Top 4 Exercises & Stretches Needed To Fix A Pulled Groin Muscle

In this video I’m going to show you the top four exercises that are needed to fix a pull groin muscle. My name is Dr. David Middaugh, I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections, and having to rely on pain medications. Please consider subscribing to this channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we post each and every week.

And in case you’re wondering what a poor gray muscle is, or you want to learn more about poor groin muscles, I’ve got some videos linked in the description below that tell you exactly everything you need to know about poor groin muscles. So go check that out. If you want to fix it. Let’s get started right here.

The first exercise that you need to begin to do is get some length through the adductor muscles or the these muscles right here, the groin muscles. And we’re going to do that by doing a bent knee followed exercise. So find a place that you can lie down on your back just like me, and lay down with your knees bent. It doesn’t matter how far your feet are from your body. So if you feel more comfortable in this position, or in this position, it’s really up to you and you can change it at any time.

What you’re going to do next is with the with one leg at a time, it doesn’t matter which one you start with, you might start out with your not hurt leg so that you can see what it feels like and then see what you can do with your Pulled Groin leg. But you’re going to slowly drop the knee outwards, just like this keeping the other side still in go as far as you can comfortably go to where you start to get a little bit of a stretch and tension through the inner thigh muscle, the groin muscle, you don’t need to force it and don’t hang out there very long.

As soon as you get out to the edge right there, then come back in and do the same thing with the other side go as far as you can comfortably go. And then come back in the point of this movement you can alternate is to just get your groin muscle to gradually lengthen, it’s a safe position because you’re not putting a bunch of weight through it, you’re not standing and you’re not forcing any emotion whatsoever. You’re just doing what the body allows and then you’re repetitively doing it.

So what should happen is your groin muscles should begin to slowly give you should allow your groin muscle to go farther, your hip joint will get a little more comfortable as well. And it should just be easier and easier. The more that you do this, I recommend doing 30 reps just to start out. I see I see that people kind of moving fearfully at the beginning, the first 10 reps and the next 20 reps are kind of gaining some length.

And then the last 10 reps, they’re really moving a lot easier and faster, they’re starting to move a lot more confidently, you can go more than 30 reps. But that’s just what I see. If you want to do this for you know, 5060 100 reps, that should be fine. As long as it’s not aggravating your groin muscle. You also don’t want to force it, you’re most likely to aggravate your groin muscle. If you really try to stretch it out and force it down with your hand or using your muscles.

We’re actually going to do an exercise here in a second that’s going to begin to do that. So no need to do it right now you’re just trying to move real easily to get some motion through those groin muscles and through your hip joints. The next exercise you’re going to do is turn on your glute muscles because most of the time whenever I see somebody that has a pull groin injury or history of it because it tends to recur, they’ve got weakness back here in the glute muscles.

And that weakness is creating a muscle imbalance that’s causing an overuse of the groin muscles. So what we have to do is begin to activate the glute muscles. And you can do it in this same position that we did the Bettany fall outs, and we’re going to do glute activations. So I’m going to do is think about squeezing your butt muscles. From here, just tighten them up and hold it for 10 seconds, and then relax.

And we do this again, we’re going to repeat this at least 10 times if not more, tighten up the butt muscles. When you tighten up your butt muscles work on relaxing as best as possible every other muscle in your body. Try to only tighten the glute muscles about muscles, what you’re likely to start to tighten is the front of the thigh muscles as well as those inner thigh muscles. So don’t tighten so hard that everything starts tighten up.

That’s called ko contracting, you want to just tighten up the muscles that you intend to the glutes. So, if tightening up 100% causes everything else to fire, you’re not ready to go on and percent that will come later on. But right now just go the percentage that you can before everything else has tightened up. For me it’s about right there. I’m at about 70% and it rarely ever works perfectly the first time even for somebody who’s not got a problem and I know how to fire my glutes pretty well.

After warm up a little bit to make my glutes activate without everything else firing up. So hold it for about 10 seconds and then relax after 10 seconds just stay right there. Alternatively, you might find that if you put your legs down like this, and work on your glutes from there you get a better contraction and that’s okay, you can do this instead of the knees bent version. So just legs down flat, relaxed, and then squeeze the glute muscles, and then relax for 10 seconds, relax as long as you need to, usually a couple seconds is just fine. And then tighten up the glutes for 10 seconds and relax.

Now notice my feet there in the frame, my feet are turned out a bit. And that’s just the way naturally relaxing live. But if you tend to be towed in like this, where your legs are really close to each other, that’s going to make you want to fire those inner thigh muscles. So you’re going to need to actually tell your body to rotate your feet out, turn your toes out and put a little space between your feet.

So open up your legs a bit, so that you can more successfully squeeze your glute muscles because as soon as you turn your feet in and bring your feet in together, your glutes will still work, but your adductors or your groin muscles will work along with them. And that’s what we’re trying to not do. Just get those glute muscles to tighten up only as best as possible. You want to do this 10 times or more.

What most people find is that the more they do this, so they’ll go beyond 10. Usually, they’ll get a better and better glute contraction. The point here is to get control over your glutes without firing everything else. So once you’ve achieved that, you’re good to go. Even if you’ve done more than 10 reps, you can stop. Even if you’ve done less than 10 reps, you don’t need a five or six and you feel like your glutes are working pretty well and nothing else is firing, you’re probably good to go.

You can go the extra five you want for good measure. The next exercise is going to be diamond bridges. Now a normal bridge exercise looks like this, your knees are bent and you’re picking up your hips just like this. This is a bridge. A diamond bridge means your feet are going to be facing each other. So your soles are on each other just like this, your feet are soul to soul. And then you’re still going to be lifting up but just a little bit.

