Groin injuries/pain are a common occurrence for athletes, a study across 24 NCAA sports showed that Hip/Groin injuries are most common in sports that involve kicking, skating and sudden changes of direction and speed. Simply put that’s A LOT of sports, so if you kick, skate, run fast change fast stop fast then you should pay attention to this (and share with all your teammates).
Recent studies show that groin/hip are the top 3 injuries in professional football (according to the nice people at FIFA). They state that up to 18% of all injuries in football occur at the hip/groin. This equates to .4-1.3 Injuries per 1000 hours of football play. Across 24 NCAA sports they found the number to be somewhat similar. The literature show 56.03 over 100,000 athlete exposures. Its hard to compare the two stats due to different parameters used. (FIFA used game play, NCAA used all exposure, so practice and games). However one thing is clear, and that’s that the hip/groin are problematic for an athlete, so some form of groin prehab is essential.
When looking a bit deeper into the science we can see that the overwhelming injury to the hip/groin are non-contact injury. The winner is the adductor/groin tear which amounted nearly 25% of all injuries. When looking at the difference between sex the stats are similar. One paper shows that hip/groin injuries are the most common non-time loss injury in female soccer.
Anatomy
Now you know that we need to address this issue so we can remain on the field or court. Let's have a little look into the anatomy of the hip.
The majority of the groin injuries are what is known as a strain, and this will most likely involve the adductor muscles. The mechanism of a groin strain is the result of an excessive stretch of a contracted muscle. Meaning overloading of the eccentric muscle action. Often once injured you become more susceptible to reinjury, so a solid rehab protocol is essential. If you don’t have a previous groin injury, then lets keep it that way.
Help is Here
I have put together a little video below to help you with your groin prehab. It shows a number of great exercises that you can add to “Bulletproof” the groin. In the video we focus on building strength through the adductor muscles. Ensure that you also add plenty of abduction, glute and hip flexor work. Give me a shout if you want some more guidance in relation to this.
Bridge Squeeze – A few variations to this shown in the video so select one that suits your level of strength and stability. Working isometrically through the adductors squeezing a ball as hard as you can.
Lateral Slides – Working through a comfortable range ensure you are able to pull back the foot to standing. This is a great exercise to add some eccentric strength through the adductors. As with other variations of lunges it recruits a decent amount of motor units around the hip complex.
Copenhagen’s – both reps and iso holds are shown in the video as both are need. A very challenging exercise that really hammers the adductors and will help build some solid eccentric adaptations, which is essential in remaining groin strain free.
Enjoy the video and give a like, share and some feedback in the comments.
I like to work on a pain grade of 0-10 with all this type of stuff. Some coaches think that you have to be a zero of the exercises shouldn’t be done. I don’t buy into this, its normal for some discomfort when rehabbing an injury, and its needed to figure out boundaries and when and how to push the process. So if these exercises don’t cause you anything above a 3 (mild discomfort/slight pain) then crack on. If they do then we need to back up a little and find some more remedial exercises, or investigate the problem a little bit further with a qualified physio. Otherwise make these drill part of your daily arsenal in order to bulletproof yourself and stay on the field or court!!!!.
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