Cable Hip Adduction

The hips seem to be an overlooked part of the body in terms of its importance in our daily lives. Humans use their hips in everyday movements, like sitting, walking, and bending over. When the hips are weak, these tasks can be more challenging as mobility, stability, and strength aren’t there to provide support.

Implementing hip-focused isolation exercises like the cable hip adduction can benefit everyday gym goers and athletes looking to improve performance. For some individuals looking for how to get wider hips, this exercise can be beneficial. This guide reveals how to perform this exercise, what benefits coincide with it, and what muscles are worked.

How To Do

  1. Locate an available cable pulley machine.
  2. Attach an ankle strap to the pulley.
  3. Adjust the cable pulley to the lowest setting.
  4. Stand with one side facing the machine.
  5. Put the ankle strap on the leg closest to the pulley.
  6. Take a step away from the cable machine to create tension.
  7. Position feet shoulder-width apart.
  8. Grasp onto the machine’s handlebar for balance. This is your starting position.
  9. Inhale and engage the core.
  10. Exhale and drive the working leg to the side, away from the cable machine.
  11. Pause to create more tension.
  12. Inhale as you return to the starting position.
  13. Repeat for desired reps and sets. Switch sides.

Tips From Expert

  • Use lighter weights to enforce proper form and technique to increase muscle engagement. As you grow stronger and more accustomed to maintaining good form, increase weight load in small increments.
  • Prioritize mind-to-muscle connection to improve muscle engagement. Emphasize specifically using the hip adductors to enforce the leg drive and control the movement pattern.

Optimal Sets and Reps

To encourage greater progress in your fitness journey, it’s essential that you pinpoint your unique goals, like strength or hypertrophy. Then, integrate the ideal sets and reps in training.

Training Type Sets Reps
Strength Training 3–5 4–6
Hypertrophy 3–4 8–12
Endurance Training 3–4 12–20
Power Training 3–5 1–3 (Explosive)
Optimal Sets & Reps of Cable Hip Adduction

How to Put in Your Workout Split

The cable hip adduction is an isolation exercise that prioritizes the use of the hip adductors to enable movement. Isolation exercises are productive for targeting a specific muscle group to address muscle weakness or lack of definition. This exercise is beneficial for strengthening the hips to increase strength and reduce injury risk in this area.

  • Upper/Lower Body Split — In this split, the cable hip adduction would best fit on lower-body-focused days. This is because it engages lower-body muscles like the hip adductors, glutes, and quadriceps.
  • Muscle-Focused Split — Typically, these splits are divided into days like back and bis or legs. The cable hip adduction is best suited for leg days as it incorporates leg muscles like the quads and glutes.

Although the cable hip adduction is an isolation exercise, it does incorporate other secondary muscle groups for stability and movement. Adding this exercise into your workout routine can target multiple lower-body muscle groups to improve strength and muscle mass.

Implement this exercise at the end of your workout, as it requires less energy than compound exercises. Pair alongside hip abduction exercises to improve overall hip strength.

Primary Muscle Groups

Hip Adductors

Muscles located at the upper inside part of your legs between your quads and hamstrings.

Hip Adductors

The hip adductors are a group of five muscles responsible for stabilizing the hips. These muscles enable movement in the hips, such as rotating the thigh bone inwards and bringing it towards the midline.

Hip adductor injuries are common in sports like soccer and hockey, where the thigh is forced away from the body. This is outside its normal range of motion, resulting in the muscle being stretched too far.

Integrating exercises like cable hip adductions can strengthen these muscles to improve the range of motion and reduce injury risk. Maintaining health in the hip adductors is crucial for functional and athletic movement patterns to stabilize the hips and posture.

The cable hip adduction exercise utilizes the hip adductors as the primary muscle needed to stimulate movement in the leg. It also helps stabilize the hips during the exercise’s movement pattern.

Secondary Muscle Groups

Gluteus

Large, superficial muscles located at your buttocks just below your lower back area.

