You know the feeling. You’re bombing down the mountain, absolutely shredding the fresh pow. Then suddenly, it happens. You feel that awful deep pull in your groin, like someone just reached into your soul from the worst angle possible and squeezed it as hard as they can. Now you’re out of action and have to watch as your buddies get the goods and you’re stuck nursing a drink and your own bitterness.
It doesn’t have to be that way. While such an injury seems like it happens suddenly, most of the time you’re chronically tight in the muscles of the inner thighs, as well as the medial seams of the hamstrings and quads, too. Your glutes (see: butt muscles) might also be tacked down. Then every time you exercise you’re pulling on those gnarly tissues. And let’s be honest, even if you do notice some tightness, it’s not a stabbing pain and you think you can just push through it. Until you can’t. Try these three mobility exercises to sort you out in an area that your massage therapist isn’t going to help heal, no matter how much you pay them:
Banded Olympic Wall Squat
Sometimes when you’re medial chain is tight, you’ve also got chronic stiffness along the lateral seam (the outside) as well. So if your groin is all locked down, it’s likely that you’re tight in the hips and along the outer edge of the quads as well. Luckily, there’s a mobilization that’ll hit both trouble spots. To do it:
—Sit sideways, parallel to a wall. Check that none of your friends has a video-enabled cell phone nearby, or you’re gonna be a social media star!
—Loop one end of a stretching band just below your left knee
—Thread the rest of the band around your lower back
—Hook the other end of the band just below your right knee
—Making sure the band stays in place, turn to face the wall, lie on your back and pull your knees toward your chest until you’re in the equivalent position to a squat-to-parallel stance (i.e. squatting until your thighs are parallel to the ground)
—Place your feet on the wall and in a neutral position (straight, not ducked out) and shoulder width apart
—Making sure your butt and lower back are flat on the floor, shove your knees out against the tension of the band
—Hold for 10 seconds, relax for 3, then repeat. Collect a total of 2 minutes
—To add a more intense stretch, place your elbows inside your knees and use them to push out harder
See this video for a demo (start at 1:00)
Adductor Smash
Another problem area that can lead to the dreaded groin pull is the inside of the quads. This group of four muscles are the engines for your legs and are very powerful. So if they get tight they can not only start tugging on your knees and tilting your pelvis, but also contribute to a groin tweak. There’s a simple fix, though:
—Lie face down
—Place a mobility ball just outside your left hip
—Reach your left leg back and pin the ball to the ground, just above your knee and on the inside of your left quad
—Slowly roll the ball forward, keeping it pinned under you, until you straighten the leg
—Return the starting position and repeat. After a few reps, move the ball a bit higher up the inside of the quad to start
—Go all the way up until you’re at the top of the quad and have accumulated at least 2 minutes
—Switch legs. You could also then smash the entire quad on both sides
Watch this clip to see the next-level kettlebell version of this move
Modified Pigeon Pose
A lot of people use the pigeon pose when they get a sharp pain in their glutes, which some call piriformis syndrome (it can actually stem from tightness in any of the butt muscles that leads to pinching on a nerve, but that’s a story for another day). For our purposes, we’re going to bias this classic yoga posture to get at that ugly deep tissue on the inside of your legs. To do so:
—Sit on the floor
—Put your left leg out in front of you and drop your left hip to the side so the outside of your leg rests on the floor. Imagine the top of your leg forms a straight line from your hip to the knee.
—The outside lower left leg should also be flat on the floor, at a right angle
—Extend your right leg behind you and try to move the knee as far to the left as it will go without causing pain or discomfort
—Hinge forward from the pelvis a couple of inches, being sure to keep your lower back flat
—Slowly twist your torso a few inches to your right until you feel tension high up on the inside of your left leg. Camp out there for 10 seconds, release the tension for 3, and repeat.
—Collect at least 2 minutes. Try hunting around to find tight spots by changing your torso position and the amount of body lean
—If you think you might be tight on the outside of the hip, try rotating and leaning in the other direction once you’ve finished with the target area
Want to change the stimulus? Then do the same thing on a countertop or bench. See 1:48 onward in this video for a how-to.
