Pulled Groin Muscle – Everything You Absolutely Need To Know

In this video I’m going to share with you everything you absolutely need to know about Pulled Groin muscles. Specifically, I’ll be sharing with you the common symptoms and causes of poor groin muscles. But I’m also going to let you know about the common treatments that are done for poor groin muscles.

I’m Dr. David Middaugh and I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. This channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we post each and every week.

So let’s start by answering the question what is a Pulled Groin muscle? Here’s the hip joint, here’s the knee joint. There it is in view better. And of course, the pelvis the low back there’s the other side. So if we’re looking at the right, the groin muscles are the muscles that attach on the inside of the pelvis bone right here on the inner part of the pelvis bone.

So the groin you know the private parts of right in this area for men and women, the muscles attached right along the edge of this bone. And then they run on the inside of the thigh down to the inside of the knee attaching at the top of the shin bone right here. And the job of these muscles is to control and stabilize movements that happen in the thigh and the knee as well as to move the knee inwards because of their attachment points.

They can when they when this muscle shortens, it can move the leg across this way. It’s also involved in some rotation of the hip joints and of course provides stability to both the hip joint and the knee joints. So when we talk about pulling your groin muscle, it’s actually the muscle group called the adductors a d d u c t o r adductor abductor, the word means to move in this direction, this is called adduction.

And then AB duction with a B instead of a D, you move outwards this way and those muscles are on the outside part of your hip. So the abductors, the AB doctors and the ad doctors, the ad doctors on the inside of the thigh are opposing muscle groups. And anytime you have opposing muscle groups, you need to have a balance between all the muscles in the area.

The reason why I pulled groin muscle happens is because the inner thigh muscles here the adductor muscles or the groin muscles have been overused, probably chronically in most cases. But then there’s usually some event that just pushes people over the edge and causes them to strain the muscle or pull the muscle is the more common non medical term.

But in the healthcare field, we would say a strained adductor muscle, that’s what causes symptoms of a Pulled Groin muscle. Now talking about the symptoms of a poor groin muscle, you’re going to experience pain anywhere along the muscle. So if we’re looking at the hip, anywhere from the inner groin, like at the absolute top, where the leg meets the rest of the body at the thigh, and where it runs down into the knee, you can have pain anywhere along.

Oftentimes, it’s usually in the upper half of the inner thigh. That would be like a true groin sprain, but you can technically get pain down by the knee as well. And it’s the same muscle group that’s causing that problem. This usually hurts to move your leg especially if it’s a real severe pull groin, they can also hurt with just simple movements like walking or getting in and out of a chair.

The most common example is when you have to turn to get out of a seat like when you’re getting out of a vehicle or into a vehicle because you have to abduct or abduct your leg which causes you to move those muscles and use them, so you have to move kind of in this direction to get in and out of a vehicle or in and out of a chair. Depending on how it is like at a booth at a restaurant.

Or if you’re in school, you’re younger, because this does tend to happen to younger people. Getting in and out of a desk chair at school might affect this problem as well. Doing more being more active. Going back to exercise too soon will usually aggravate this problem as well. And pull groin injuries are often associated with other injuries down at the knee and at the hip as well.

Injuries like IT band problems in the hip tendinitis bursitis problems in the hip patellofemoral pain syndrome or pain in the back of the kneecap inside the knee meniscus injuries, ligament injuries inside the knee joint can also be related to this. You can even have back pain associated with a poor groin injury. Because of the muscle attachment to this pelvis bone.

It can shift this bone right here, this big bone it’s all one connected piece of bone that can just transfer or refer pain into the back of the low back area. So if you strangely been getting low back pain and then you got the pull groin or vice versa, maybe you pulled your groin first. And now you have some residual back pain. It’s likely related to that pelvis bone shifting. And we talked about the causes of a pull groin the number one cause is going to be some sort of sporting accident.

An athlete typically over does it by just being too aggressive, too intense than what they’re prepared for what Their bodies ready for, if you’re exerting yourself just a lot more intensely than you normally might, especially in a game situation, then you are susceptible to getting a groin injury if you have that underlying muscle imbalance.

Now that underlying muscle imbalance is key here, if you’re thinking about the inner thigh muscles, and how they how they run here, to the inside of the hip, and to the inside of the knee, those muscles are merely just stabilizing muscles. And they’re typically not the biggest muscles in the hip. The biggest muscles in the hip are going to be the glute muscles in the back.

Those muscles are your powerhouse muscles that are designed to propel you through running through walking through jumping. And if you’re not using these muscles, when doing all those activities, running, jumping and walking, then you’re likely substituting muscle strength from other muscles, including the adductor muscles or the groin muscles. And that’s what’s leading to this overuse injury. Leading to a poor groin muscle.

A secondary problem that could feed into this is poor foot strength. Because if your arch in your foot is kind of dropped, and you don’t have enough strength to support it, especially if you’re doing some sort of activity where you’re on your feet for a long time, like with running soccer or any sort of sport where you’re on your feet, then you’re going to need a lot of strength in your arch of your foot to support the rest of your leg.

If your leg is chronically coming in, because your arch falls down like this, then it’s going to tension that adductor and put it in a position where you’re going to want to use it more. And it typically shuts off the glute muscle, that big power muscle that’s supposed to propel you in most activities. So how is a pull groin muscle treated? Now, like I said, this tends to affect athletes, but it can affect anyone of any age.

It’s just a matter of what muscle imbalances are there and what activity you’re putting your body through. We see people here in the clinic in their 50s 60s and 70s. And beyond that suffer from a poor groin from doing chores around the house, especially springtime when the weather gets a little bit warmer and people get out and are more active, maybe gardening or doing cleaning around the house that they hadn’t been able to get to during the winter time.

Putting away Christmas decorations or even taking them out can also be a time that they’re especially susceptible to pulling their groin muscle. But the number one treatment that people start is ice and heat. And especially if you’re in an athletic environment, you may have access to athletic trainers, they’ll typically put that on you. They may even offer compression by wrapping your thigh, you might do that on your own at home.

There’s plenty of advice on the internet to show that that’s something that can make you feel better in the short term. If you end up seeing a doctor for this, they may recommend pain medication, likely over the counter pain medication like Tylenol, or Advil, ibuprofen, whether you might recommend prescription strength medication, if it’s right for you.

Typically doctors will tell you that it’s going to heal on its own and it often does calm down once you start being so active. The problem is that muscle and balance needs to be addressed. And if you’re not doing the right exercises to address the right muscle strength, then that muscle imbalances going to stay there and as soon as you put your body in a position where you’re over exerting yourself again, you’re very susceptible to getting that pull groin injury.

Again, if you do end up getting sent to physical therapy, you go find a physical therapist, a general physical therapists will probably take you through some light stretching activities and as well as some easy exercises just to begin to get comfortable with movement through your leg again, more specialized physical therapy like the kind that we offer here will begin to directly address the muscle imbalance which is typically weak glute muscles and weak foot muscles.

I’ve got some videos that are going to help you address those weak glutes and weak foot muscles down in the description below. So to hit that See More button, you’ll drop down the description and you can scroll down and find the links to those videos to begin to work on them at home right now. I hope this video was helpful for you please consider sharing this video with somebody who needs to see this and I’ll see you in the next video friends. Bye