Adductor Stretch – Keep Your Knees-Out During Squats

If your knees cave in during squats you may have tight adductors.

The Adductors are an often-overlooked part of training. The adductor magnus plays an important part in hip extension in athletic movement and in postural balance. The adductors are often tight and influence the pelvic floor and core stability. Many problems associated with the hamstrings (butt-wink, keeping the knees out, hamstring stiffness) are related to the adductors.

This stretch has two components – a bent and straight leg stretch for the short and long adductors. After doing this stretch retest your ability to keep your knees out.

Keeping your Knees-Out during the Squat
The third point of performance for the squat ‘knees-out’ is related to flexibility of the joint-capsule and the adductors especially.

Glut-Strength
Glut strength is another factor in keeping the knees out during the squat.

Here is a great 3D Glut Strengthening Exercise by Mike Reinold

Clamshells and this sidelying exercise can be easily incorporated pre-workout to strengthen and activate the gluts. Hip-internal rotation is sometimes improved without addressing flexibility by activating the gluts.

Joint-Capsule
Limited hip internal rotation can be addressed with the joint capsule stretches I covered for internal rotation and this hip-opener sequence.

Ankle Flexibility
Another factor in keeping the ‘knees-out’ is ankle flexibility. This ankle-band stretch can help restore the motion of the ankle. My lower-leg routine (coming soon!) will also help prevent the ankle from rolling in during the squat which then causes the knee to cave in.

Knee Pain
Knee pain is often attributed to the quadriceps on the front of the thigh, sometimes strengthening exercises for VMO (the medial quadriceps) strengthening are prescribed. This, in my opinion is less functional than rebalancing the inner and outer relationship of the adductors and gluts.

If you adductors are tight or weak – it is likely that you will have problems with knee tracking and possibly knee pain.

Tom Myers, author of “Anatomy Trains” explains that the deep front line (which includes the core musculature of the adductors) and the lateral line (gluts…) work together to stabilize the knee.

Adductor Strengthening
Strengthening the adductors can also greatly improve your squat. Two options for strengthening the adductors are wide-stance squats and uni-lateral exercises like lunges, one-leg hip thrusts, and pistol squats.

– Kevin Kula, “The Flexibility Coach” – Creator of FlexibilityRx™

Tags: adductor flexibility, adductor magnus, Adductor Stretch, knees out, squatrx, tight hips