Check out part three on my "Sweat the Small Stuff" series. Make sure you don't overlook those hip abductors!

Sweat the Small Stuff
Part II: The Hip Abductors
by Mike Mejia, CSCS

If you've been following along with this series from the beginning, by now you should have a pretty good sense that the exercises it features aren't your typical weight room fare. In fact, some may have already earned you some rather confused looks from your fellow gym rats. Don't worry; this is a good thing. It means that you have enough common sense to not just blindly copy what everyone else is doing and instead, take a real interest in keeping your body properly balanced to help avoid injury.

In keeping with that theme, we'll continue working our way down the body towards the hips. Aside from the powerful gluteus maximus and hip flexor muscles, there are also some smaller, lesser known muscles that play a major roll in helping keep your knees in proper alignment during exercises like squats, deadlifts and lunges; as well as while you're out on the field sprinting and making raid changes of direction. Chief among these are your medial glutes- which are responsible for taking your leg out away from the midline of your body.

Failing to spend at least some time strengthening this decidedly unglamorous area, can set you up for all sorts of problems down the road. For starters, weakness in these muscles can adversely affect the ability of your knees to "track" properly- causing widespread misalignment during weighted exercises in the gym, as well as when landing from jumps and other explosive movements while you''re playing. Reason enough why you'll want to incorporate drills like the one's featured in the video below into your training regimen several times per week.


Last edited by CageSage; . Reason: Embedded Video Into Article

Building young athletes from the ground up.