Exercises for the Adductors and Pectineus Muscles

The inside of your thighs is made up the thigh adductors or, simply, the adductors, referring to muscles that pull your leg toward the midline of your body. Five muscles enable this action: adductor longus, adductor brevis, adductor magnus, pectineus and gracilis. Exercising these muscles helps fill the void if you have a large gap between your thighs. If you have excess fat in your thighs, increasing your muscle mass improves the shape of your thighs, though only proper dieting and exercise, where you put out more energy than you take in, will remove excess fat.

  1. Standing Exercises

    • To exercise these muscles under resistance while in a standing position, you must have access to either a resistance machine, a cable pulley or a resistance band. Regardless of which type of equipment you utilize, the gist of the movement is to start with either leg away from the midline of your body and then move this leg inward until it is at your body's midline, or just slightly past. Exercising your adductor while standing gives you the advantage of recruiting a greater number of stabilizer muscles, such as the gluteus medius of your buttocks and the obliques of your abdomen. These muscles help you maintain your balance while you execute the movements.

    Seated Exercises

    • Similar to standing exercises you need access to training equipment to train your adductors while seated. The difference, however, is you can perform the exercises bilaterally -- two sides at a time -- while seated. Sitting down enables you to bring both legs toward the midline at the same time, working the adductor muscles of each thigh. However, the drawback of sitting is that you involve fewer stabilizing muscles.

    Isometric Exercises

    • Concentric and eccentric exercises mean you shorten and lengthen your adductors during each repetition -- simply put, these exercises use movement. Another way to train your adductors without changing the lengths of your muscles to any significant degree is an isometric exercise, where you hold your form to strengthen your adductors. You use this type of training while performing either standing or seated exercises. Once you move your leg, or legs, toward your body's midline, you hold the leg position for as long as possible, or for a set period of time, such as 30 to 45 seconds.

    The Workout

    • Before you do any of these exercises, warm up for five to 10 minutes. Example warmups are slow walking or light cycling, which engage the addutors without stressing them. Complete two to three exercises for an effective adductor workout, preferably when you're also working out your hips or legs. The key is to do three sets of 10 to 15 repetitions per exercise. For the isometric exercises, you are not counting reps, but holding the position for the desired amount of time. When you finish your workout, stretch the adductor muscles as part of the cooldown. Stretching is critical to staying limber. Complete, for example, the lying adductor stretch by lying on your back and holding the back of either thigh, pulling your leg toward your shoulder with your knee bent. Hold the position for 15 to 30 seconds and switch legs.