Quadriceps

Muscles located at the front portion of your upper legs, below your pelvis and above your knees. Consists of four parts.

Iliopsoas

Muscles starting at your back, moving through your pelvis connecting just below your groin.

Iliopsoas

The iliopsoas is a muscle in the spine that runs deep and connects the lower limbs to the spine. It comprises three muscles: the iliacus, the psoas major, and the psoas minor. This muscle is the primary hip flexor necessary for supporting good posture and daily actions like walking.

In the cable hip adduction, the iliopsoas is incorporated as a secondary muscle to stabilize the hips. It does this as the thigh is lifted in the exercise’s hip adduction movement pattern.

Quadriceps

The quadriceps, or quads, are four muscles found at the front of the thigh. These muscles include the rectus femoris, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius, and vastus lateralis. Each quadriceps muscle plays a vital role in enabling leg movement needed for walking, standing, and jumping.

Keeping the quadriceps strong and healthy is crucial for functional movement patterns and boosting quality of life. When the quads are unhealthy or weak, these daily activities, like walking, cannot be properly supported.

Utilizing exercises like the cable hip adduction can help strengthen the quadriceps to improve functionality and performance. Although the quadriceps are a secondary muscle, they are essential for promoting efficient leg movement in this exercise.

Gluteus

The gluteus muscle, or gluteal, refers to a collection of muscles that make up the buttocks. These muscles that comprise a part of the back of the leg include the gluteus minimus, medius, and maximus. The gluteus maximus is the largest of the three, extending from the buttocks to the hip.

The role of the gluteus is to stabilize the pelvis to keep the upper and lower body in alignment. It also stimulates propulsion, or forward motion, required for running, jumping, and walking.

In cable hip adductions, the gluteus acts as a secondary muscle. The gluteus muscles are engaged to stabilize the pelvis and to support stability and balance. They are more active on the standing leg compared to the leg that is adducting. Try these gluteus medius exercises to boost glute growth and strength alongside cable hip adductions.

Equipment

Narrow Cable Pulley Towers

Narrow Cable Pulley Towers

This versatile cable machine is suitable for a wide range of exercises. It provides constant resistance. Ensure the cable points are firmly clipped in.

Ankle Cuff

This provides a great way for you to work your glutes and hamstrings when attached to a cable machine. Ensure that it's secured in place.

Alternatives

Exercises that target the same primary muscle groups and require the different equipment.

Hip Circles

Inner Thigh Raise

Butterfly Stretch

Who Should Do?

Older Populations

Hip fracture risk increases with age, with women older than 85 being eight times more likely to be hospitalized. Low body mass index (gauges disease risk using body size), hip weakness, and a history of osteoporosis (weak bones) are risk factors. 

Strengthening the hips with exercises like cable hip adduction can help older populations reduce the risk of injury. Increasing strength in the hips is productive for boosting hip stability, range of motion, and posture needed to maintain balance. 

Those Looking To Improve Hip Mobility

Having healthy hip mobility is crucial for athletic and daily activities. Without good hip mobility, actions like bending down to pick something up, sitting, squatting, and jumping can be limited. 

Incorporating exercises like cable hip adduction can improve hip mobility by strengthening the muscles surrounding the hip. With better hip mobility can come advantages like reduced injury risk, increased stability and balance, and improved performance. 

Athletes

Athletes can greatly benefit from integrating cable hip adductions into their training routine. Strong hips can significantly improve athletic performance by boosting the propulsion of the hips to enhance speed, power, and explosiveness. 

Keeping the hips healthy and strong is productive for athletes to support athletic performance. The hips are greatly connected to propulsion in different movement patterns like vertical and horizontal jumping, running, and walking. 

Who Should Not Do?

Anyone With An Adductor Injury

Anyone with an adductor injury, specifically an acute adductor injury, shouldn’t perform the cable hip adduction exercise. This movement activates the use of the adductors.

