Basic Anatomy of Stretching the Adductors

This week we are going to take a look at the basic anatomy of stretching the hip adductors.

This is the group of muscles that make up your inner thigh muscles. The muscles specifically are the adductor longus, adductor brevis, gracilis, pectineus, and adductor magnus.

The only one of these muscles that crosses the hip joint and the knee joint is the gracilis. All the others only cross the hip joint.

The implication of this is that when the knees are bent, most of the adductors (especially by mass) are not slacked.

Last week when we talked about the hamstrings, we noted the importance of the knee bend and how that slacks the hamstrings. Not true with the adductors.

When you go down into a squat or a sumo deadlift where your legs are out to the side, the main muscular limitation is the adductors, especially when you externally rotate your femurs.

In the squat, the hamstrings are slacked because of the knee bend, but the adductors are not. They are the most likely muscular limitation around the hip to preventing good squat depth.

Ok the video goes into much more depth than this because this is really one of those things you need to see to understand!

Thanks for reading,

Ryan