Can You Widen Your Thighs Using Your Adductors?  

And Why Would You Want To?

You've probably heard the instruction in a yoga class to widen from your inner thighs. What does that mean? Your adductors are the muscles of your inner thighs but how could you widen from your adductors? That seems like a contradiction since your adductors generally draw your thighs closer together. It would seem that you must use your abductors to widen. If the instruction to widen from your inner thighs is to have credibility, there must be something else at play.

There is. But first...

Why Widen?

Why would you want to widen your thighs in the first place? It's to protect your knees. Your knees are precision instruments. The condyles of your femurs and tibia move in an elegantly choreographed dance with your soft tissues such as menisci, muscles and ligaments. If any part of the dance is misaligned or even out of sync time-wise, the soft tissues are quite vulnerable to damage. Even your brain is in on the dance. Your brain fires your popliteus muscle in order to pull your lateral meniscus out of the way when you bend your knee. I explain the meniscus dance in detail in the Biomechanics of Healing Webinar: Torn Meniscus edition.

One of the best ways to protect the soft tissue of your knees from damage is to help your knees track naturally. If turns out that if you draw your shins medially and widen from your thighs at the same time, you are providing the muscular support for natural tracking in your knees. When your knees track properly, the meniscus dance is a thing of beauty to behold.

What is Widening?

First we need to clear up the distinction between widening and abduction. AD-duction and AB-duction are rotations that occur at the hip joint. They are radial movements that center on the hip joint. When you abduct your hip joint, your foot moves a lot and your hip joint does not move at all. It only rotates. Both AD- and AB-duction are pure rotations.

Widening is not the same as rotation. Instead, widening is like moving two broomsticks apart from each other. When your yoga teacher asks you to widen from your inner thighs, they are not asking you to abduct. They are asking you to widen. In order to widen your thighs in Tadasana, you cannot do so from your abbductors because your feet are fixed. Abductors cannot widen. They can only rotate.

Can You Do That?

Now, for the big question: CAN YOU WIDEN USING YOUR ADDUCTORS? This is understandably an issue that generates lots of debate because most people are thinking about abduction when they hear widening. But remember, abductors cannot widen. They can only rotate. But can adductors cause widening?  

The answer is, yes they can, but it is an indirect reaction to an attempt to adduct with your foot fixed in place. Here's how you can feel the widening effect in your own body.

• Stand with your feet parallel and outer hip width apart.
• Pull your feet toward each other isometrically, that is, attempt to adduct your hip joints.
• You will feel your adductors engage.
• From this action, attempt to widen at the top of your femurs. Be sure to initiate this action from your inner thighs and not your abductors - keep them soft.
• You will see that you can feel widening happening from your inner thighs.

How Does Widening Happen?

Here is how it works. Consider your right leg when standing in Tadasana. Since your leg is held straight and rigid in this exercise (no bending at the knees), you can consider it a single rigid member. When you are standing, your foot is anchored in position and does not move. When you attempt to adduct your right hip joint, your adductor muscles attempt to shorten the distance between your femur bone and the center of your pelvic base. They pull your femur and your pelvis toward one another.

This action attempts to rotate your femur counter-clockwise while at the same time, rotating your pelvis clockwise. These two rotations combine to create a widening action at your femur head.

You can create a simple model of this action with your fingers as follows.

• Hold your left index finger pointing upward (represents your femur).
• Hold your right index finger pointing downward with your fingertips touching (represents your right pelvis).
• Where they touch represents your hip joint.
• Rotate your left index finger counter-clockwise and your right index finger clockwise while keeping your finger tips touching.
• You will see that your fingertips (hip joints) widen laterally.

There you have it. You can widen your upper femur due to the actions of your adductors.  

This is how the GEEK spend his time. I hope this will be helpful to you. Also, here's fun link to my skit, The Meniscus Dance. 

With Love,

Martin