Hockey Players Pulling Groins

Ever pulled your groin so badly it hurt to walk? Have hip tightness that makes it difficult to do the things you love?

I have and having been through that journey, I wanted to share some things that help with new or lingering groin pain.

Where this post is focused today is the inside of the thigh. It is an area that isn’t trained specifically in the gym but is used in our lives daily. Adductor strains occur mainly due to cutting and pivoting movements in sports like hockey and football (1). Many people think that the strain or pull comes from lacking flexibility, but it is heavily due to the opposite! Strength is often the issue when looking at risk factors for a groin strain (2). The other main risk factor is having a previous groin strain, which if you grew up playing hockey like myself, is very possible (2). If you play hockey, listen up. Hockey players out of all athletes are most likely to get groin injuries because of our skating or playing goalie (2).

Now the big question is how do we build up the strength? And what kind of strength do we need?

When we first injure the muscle, we need to do some passive modalities and exercises like isometrics and manual stretching to get the muscle through a full range of motion before we are able to transition into active exercises focusing on eccentric motions (2). Coppenhagens are a great exercise for groin strains. Controlling the deceleration of our bodies, aka our brakes, with our lower limbs and building strength for this is what will help keep groin pain away in the long run. The key here is to go slow and progressively increase the intensity of the exercises, in order to not hurt ourselves during rehab!

1. Kelly, B. T., Maak, T. G., Larson, C. M., Bedi, A., & Zaltz, I. (2013). Sports hip injuries: assessment and management. Instr Course Lect, 62, 515-31.

2. Tyler TF, Fukunaga T, Gellert J. Rehabilitation of soft tissue injuries of the hip and pelvis. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2014;9(6):785-797.