strength and Preventing Injury

The adductors are an important group of muscles located on your inner thighs that serve to bring your legs toward the center of your body.

This motion of bringing your legs inward is called adduction — not to be confused with the term “abduction,” which means just the opposite.

The adductors span from various points on the public bone to several locations on the backs of the femurs. For this reason, they are often referred to as the “groin muscles.”

If you squeeze your legs together, you’ll feel the muscles of your inner thigh activating — these are the adductors.

Summary

The adductors are an important group of muscles located on your inner thighs that are responsible for bringing your legs toward the midline of your body.

Considering that the adductors, along with the other leg muscles, are among the largest muscles in the body, they serve an important role in activities of daily living and athletic activities.

Their primary function is to provide lower body stability during daily activities such as walking, going up stairs, and squatting. They are especially important when performing exercise.

Athletes, in particular, depend on this muscle group to aid in explosive movements such as running, jumping, and quickly moving from side to side.

In addition, they provide mobility at the hip joint, which is essential for injury prevention (1).

By regularly training your adductors, you can help prepare them for the demands of physical exercise, greatly reducing your risk of injury (1).

Summary

The adductors’ primary function is to provide lower body stability and mobility during daily activities. Athletes depend on this important muscle group for explosive movements such as running, jumping, or moving from side to side.

The adductors serve as secondary supporting muscles during many common exercises, such as squats, deadlifts, box jumps, and sled pushes.

While simply performing these exercises can work the adductors to a certain extent, you may wish to target them specifically to increase strength and reduce injury risk.

Here are 7 of the best adductor exercises — with varying levels of difficulty — to include in your training regimen if you’re looking to target your inner thigh muscles.

Adductor machine

When many people think of isolating the adductors, they may think of the classic adductor machine found in gyms across the world.

Though this machine can do a great job of training the inner thigh, it’s not the only movement that can yield good results.

Considering that you can adjust the amount of weight and width of the pads, this movement is great for beginners.

It’s best to start out super light to get a feel for the exercise and avoid getting injured.

How to perform:

1. Start by sitting on the machine with the pads positioned between your legs as wide as is comfortable, and select your desired resistance.
2. In a controlled manner, squeeze your thighs together just until the pads touch, feeling the muscles contract.
3. Slowly reverse the movement, returning your thighs to the starting position.
4. Repeat for the desired number of sets and reps. If just starting out, try 2–3 sets of 10 reps.

Wide stance squat

The squat is often touted as the king of leg exercises, and this is with good reason, because it stimulates whole-leg muscle recruitment.

Among the numerous squat variations, the wide stance squat — also known as a sumo squat — does a particularly good job of hitting the muscles of the inner thighs.

You can perform this movement with a variety of weighted equipment — such as a barbell, kettlebell, dumbbell, or sandbag — or with just your body weight.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll review the wide stance squat performed without any external resistance.

How to perform:

1. Set your feet a bit wider than shoulder width, turning your toes slightly outward.
2. Shift your weight back and slowly lower your hips until your thighs are parallel to the floor.
3. In a controlled motion, return to the starting position by pushing through the floor, feeling the muscles of your glutes and legs, including your adductors, contract.
4. Repeat for the desired number of sets and reps. Aim for 2–3 sets of 10–12 reps.

Standing banded adduction

When aiming to isolate the adductors, resistance bands are a great tool to efficiently train them from several angles.

Bands come in a variety of lengths and levels of resistance, making it quite easy to adjust the level of difficulty.

How to perform:

1. Start by wrapping a resistance band around a solid anchor such as a power rack or another piece of equipment that is attached to the floor.
2. Standing with either side of your body facing the anchor point, wrap the band around your inner (working) foot.
3. Adjust the tension of the resistance band by standing farther away from the anchor point or wrapping the band more tightly.
4. Allow the band to pull your leg to the side while resisting the movement.
5. To start the exercise, stand tall and bring your banded leg toward the center of your body, feeling a good contraction in your adductors.
6. Slowly release your leg back to the side, with control.
7. Switch legs and repeat for the desired number of sets and reps. Aim for 2–3 sets of 10–12 reps.

Seated banded adduction

This seated version of the standing banded adduction is slightly less difficult because it requires less stability.

This variation is an excellent option for beginners looking to target their adductors.

How to perform:

1. Start by wrapping a resistance band around a solid anchor such as a power rack or another piece of equipment that is attached to the floor.
2. Sit on a weight bench with either side of your body facing the anchor point and band.
3. Put your inner foot through the band, positioning it just below your knee.
4. Allow the band to pull your leg toward the anchor point while resisting the movement.
5. Bring your leg back toward the midline of your body by contracting your adductors.
6. Repeat with each leg until you have reached the desired number of sets and reps. Aim for 2–3 sets of 10–12 reps.

Side-lying adduction

This is a great beginner exercise and requires no equipment to perform.

How to perform:

1. Lie on your side on a mat. Ensure that your spine is neutral and your hips are stacked. Keep your bottom arm folded under your head and your top hand on the floor in front of your stomach.
2. Bend your top knee so it points toward the ceiling and place the foot flat on the floor in front of your bottom leg.
3. Keeping your bottom leg long and foot flexed, lift your bottom leg off the floor, contracting your adductors.
4. Allow your leg to slowly return to the floor in a controlled motion.
5. Repeat the movement with your other leg for the desired number of sets and reps. Aim for 10–12 reps and 2–3 sets.

Lateral lunge

The lateral lunge is a great choice for any skill level. You can modify it by adding dumbbells if you want to make it more challenging.

How to perform:

1. Stand with your feet hip-distance apart.
2. Step out with your right leg and begin sending your hips back as you bend your right knee. You can reach your arms forward for counterbalance if you like. During the descent, your knee should not move more than about 2 inches beyond your toes, and you should keep your knee aligned between your second and third toe. The toe of the foot that steps out may turn outward slightly.
3. Push off with your right leg to return to a standing position.
4. Repeat on your left leg to complete 1 rep.
5. Complete 2–3 sets of 10–12 reps on each leg.

Copenhagen hip adduction

This exercise is an option for more advanced trainees. It fully isolates your adductors using your body weight.

While strength athletes commonly use it as an accessory exercise, it’s also an option for athletes in other sports as well as for those just looking to strengthen their inner thighs.

Be particularly cautious when performing this movement, because it puts your adductors in a slightly compromised position and could lead to increased injury risk if not performed properly.

How to perform:

1. Start in a side plank position with one elbow on the floor or a pad and your legs perpendicular to a weight bench or similar piece of equipment.
2. Place your top leg on the bench with your knee slightly bent, keeping your bottom leg straight underneath the bench. The higher you rest on your top leg on the bench, the more stability (and less risk of injury to the groin) you will have. If you rest only your ankle on the bench, this exercise will be extremely challenging.
3. Contract the adductors of your top leg to hold your body weight, and slowly raise your bottom leg until it touches the underside of the bench.
4. Gradually lower your body back to the starting position.
5. Once you’ve completed the desired reps for that leg, flip over and work the adductors of the other leg.
6. Repeat for the desired number of sets for each leg. Aim for 2–3 sets of 10–12 reps.

Summary

These 7 adductor exercises provide an excellent introduction to training the muscles of your inner thighs. Start with the easier movements and gradually progress to the more advanced ones as you get stronger.

When training the adductors, there are a few important factors to keep in mind to maximize the efficiency of the exercise and reduce the risk of injury.

Gradually increase range of motion

If you’re just getting started with adduction training, it’s best to start with a limited range of motion to reduce your risk of injury.

As you get stronger and more experienced, you can slowly increase the range of motion and resistance to put more stress on your muscles.

This will help you avoid straining an adductor muscle during training.

Stretch and warm up

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to warm up before exercise to get blood flowing to your muscles and increase your internal body temperature, which can help prevent injury (2).

Many people choose to start with 5–10 minutes of low intensity exercise such as walking on the treadmill or using an elliptical to get their blood flowing, which can be followed by stretching.

In terms of types of stretches, research suggests that dynamic (movement-based) stretches prior to exercise may be superior to static (non-movement) stretches because they can help preserve muscle strength (3).

Static stretches, on the other hand, may decrease muscle strength when performed prior to strength training (3, 4).

Some examples of appropriate dynamic stretches to warm up the adductors are:

• front-to-back leg swings
• side-to-side leg swings
• jumping jacks
• bodyweight jump squats

Feel the contraction

It’s one thing to go through the motions when completing an exercise, but when you focus on contracting the working muscle, results tend to be better.

Some research suggests that focusing on the contracting muscle, also known as mind–muscle connection, can improve muscle activation and, in turn, potentially yield better results from training (5).

For beginners just starting out, a good mind–muscle connection may be difficult to achieve. Therefore, it’s best to focus on slow, controlled repetitions for the best results.

Summary

When performing adductor exercises, there are a few important factors to keep in mind in order to maximize results and prevent injury. These include gradually increasing the range of motion, making sure to warm up, and focusing on feeling the contraction.

The adductors are an important muscle group located on your inner thighs that move your legs toward the center of your body.

Their main functions include providing stability during daily activities and supporting explosive movements such as jumping and running for athletes.

While many exercises can target the adductors, the 7 reviewed above are some of the most effective to get you started.

When training your adductors, it’s important to ensure that you perform a proper warmup, gradually increase the range of motion and resistance, and focus on the muscle contraction in order to maximize efficiency and prevent injury.

If you’re looking to improve your hip muscle strength, mobility, or sports performance, including some adductor strengthening exercises in your training regimen may provide great benefits.