Keeping Your Adductors Strong
By Bill Starr
In Exercises
September 10, 2010
Knees rolling in on squats and pulls? Bill Starr explains how you can fix the problem by working on your adductors, which will translate to more weight on the bar.
All strength improvement emanates from the center of the body—hips, glutes, upper leg—then radiates upward and downward. Those on a mission to get stronger recognize the importance of leg strength and know the back squat is the very best exercise for the job. In addition to heavy squats, many strength athletes also add in leg extensions and leg curls to ensure that they’re keeping their quads and hamstrings plenty strong. But few do anything specific for their adductors. They’re sort of the forgotten leg muscle.
Of all the athletes, both male and female, that I started on strength routines, at least a third of them displayed a weakness in their adductors right away. So they start in squatting with a slight handicap that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. Then there are those who are fine at the beginning, but after the poundages in the squat start to be considerable, weak adductors reveal themselves.
How? When an athlete’s knees turn inward when he’s squatting or pulling heavy weights, his adductors are relatively weaker than his quads and hams. It’s easy to spot once you know what you’re looking for, and the nice thing about working the adductors is that they respond to direct attention rather quickly.
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22 Comments on “Keeping Your Adductors Strong ”
1
wrote …
For knee caving I would imagine you need to look at both the abductors as well as adductors for weakness or dysfunction. Many of the exercises suggested work those too yet there is no real reference to the abductors ever being the cause also.
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2
wrote …
How would strengthening adductors prevent the knees from rolling inward? I think you'd have to strengthen abductors in this scenario.
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3
wrote …
this article doesn't make any sense. if you LOOSEN up your adductors, you'll certainly get more knee abduction.......but I'm with the first two comments.....
obviously having strong adductors helps, but I don't think ol' Bill understands his anatomy
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4
wrote …
One trick that I use to strengthen my inner and outer thighs is by attaching a theraband or tube to anything. each one has varied resistance. sportsinjuryclinic.net (or .com) is a good source of physical therapy home remedies.
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5
wrote …
Weak hip ABDductors (gluteus medius/ minimus, TFL, etc) cause excessive valgus (knocked knees/ knee in) during a squat, not weak ADDuctors. If your ADDuctors were weak you would "knee out", but people will mostly have weak hip abductors, so we typically never see this, except with tight IT bands.
I agree with the first three posts.
Mike Dickey, ATC
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6
wrote …
I agree with the above posts to an extent. However the "knee-in movement" can be seen as a compensatory motor pattern (ie strong quads compensating for weak adductors) and not necessary an unbalanced tension between opposing muscle groups.
Bill Starr, thanks for sharing insights from years of competing and coaching.
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7
wrote …
Do you honestly think Bill Starr would write an article with such a critical error??! Do you think the CFJ would actually publish that?!
Re-read the article after googling the origin, insertion and function of the adductors.
You move your feet to put them in abducted position at the top, you don't actively undergo abduction during the squat. Knees staying over the toes is just maintaining that position, not undergoing more abduction.
Below is a paraphrased Rip quote:
Look at what the adductors do on the way up. They originate at some point on the medial pelvis, and they attach on the medial femur. If you understand this anatomy, the question then becomes, does that distance increase on the way down and decrease on the way up? If it does, then the muscle is contracting and the muscle is contributing to the movement out of the bottom.
The fact is that when you get down to the bottom position with your knees out, those adductors (just like the hamstrings) form part of the rebound platform that involves the pelvis and the femur out of the bottom of the squat.
Now, in the bottom of the squat, the adductors are supposed to help you come up. On the way down, the adductors get longer and on the way up they shorten, correct? So that means that these muscles are contributing to hip extension. Now if I let my knees cave in, I have just contracted my adductors, but I didn’t make them do anything if I haven’t raised anything with them! If I make my knees stay out, then I have to use my adductors. They have to get strong enough to contribute to the movement.
