The groin muscles respond well to targeted strengthening, and you can start building them with bodyweight exercises alone. This muscle group, known as the adductors, runs along your inner thigh and is responsible for pulling your legs toward your midline, stabilizing your pelvis when you walk, and controlling rotational movements. Weakness here is one of the strongest predictors of groin strains, but a few weeks of consistent work can make a measurable difference.
What Your Groin Muscles Actually Do
Five muscles make up the inner thigh compartment: the pectineus, adductor longus, adductor brevis, gracilis, and adductor magnus. The adductor magnus is the largest of the group and arguably the most important. Part of it flexes your thigh forward and rotates it inward, while another portion extends your thigh backward and rotates it outward. Both portions work together during walking to control your pelvis and keep you balanced.
This dual role matters for exercise selection. Squeezing your knees together (adduction) is the most obvious groin movement, but these muscles also contribute to lunging, squatting, and changing direction. Effective strengthening hits them across multiple movement patterns, not just one.
Best Exercises for Groin Strength
Side-Lying Hip Adduction
This is the simplest starting point. Lie on your side with your bottom leg straight and your top leg crossed over in front, foot flat on the floor. Lift your bottom leg toward the ceiling, hold briefly, and lower it with control. Aim for 2 sets of 15 repetitions per side. It isolates the adductors without any complicated setup, making it a good option if you’re new to groin work or coming back from soreness.
Ball Squeeze (Adductor Squeeze)
Lie on your back with your knees bent and a ball, pillow, or foam roller between your knees. Squeeze inward and hold for 5 to 10 seconds, then release. This isometric exercise (muscle working without moving) builds baseline strength and is also used clinically to test adductor function. Start with 3 sets of 10 squeezes and increase hold duration as it gets easier. You can also do this seated at your desk.
Lateral Lunges
Stand with your feet together, then take a wide step to one side, bending that knee while keeping the other leg straight. Push back to the starting position. This challenges your groin muscles through a full range of motion and trains them eccentrically, meaning they’re working as they lengthen. Do 2 sets of 15 per leg. Add dumbbells or a kettlebell when bodyweight feels comfortable.
Sumo Squats
Take a wide stance with your toes pointed slightly outward and squat straight down. The wide position shifts the load toward your inner thighs compared to a standard squat. Keep your weight in your heels and your chest upright. This exercise doubles as hip and glute work, making it efficient for lower-body sessions.
Copenhagen Adduction
This is the gold standard for groin strengthening in sports research. Set up in a side plank position with your top leg supported on a bench or a partner’s hands. Your bottom leg hangs free. Lift your bottom leg up to meet the top leg, hold, and lower it. The exercise has three progression levels:
- Level 1: Side-lying hip adduction on the floor (no plank position)
- Level 2: Side plank with the bench supporting your top leg at the knee, making the lever shorter and more manageable
- Level 3: Side plank with the bench supporting your top leg at the ankle, creating a longer lever and significantly more load
Research comparing the Copenhagen exercise to standard squeeze exercises found it produces substantially more force through the adductors. A 2025 study showed that a weighted version of the Copenhagen generated up to 48% more torque than the standard isometric version and even more compared to the long-lever squeeze. If you’re training for sport performance or injury prevention, this exercise should be in your program once you’ve built a base of strength.
How Often and How Much
For general strengthening, training your groin muscles 3 times per week is a well-supported frequency. A preseason program studied in ice hockey and soccer players used exactly this schedule, with sessions focused specifically on adductor work three days a week for six weeks. That program cut documented adductor strains from 11 to 3 compared to previous seasons with the same team.
If you’re working on rehabilitation or maintenance rather than performance, daily sessions with lighter exercises like stretches, squeezes, and side-lying adduction can work well. Keep the volume moderate: 2 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions per exercise is a solid range for most people. For the Copenhagen exercise, start with fewer reps (5 to 8 per side) because the loading is significantly higher.
Progression matters more than volume. Once you can comfortably complete your sets, increase difficulty by adding resistance, extending hold times, or moving to a harder variation rather than simply doing more reps.
Why Groin Strength Prevents Injuries
Groin strains are among the most common lower-body injuries in sports that involve sprinting, kicking, and quick direction changes. One of the clearest risk factors is the ratio between your adductor (inner thigh) and abductor (outer thigh) strength. Players whose adductor strength measured below 80% of their abductor strength had a 17-to-1 relative risk of sustaining a groin strain compared to those with balanced ratios. Uninjured players averaged a 95% ratio, while injured players averaged just 78%.
The practical takeaway: your inner thigh muscles should be nearly as strong as your outer thigh muscles. If your training program emphasizes lateral band walks, clamshells, and other abductor work without matching it with adductor exercises, you may be creating the exact imbalance that leads to injury.
How Quickly You’ll See Results
Noticeable strength improvements typically begin within 3 to 4 weeks of consistent training, which aligns with the timeline your nervous system needs to recruit muscle fibers more effectively. Structural changes to the muscle itself, like increased size and tendon resilience, take longer, generally 6 to 8 weeks of regular loading.
If you’re recovering from an existing strain, timelines vary based on severity. Athletes with mild to moderate adductor injuries (grades 0 through 2) are typically pain-free within about 2 weeks and back to full activity within 3 weeks. More severe injuries (grade 3, involving significant tearing) take considerably longer, with athletes reaching pain-free status at around 2 months and returning to full training at roughly 2.5 to 3 months.
Signs of a Groin Strain vs. Normal Soreness
Muscle soreness from training should feel diffuse across the inner thigh, peak 24 to 48 hours after exercise, and improve with light movement. A groin strain feels different. It typically involves sudden, sharp pain during a specific movement like sprinting, kicking, or changing direction. The pain localizes to a specific spot rather than spreading across the muscle, and you may notice bruising or swelling with moderate to severe injuries.
A simple self-test: lie on your back with your hips bent to about 45 degrees and try to squeeze your knees together against resistance (your own hands or a ball). If this reproduces your pain in a specific location, that’s a strong indicator of an adductor injury rather than general soreness. Reduced sprinting ability or weaker kicking power can also signal early trouble before full-blown pain develops.
If a strain doesn’t improve with rest and gentle exercise over a couple of weeks, imaging may be warranted. Up to 20% of adductor strain cases involve small bone-related complications that change how the injury should be managed.