Command a gym full of bros to train their legs; most will probably sprint towards the squat rack or call dibs on the leg press. However, you’ll probably find the hip adductor machine rusting in a corner, provided your training facility has one. 

The adductors, commonly known as inner thighs, are arguably the most neglected lower body muscle group. This article is our way of raising the alarm about the gains you’re leaving on the table by skipping hip adductor exercises. 

Hip adductors are small muscles in your inner thighs responsible for bringing your thighs together, providing balance, and supporting proper hip alignment. 

Many women often lead themselves down the wrong path by chasing a thigh gap, which has become a physical attractiveness and fitness symbol. A thigh gap is the space between the thighs when standing upright with the feet together. 

Many ladies take drastic steps, including following fad diets, fasting for long periods, and overexercising to achieve a thigh gap. However, not only does this jeopardize their health, but it is also an unrealistic beauty ideal primarily dependent on your bone structure and genetics—where you store body fat. 

Hip adductors primarily help adduct the hips or bring the thighs together to your body’s midline. The adductors span from various points on the public bone to several locations on the backs of the femurs. If you squeeze your legs together, you’ll feel your inner thighs activating. For this reason, they are also called groin muscles.

Hip adductors are a group of five muscles in the inner thighs:

Even though hip adductors and abductors play opposing roles, most people confuse the two. While hip adductors help bring your thighs together, the abductor aid in sending the thighs away from your body’s midline.

Here is an easier way to remember their function. In a hip add-uction, you are putting one and one together. So, when you bring your legs together, you are effectively adding them.

Here are the benefits of adding hip adductor exercises to your training regimen:

Strong adductors boost your rotation power, which is especially great for people who participate in physically demanding sports like baseball, football, soccer, or tennis. 

Performing hip adductor exercises can help improve your balance by adding stability and keeping your body upright when making sudden lateral movements.

Hip extension plays a crucial role in compound exercises like the deadlift and squat. Adding hip adductor exercises to your regimen can improve your performance in other lifts and day-to-day activities. 

Groin injuries are one of the most common sports-related injuries. They are caused due to weak or tight adductor muscles. Performing hip adductor exercises will not only strengthen these muscles but will also improve your flexibility and mobility. 

Many bodybuilders never train adductors and stick to working their quads, hamstrings, and calves. However, developed inner thighs are what separate the men from the boys. Developed adductors can make your legs look wider and aesthetically appealing. 

Furthermore, not training your adductors can lead to groin injuries, especially in sports that require quick lateral movements where players have to change directions quickly and repeatedly. 

A study found that professional ice hockey players were 17 times more likely to sustain a groin injury if their adductor strength was less than 80 percent of their abductor strength. [1]

Another study published in the ​Journal of Sport Rehabilitation​ concluded that hip adductor strains are among the most common lower extremity injuries in people involved in sports [2]. So, if you are an athlete or work a physically intensive job, you should never skip training your adductors. 

Now, you might think that you squat 225 pounds for reps like it’s nobody’s business, and there is no way you have weak adductors. However, the hip adductor strength test might surprise you. 

You have weak hip adductors if you cannot hold the Copenhagen plank for even 10 seconds. 

The Copenhagen plank helps you determine if you have weak adductors. Furthermore, it is a great exercise to bring up the weakness, making it the number one exercise on our top fourteen hip adductor exercises list. 

Now that we’ve covered one exercise, here are the remaining 13 hip adductor exercises that you should add to your training regimen:

Pro tip: As you get better at the lift, you can use a dumbbell or barbell to add tension to the target muscles. 

Compared to the side lunge, you will work in the frontal plane and go side to side in the cossack squat. At the bottom of a cossack squat, the toes of your extended leg will come off the floor. 

The frog stretch is one of the best hip adductor exercises for folks with tight adductors.

You’re developing an Achilles heel in your upper legs by not training your adductors. Hip adduction exercises can be the key to powerful, athletic movement. Add them to your workouts to build lower body strength and improve your aesthetics.

Furthermore, you could use a resistance band in most exercises mentioned above to make the movement harder by adding more resistance. 

Vidur is a writer and editor at FitnessVolt.com. He is passionate about all things strength sports and dedicated to sharing his hard-earned knowledge. An expert at giving unsolicited advice, his writings benefit the readers and infuriate the bros.

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