The point here is to put some length through the groin muscles. So only go out as far as you can comfortably go, you might find that you need to be more like this. Always keep your legs symmetrical as well. Don’t let one leg go way, way far out compared to the other. If you feel like you’re injured thigh muscle, your groin muscle doesn’t let you go out more than about this angle. And just keep your other leg at about the same angle for symmetry sake.

But if you feel like you can slowly gradually let them fall out especially if you’ve been doing the previous two exercises, you should be able to get there easier. And just go to where you’re normal and ranges without stretching or discomfort. Next you’re going to do is find the right position for your feet you might even movement a little bit more or out and then you might try the exercise a couple times to and then make another adjustment.

Then you’re going to squeeze your butt muscles and you’re going to feel some tension, build up on your inner thighs. Make sure it’s not aggravating you, it’s not hurting you. It’s just a little bit of stretch, a small stretch, holding the glutes tight nagging to start to lift up your bottom, hold it there for 10 seconds and you should feel your glutes working pretty well. And a little stretch on the groin muscles.

Not an aggressive stretch whatsoever, you will make yourself worse if you’re getting an aggressive stretch. After 10 seconds. Come on down and relax everything you need to get out of this diamond position you can once you ready for the next rep get your feet soul to soul. Again, squeeze your butt muscles, lift your bottom and I’m just lifting a little bit I can go way up right there. But you see on my knees kind of want to come in now.

So I’m only lifting half an inch to an inch, you know one or two centimeters. And holding it there to make my glutes work and providing a stretch here. The higher up you come up with your hips, then your thighs won’t stretch as much on the inside part. So it’s not as effective. The point here is to fire the glute muscles while adding length to the groin muscles. So but tight, lift up just a little bit, hold it for a 10 count 710 and then relax.

And you’re just getting those glutes to work but tight and lift up a little bit and get the groin to stretch at the same time. And it feels good. Even if you don’t have a great injury. I don’t have a gray injury thankfully, and this feels nice on my hip joints on my thigh muscles, of course, and my glutes are working very nicely. So it’s always a good thing to avoid any sort of muscle imbalance.

So once you’ve done 10 reps of these, you should be ready for the next exercise, which is a mini squat. This exercise takes the diamond bridge and makes you do it in a standing position. I love this especially because you need to be on your feet eventually. And so this teaches you to move properly. To be on your feet and activate the right muscles, and begin to reverse the muscle imbalance of your groin muscles working too much and your glutes not working enough. Right.

So here’s how you do the mini squat. And you’re going to see the similarity between this and the diamond bridge, you’re going to get your feet about hip width apart, turn your toes out, because that makes you want to fire your glutes. And it puts a little bit of length through those adductor muscles, those groin muscles, and then you’re going to just bend your knees a little bit. That’s why it’s a mini squat, and you got to shove your hips forward.

So it looks like this. Here’s what it looks like from the front, I’ll show you the side in the back in just a moment. But already just shoving your hips forward, you should feel your butt muscles, engage and tighten up. That’s the goal here. You don’t want to use the inner thigh muscles or the front of the thigh muscles, you need to feel the glute muscles working in the back right here. Let me show you the side view of this.

So there I am standing normally I’m not squatting yet, feet about hip width apart, toes turned out. And I’m going to just slightly bend my knees very slightly, I mean, maybe 15 degrees or so. Not quite 2025 degrees. And then I’m going to shove my hips forward, it’s like a forward hip thrust, and then open and just thinking about opening my knees at the same time. So now these muscles back here are tight, they’re working.

This is very minorly working, it’s I feel just a tiny bit of tension. But definitely way more back here, obviously, much more activation to the glute, which is what I want it a little bit of stretch to the inner thigh muscles from the back view over here. feet about hip width apart, very subtly bend my knees. And then I’m going to show my knees out and bring my hips forward, which makes these muscles engaged here on the back. And I’m holding this for 10 seconds I mentioned that but you need to be holding this mini squat for 10 seconds.

After 10 seconds you can stand up and just relax the muscles. And then repeated knees and shove your hips forward. Make sure these glute muscles are as tight as can be. You might put your hand back there, put your hand in your pocket, just feel the muscles engaged back here so that you have certainty that you’re using those glute muscles. After 10 seconds, you can relax and you would look at repeating this exercise for a minimum of 10 reps.

As long as you don’t feel your adductors your groin muscles working. That’s about 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and then relax. Knees bent, hips forward, shove your knees out a little bit, there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 seconds and I feel those groups working really well. So as far as how often to do these exercises, if you’ve just suffered a groin injury or pull the groin, at least give yourself you know, a few hours to just recover.

You might do the feel good stuff like I see Wrap It Up rested for sure. But once you feel like you’re comfortable and ready to move, you should be able to begin doing some of these exercises at least the first exercise of any fallout exercise, and the glute says should be tolerable if at any point any of these exercises begin to make your Pulled Groin muscle worse, you need to stop you might be overdoing it already, you might need to just give yourself a little more time before you get back into it.

And as your pool growing begins to heal. You should definitely do more and more of the harder exercises like the diamond bridges as well as the mini squats so that you can begin to make your glutes the primary muscle that you’re using in your hips and avoid using your adductor your groin muscles and in falling into that recurring pattern of pulling your groin over and over again. Hope this video was helpful for you. Please don’t forget check out the extra videos we’ve got about poor groin muscles down in the description below. And we’ll see you in the next video friends. Bye