If you have an existing adductor injury, performing cable hip adductions can increase the pain associated with the injury. Avoid exercises that integrate the adductor muscle until pain is no longer associated with its engagement. Consult with a medical professional to receive guidance on how to approach healing and exercise. 

Anyone With A Hip Injury

It is not recommended to perform the cable hip adduction exercise if there is a pre-existing hip injury. Some examples include hip bursitis (inflammation on the side of the hip) or a muscle strain or tear. Exercising the hip with these injuries could increase irritation to the injury. In turn, this could augment the risk of worsening the injury and causing pain-related symptoms to become more intense. 

Consult with your doctor to prevent the worsening of the hip injury. After receiving the go-ahead from your doctor, you can pursue hip-activation exercises like cable hip adduction. 

Anyone With A Knee Injury

Anyone with a knee injury is advised to proceed with caution when performing cable hip adductions. Due to the exercise’s form, tension is placed on the non-working leg for balance. Extra weight is put on this leg while the working leg is raised, which can agitate injury to the knee. 

Instead of using cable hip adduction, try an alternative like lying banded hip adduction. This exercise’s lying position takes weight load off the knees and emphasizes using the hips. 

Benefits Of The Cable Hip Adduction

Builds Strength

Cable hip adductions may be an isolation exercise, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of increasing strength. Although this exercise primarily uses the hip adductors, it also engages other muscle groups like the quadriceps and gluteus. Activating these muscle groups to enable leg movement and maintain stability helps to stimulate and strengthen these muscles. 

Strengthening these muscles is important for supporting movement, stability, and balance in daily and athletic activities. Building strength in the muscles provides numerous benefits for reducing injury risk and increasing lean body mass. Utilizing exercises like the cable hip adduction can help produce the sought-after benefits. 

Enhances Posture

Globally, a large population is afflicted with pain-related symptoms of poor posture in work and school environments. A forward neck, hunched back, and rounded shoulders are all examples of poor posture, resulting in back and neck pain. 

An increased pelvic tilt, which can have an impact on spine alignment, can also affect posture. This can become problematic if an individual is unable to move freely in and out of an increased pelvic tilt. This could potentially cause pain in the lower back and hips. 

Enforcing better posture and strengthening posture-related muscles like the hip adductors, erector spinae, and trapezius are crucial for improving posture. It can help promote better posture alignment to reduce pain-related symptoms of poor posture in the hips, shoulders, and back. 

Improves Hip Stability

Good hip stability is significant in our daily lives to control the hips while moving other parts of our body. For example, if you’re animatedly walking and talking with a friend, hands gesturing wildly and torso turning different ways. While you’re enacting an interesting story, your hips are keeping your pelvis aligned while other body parts are moving.

If hip stability is weak, you may find yourself off-balance, uncoordinated, and have difficulty maintaining good posture. Improving hip stability can be done through exercises like the cable hip adduction. This exercise strengthens the hip’s adductors, which are responsible for supporting pelvic alignment. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the cable hip adduction work?

The cable hip adduction works the hip adductors, gluteus, quadriceps, and iliopsoas. The primary muscle engaged is the hip adductors in this isolation exercise and the others are secondary muscles. 

Are cable hip adductions good?

Cable hip adductors are a quality exercise for targeting the hip adductors. This exercise can be used to strengthen the hips, improve stability, and increase mobility.

Does the hip adduction make the glutes bigger?

The cable hip adduction does use the gluteus as a secondary muscle. Passive engagement can result in some improvements in glute size but more than likely not significantly. A better glute-focused alternative would be the barbell hip thrust.

Why does hip adduction hurt so much?

For some individuals, hip adductors can hurt because of strain on the adductor muscles. This is common in athletes, where the adductor muscle has been stretched past its normal range of motion. 

Resources

Endomondo.com refrains from utilizing tertiary references. We uphold stringent sourcing criteria and depend on peer-reviewed studies and academic research conducted by medical associations and institutions. For more detailed insights, you can explore further by reading our editorial process.

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