How To: Side-Lying Hip Abductions
Have knee pain that isn’t brought on by having your legs broken from a gambling debt or some other kind of freak injury?
Then you more than likely have weak glutes.
The glutes are the largest muscle group in the body and consist of three muscles, one of which is the gluteus medius. The gluteus medius is responsible for leg abduction, or lifting your leg to the side, as well as stabilization of the pelvis. When this muscle is weak, the right side of the pelvis, for example, drops as you lift that leg to stand on the left one as you walk or run. Then with all your weight bearing on that leg, your knee caves in toward the other knee, which compresses the kneecap. It’s this chronic stress of the knee that eventually results in knee pain thanks to the change in the body’s biomechanics.
That’s not only where hip abduction exercises come in handy to help strengthen the gluteus medius but also where side-lying hip abductions come in particularly useful. Per a recent study comparing different side-lying hip strengthening exercises, side-lying hip abductions beat out clamshells and side-lying hip abductions with external rotation. Side-lying hip abductions were superior in activating the gluteus medius with little activation of the tensor fasciae latae and anterior hip flexors.
So yeah, you should probably do ’em! Continue reading How To: Side-Lying Hip Abductions