Strengthening the abductors is not the solution because they are not weak. Weak adductors are the problem. That’s what is so counterintuitive. You strengthen the adductors by keeping the knees out. When you keep the knees out, the adductors have to do their share of the work. Keeping them out is, partially I suppose, a function of the abductors. But it’s not that they are weak.
You can prove this to anybody who’s been squatting with their knees pointed forwards. Make them shove their knees out and make them squat with the knees out. Then ask them the next day, “What got sore?” No one will ever tell you that their abductors got sore. They will all say that their adductors were sore. That tells you all you need to know right there. Do the exercise perfectly correct and then see what gets sore. That will tell you what muscles are working and what you’ve been doing wrong.
If reading isn't your thing, watch him explain it on video
journal.crossfit.com/2009/06/knee-position-and-muscle-mass.tpl
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8
wrote …
How about knees in being due to tight or over active adductors? Caused by that
damn adductor machine!
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9
Tom Seryak wrote …
Straight from Gray's Anatomy: "in consequence of the obliquity of their insertion into the linea aspera they rotate the thigh outward, assisting the external rotators" Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the adductor's main function is to adduct the hip in the frontal plane; however, in the transverse plane they assist in external rotation by decelerating internal rotation (i'm guessing this is an eccentric contraction).
My interpretation of the purpose of the article was to present a possible solution to internal rotation during squats that most of us are overlooking. the standard prescription to foam roll the adductors and strengthen the gluteals has never really worked that well in my experiences. so, wide stance box squats with toes straight ahead it is!
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10
replied to comment from Matt Solomon…
whenever we have someone with the whole knees in thing, we'll do some adductor releases on the spot, and magically, the problem is solved. without strengthening!
I'm no stranger to strengthening the adductors, but what Bill and Rip are saying doesn't make any sense.
Squeeze your adductors......do the knees go out or in?
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11
replied to comment from mike mallory…
Here's why Bill and Rip's comment makes sense. If your adductors are weak your knees roll inward in the squat to give them slack and take them off tension. If you push your knees out, the adductors are stretched and forced into tension, so they contribute to the movement as you come out of the hole. That's it in a nutshell.
To take it a bit further, when you roll your knees in, the adductors come off tension and drop out as a major contributor to the movement. It's a basic compensatory motor pattern. The load shifts from the weak muscles (adductors) to the strong ones (quads) when the weak muscle can't balance the strong.
The problem this causes is twofold.
First, your squat will be weaker than it can be because you are ignoring a weak link and aren't using a significant contributor. The adductor contraction helps pull you out of the hole when it's involved. If you have both flexible and strong adductors, they will allow you to get into a deep squat with good form and they'll help bounce you out of that deep squat like a stretched rubber band. More flexible adductors that stay on tension are like streching a rubber band further. You get more energy out of a longer pre-stretch.
Second, and just as important, a knock kneed squat is bad bad bad movement mojo. Bad for your knee ligaments, and it's also a bad motor pattern that transfers the rotational torque from the hips where it belongs to the inside of your knee, where it doesn't. Keep your knees straight and let your hips handle the movement deviations.
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12
Tom Seryak replied to comment from mike mallory…
mike, hip abduction/adduction occurs in the frontal plane. in the squat there is hip flexion and external rotation of the femur. the adductors in the tranverse plane assist in externally rotating the femur by eccentrically controlling internal rotation to keep the knees tracking in the proper position. there is no hip abduction or adduction of the hip in the squat position and certainly no knee adduction or abduction. the normal function of the knee is to flex and extend. i don't think Bill is the one that needs to brush up on his understanding of anatomy.
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13
wrote …
Mike Mallory- you're making far more sense to me than what some people are saying. I think weakness of the adductors is being assumed a lot when I'm more with you, thinking its more likely tightness and poor range of movement in the adductors.
Super slow clam shells will give an indication of someone's abduction control. If its jerky rather than smooth you can see there's some work to do. Also if the abductors aren't stabilizing you as well in a squat the adductors are always going to stay short and tight. I don't think you can talk about one without the other when talking about knee valgus issues.
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14
replied to comment from Matt Solomon…
Well said. I agree.
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