Hip Adductor

Experience From - Mike Walker , Rick Lewis , Rich Schick , Karl King, Jan Vandendriessche ,

I'm seeking advice on how to overcome injury to what I believe is the abductor region of the upper inner right thigh. Almost appears into the groin but not quite. I've felt pain to touch and it creeps up in later miles of a run by causing sharp sore pain upon foot plant, but ends in making it difficult to even raise the leg for varied terrain after 5 or more miles. The muscle directly effected makes it difficult to raise the leg to bring the knee to the chest. I first noticed this injury after a hard week with a 23 mile run at week end while not having a real solid base of daily mileage. It has remained for two weeks now.

Any thoughts or experience on how to deal with this sort of injury?

Mike Walker wrote:

I'm seeking advice on how to overcome injury to what I believe is the abductor region of the upper inner right thigh. Almost appears into the groin but not quite.

I had a groin pull many years ago, and so as a result my experience went on up into the tendons in the groin. Fortunately for me it hasn't been more than a constant tenderness in the area.

There are some "very" gentle stretches you can do to help heal. Mostly though you need to consider new shoes and/or arch supports, and to consider the terrain you are running on: is it new to you/your shoes?

I've felt pain to touch and it creeps up in later miles of a run by causing sharp sore pain upon foot plant, but ends in making it difficult to even raise the leg for varied terrain after 5 or more miles. The muscle directly effected makes it difficult to raise the leg to bring the knee to the chest.

Arch inserts or new shoes are the recommendation. Myself at 6'2" and 195# I go through shoes pretty quick: from 200 to 500 miles, and I forget although I keep track, of when they collapse, then I get an "injury" like this and realize "Hey, time to buy shoes!" only of course to realize the shoe company has changed my shoe again. Arg! :)

I first noticed this injury after a hard week with a 23 mile run at week end while not having a real solid base of daily mileage. It has remained for two weeks now.

Here's to a quick healing - try very long walks for a couple of weeks yeah I know it isn't running.

Decided to make a duo purpose out of this post. I am trying to assist the individual with his problem and also a short course on how I find stuff for folks.

First of all we need to get the name of the injury correct, then we can make progress on finding some help. You will often see the terms abductor and adductor applied to certain muscles. The "ab" is from the Latin root meaning "away or from," the "ad" meaning "to or towards." In anatomy the point of reference is a line running from the ground to the center of the forehead of a person standing facing you. Thus muscles that pull away from the midline are abductors and those that pull towards the midline are ad-ductors.

What you describe is an injury to a hip adductor. With this determined I went to my favorite search engine www.dogpile.com and entered the terms "hip adductor " in quotes and "strain" without the quotes. Then I visited a couple sites. some good ones were:

http://www.kicksports.com/aches/upperleg.shtml

and you can post a question through this link, http://www.ontherun.com/clinic/messages/1099.htm

I found the following article, http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1997/10oct/ex_thigh.htm

which has a good rehab exercise at one of my favorite sports medicine links, http://www.physsportsmed.com/back_iss.htm

Hope this helps now and in the future.

Mike Walker wrote:

"I'm seeking advice on how to overcome injury to what I believe is the abductor region of the upper inner right thigh. Almost appears into the groin but not quite. I've felt pain to touch and it creeps up in later miles of a run by causing sharp sore pain upon foot plant, but ends in making it difficult to even raise the leg for varied terrain after 5 or more miles. The muscle directly effected makes it difficult to raise the leg to bring the knee to the chest.

However, the last part of your description: "makes it difficult to raise the leg to bring the knee to the chest" suggests that you also have a problem with the psoas muscles. They attach to the lumbar area of the spine and run down to the leg. They assist raising the leg, and in a long run can tire to the point that you can't raise the leg normally, as you describe.

My adductor problem was caused by tightness in the hip rotator area. That caused my toes to point out when running, increasing the impact loading on the adductor tendons.

What I have to do to keep this at bay is:

1. stretch the hip rotators ( the root cause )
2. stretch the adductors
3. do inclined leg raises to strengthen the psoas group

I sit with the soles of my shoes together so that the weight of the legs gently stretches the adductor area. That is held for 20 seconds. Then I place an elbow on the inside of each knee, clasp the hands together and push inward with the legs for 10 seconds. Then the legs are relaxed. This is repeated 4 times. After each compression, the legs relax more and fall closer to the floor.

1) through 3) above are done every day.

Along with strengthening the adductor/psoas area, it would be wise to strengthen the rest of the body core, doing exercises for the lower back and abdominal muscles.

You should also consider you shoes as a contributing factor. If the heel counter is weak and allows the heal to roll inwards, it can increase the loading on the adductor area.

"Almost appears into the groin but not quite.

I agree with the suggestion of Karl to stretch the muscle much as possible. But : warm it up before you start stretching (with a hotpack or something like that)

You can also look for someone who's treating triggerpoints because it will certainly be that. I suffered with the same problems a year ago, I can imagine the bad feeling.

On the other hand, you may not forget that this adductor muscle may be the last muscle in a musclechain ! I mean, it is possible that other muscles are involved who are irritating that adductor magnus muscle.

So, if you go to a fysiotherapist, osteopath or someone like that, hen aks them also to look to the following muscles : adductor longus, adductor brevis, semimembranosus, semitendinosus, biceps femoris, sartorius, rectus abdominis, obliquus externus abdominis and pectineus.

But, the m.adductor magnus himself can also irritate other muscles who will react with pain, and these muscles may be : adductor breis, adductor longus, pectineus and quadriceps femoris vastus medialis.

"...but ends in making it difficult to even raise the leg for varied terrain after 5 or more miles. "...

hint : look for someone who knows to treat triggerpoints.

BTW : the Belgian site about triggerpoints : www.trigger.be