Groin strain

What it is

Most groin strains involve adductor longus at or near its attachment to the pubic bone. It happens with a rapid change of direction, a stretched kick, or a sudden lengthening while the muscle is contracting - which is why it is so common in football and hockey.

The most useful finding is a ratio. Adductor strength relative to abductor strength predicts groin injury, and programmes that strengthen the adductors specifically - the Copenhagen adduction exercise in particular - reduce groin injuries substantially in trials. Almost no ordinary training programme includes adductor work.

What it feels like

• Pain in the inner thigh or groin, sharp at the time of injury
• Tender to press along the inner thigh or at the pubic bone
• Painful to squeeze the knees together against resistance
• Worse with changing direction, kicking and getting out of a car
• Sometimes a lingering ache that never quite resolves and recurs each season

What causes it

Most people have more than one of these at once, and they feed each other. Read the list looking for the two or three that sound like your week rather than for the one true answer — the ones that describe you are the ones worth acting on.

Adductor longus overload at its attachment

The adductor longus has a small, tendinous attachment to the pubic bone that concentrates load. It is where most acute strains and most chronic groin pain in athletes originate.

Adductor weakness relative to abductors

The strength ratio between the muscles pulling the leg inward and those pulling it outward predicts injury. A relatively weak adductor group is the most consistently identified modifiable risk factor.

Rapid changes of direction

Cutting movements load the adductors eccentrically at speed. Football, hockey, ice hockey and tennis all involve this repeatedly.

Kicking, particularly a stretched or blocked kick

A kick that is stretched at the end of its range or blocked by an opponent produces a sudden eccentric load at the muscle's longest position.

A previous groin injury

One of the strongest risk factors, and groin injuries are notorious for becoming chronic when the strength deficit is not addressed.

Reduced hip range

Restricted hip internal rotation and abduction change how the pelvis and hip handle cutting movements and are associated with groin problems.

Weak trunk and pelvic control

The adductors attach to the pelvis, which needs to be controlled by the trunk during single-leg loading. Poor pelvic control transfers more of the demand onto the adductor attachment.

Preseason training spikes

Groin injuries cluster in preseason when training volume and intensity rise sharply after a break.

Other causes of groin pain

Hip joint problems, hernia, pubic bone stress and, in women, gynaecological causes all present as groin pain. Persistent groin pain that does not behave like a muscle strain deserves a proper assessment.

Who tends to get it

• Footballers, hockey and ice hockey players, and anyone in a cutting sport
• Anyone with a previous groin injury
• Athletes in preseason, when load rises sharply
• Anyone with weak adductors relative to abductors, which is most people
• People with restricted hip range

What makes it worse, and what settles it

The qFIT routine for this

Ready-made routineMuscle Strain Recovery (Hamstring, Calf, Groin & Quad)

qFIT already has this one built. It runs massage first, then stretching, then strength — the order that works on a body that is already sore — and every activity in it carries the reason it is there.

The button below opens your Checklist with this routine already selected, so instead of your whole list you land on just its Categories, Targets and Exercises, each with its checkbox, ready to tick as you work through them.

Have more than one problem? Tick yours under My Problems on My Profile and your Checklist's Routine list gains Recommended for my problems — every routine for the problems you picked, merged into one. Your picks stay private; that filter is the only thing they feed.

Get it checked if…

Groin pain with a lump, or pain radiating to the testicle, needs a hernia assessment

And whatever the body part: chest pain or unusual breathlessness on exertion; a fever alongside the pain; unexplained weight loss; pain that is constant and unrelated to how you move; new numbness, weakness or loss of bladder or bowel control; or one calf that is swollen, warm and painful. Any of those, stop and get assessed.

How it usually goes

Acute strains settle in two to six weeks depending on grade. The bigger issue is chronic groin pain, which is common in athletes and responds to progressive adductor strengthening over three to six months - active treatment consistently outperforms rest here. Prevention is well evidenced and cheap: an adductor strengthening programme reduces groin injuries meaningfully. Groin pain that does not behave like a strain, or that persists, needs assessment for hip joint, hernia and bone stress causes.

Prevalence basis: Sports injury data

Others the same routine covers

These share the Muscle Strain Recovery (Hamstring, Calf, Groin & Quad) routine, so the work is the same. If one of them also sounds like you, that is a reason to expect more from it, not less.

This is general information, not a diagnosis, and it cannot examine you. If it matches you, use it to ask better questions of a clinician rather than to replace one.