Groin Strain Issues

Straining or ”pulling” a muscle is one of those issues that arises far too often in sports. Soccer, hockey, and many track and field runners are part of the population that seemed to get plagued with these. Often times hamstring pulls are actually groin issues. These strains can be caused from a variety of issues such as…

Poor tissue quality
Strength imbalance between addutors and ABductors
Limited hip range of motion
Stiffness imbalance between glutes and adductors (basically similar to #2)
Lack of overall core stability
High volume running or skating in the preseason and a lack of off-season preparation

Poor Tissue Quality

If there is one area of the body that seems to feel like a steel cable to many athletes it is in their adductors. Soccer players, hockey players, and a variety of track runners that I used to know always noted how there adductors seemed to be problematic. One way to really get into the “high” posterior adductor magnus, the one adductor that gets overworked (check glute strength), is to use a dense medicine ball in this area as part of the warm-up (as foam rolling should be but the medball in this case works better). Also, hammering the glutes (lax ball), and hip flexors.

Posterior Adductor Magnus

Stiffness Imbalance between ADDuctors and ABductors

Since spending the past 2 in-seasons with a hockey organization, I have noticed similarities in warm-up and stretching with hockey and soccer players. Many of them have too much flexibility or mobility in their adductors and not enough with their glutes. What is the first stretch you will almost always see these players go to…

Everytime

As a result, they gain too much frontal plane flexibility (side-to-side flexibility), and much denser or “stiffer” glutes. We can help prevent the imbalance by mobilizing the glutes and strengthening the adductors in a shorter position

Lack of Core Stability

Sports hernia’s are the rage in many sports and to learn a great deal about them, I suggest taking the time to check out Kevin’s blogs about all these. Click here to start.

Basically, there is a tug of war going on with the fascia of the core musculature and the adductors. A marked anterior pelvic tilt makes this situation even worse. Anterior pelvic tilt stretches the abdominal wall–>bad news. We need to get athletes out of this extension and back to neutral by always coaching neutral spine.

Not there yet

There we go. Good positioning, and why the PVC is awesome

Thanks to the guys at Endeavor for teaching me these things

Cheers,

Matt

Comment

You need to be a member of Strength Performance Network to add comments!

Join Strength Performance Network

Comment by Lewis Coldham on May 28, 2012 at 1:30pm: Thank you very much Matt, i really appreciate help from a professional such as yourself and im sure i'll have plenty to ask.

My best regards

Lewis

Comment by Matt Siniscalchi on May 28, 2012 at 1:19pm: great response lewis!
keep in touch, my email is mattsiniscalchi@gmail.com if you need anything, I would be thrilled to help. I really want to part of the football community. I love it
Cheers,

Matt

Comment by Lewis Coldham on May 28, 2012 at 12:14pm: Matt,

Thank you very much your response was very helpful and from working with youth soccer players here in England ive seen the same, where the youth players have no clear ir problems however they did show lack of structural balance around their hips through continual playing such as knee buckling, anterior pelvic tilts etc.

The older ones however seemed to have more obvious internal rotation deficiencies which would most probably be from the accumulation of kicking techniques in er (like you said) over a number of years and thus it was common for the players to gain lower back soreness or light pain with age. After soft tissue work (foam rolling, tennis ball) and stretching of the hip flexors (rec fem and psoas) and light ir mobilizations and stretches these lower back issues continued to subside and/ease for the players but these issues were only seen in the older ages.

Comment by Matt Siniscalchi on May 28, 2012 at 11:58am: Lewis,
We have had a good amount of young soccer players but have not seen this issue because they are mostly too mobile. However, we have dealth with a great deal of hockey players and do know that hockey, soccer, and baseball are the primary athletes that as they get older tend to lack hip internal rotation because of the movement patterns associated with the sport. Baseball lead leg tends to lose hip ir , soccer kicking motion is er and hockey stride is lots of er. If anyone lacks hip ir or er we need to address it because we need full mobility in order to have authentic stability. Also a lack of hip ir can lead to groin issues, sports hernias, hip flexor problems etc.. we tend to roll our glutes with a lacrosse ball and do lots of glute mobilizations for these issues.

Comment by Lewis Coldham on May 28, 2012 at 8:11am: Hi there Matt, This may be a little unrelated but would you be able to tell me if you have much experience with Soccer players with Hip internal rotation deficits or lack of internal rotation at the hip joint. And if so then would this be another concern for players and something that needs addressing/correcting ?

Thank you very much

Lew

RSS

Welcome to
Strength Performance Network

Sign Up
or Sign In

Or sign in with: