The 5 Best Stretches to Treat Your Pulled Groin
These deep hip stretches will help you find relief fast.
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As runners know all too well, injuries happen. A common one? A pulled groin.
To heal a pulled groin, you need to understand why it happens. Your groin region—the area between your stomach and thighs—is comprised of five muscles that work together to help you move your legs with a full range of motion: the pectineus, gracilis, adductor magnus, adductor longus, and adductor brevis.
If you’re young and active, you might start feeling groin pain if you skip a warmup and jump directly into your workout. Overuse, injuries, or pulling a muscle can all cause aches, soreness, and pain down there.
The fix? Stretching these muscles out help relax the pulled groin and hip flexors when they’re especially tight, explains Mark Vorensky, P.T., D.P.T., S.C.S., physical therapist at New York University’s Langone’s Sports Performance Center. At the same time, “strengthening will allow the groin muscles and region to be more resilient,” he says.
[Need a runner-specific workout to strengthen weak links, prevent injury and improve recovery? Check out RUN 360.]
Here, Vorensky offers up five pulled groin stretches to get you going, all of which help to release the hip flexors and groin muscles. Incorporating these into your routine twice weekly will teach these muscle groups how to relax and prepare you for other effective strengthening exercises down the road.
Emily Abbate is a freelance writer, certified fitness trainer, and host of the podcast Hurdle. You can find her work in GQ, Shape, Runner’s World, and other health and fitness publications.
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