Adductor Muscles: What Are They?
The adductor muscle group is located in the inner portion of the thigh. This group is made up of the set of five muscles, four monoarticular:
? Great adductor
? Long adductor
? Short adductor
? Comb
and a bi-articular one:
? Gracile
Their main function is hip adduction. Since the origin of these muscles goes from the pubis to the ischial tuberosity, we find ourselves having bundles placed behind the frontal plane, which passes through the center of the joint, and other bundles placed anterior to it.
Anatomy
Let's look at these muscles a little more specifically:
? Adductor major muscle: triangular in shape, it is located between the gracilis muscle and the short adductor muscle, it is the deepest and most powerful of the hip adductor muscles.
With its action it internally rotates the thigh.
? Adductor longus muscle: it is a flat triangular muscle, its superficial face is covered by the femoral fascia and, at the bottom, it is in relation with the sartorius muscle and the vastus medialis muscle. Adduces and rotates the thigh outward.
? Adductor brevis muscle: triangular in shape, it is placed deeply in the adductor longus muscle and superficially in the adductor major muscle, with its action adducts and rotates the thigh outward.
? Comb muscle: quadrilateral in shape, it is located in the supero-medial part of the thigh. With its action it adduces, flexes and rotates the thigh outward.
? Gracilis muscle: it is the only biarticular muscle of the adductors, flattened and ribbon-like, occupies the medial side of the thigh. It is covered by the femoral fascia and is placed deep within the adductor longus and major muscles. With its action it adducts the thigh, flexes and medially rotates the leg.
How to train them?
Adductors read "inner thigh", is one of the most interesting points for women who often, however, limit themselves to training the adductor machine which will surely be a comfortable solution and will allow them to remain seated comfortably and chat with the neighbor while "open and close" the legs, but also limited.
#1 Adductors machine
Execution: sitting at the adductor machine, close the legs by exhaling the air and then open them in a slow and controlled way.
Men, on the other hand, tend to snub this machine considered "by women", but usually in their training routines for the legs there is no shortage of exercises such as squats, front squats, deadlifts, leg presses, lunges where the adductor muscles work in an auxiliary way.
These exercises are certainly fine, but done using small variations, they will involve the adductors more.
#2 Squat sumo
Compared to the standard version, the legs are wider, positioned as a sumo wrestler would do and the toes are well turned outwards.
# 3 Sumo deadlift
Compared to the classic version, here too the legs are wider and the tips of the feet turned out, the back is more upright and the hands grip the barbell so that the arms pass between the legs.
#4 Leg press
Performed by keeping the legs apart with the tips of the feet turned over.
# 5 Side lunges
Unlike normal lunges, the step is done to the side.
Conclusions
A complete workout must include exercises multi-joint and isolation.
As for the adductors often women they are limited to isolation exercises, while the men they do not train them directly with the excuse that they already work as auxiliary muscles by doing squats, presses, etc ...
The advice for those who want to pay attention to these muscles is to start their workout with multi-joint exercises, perhaps using the variants that place greater emphasis on adductors and conclude with an exercise or 2 aimed at this muscle group, varying the range of repetitions.
