Has anyone come across athletes with painful adductors? The painful area seems to be where the adductor longus and the gracilis insert. The athlete seems to be in pain after football and now the pain has become chronic. A quick note: since taking up foot ball the athlete has alot of DOMS in the hipflexors and rectus femoris after playing.
Without seeing the person I would have to guess that the problem is coming from a lot of built up chronic shortness in the fascial element of the muscles in the legs, pelvis and maybe abdomen. Adductors are easy places to get tight, and their extension is up into the abdominals and psoas, and the illiacus inside the pelvis. There is also an effect from the lower leg muscles, and in my 22 years of practice, I have always seen the hamstrings affecting every kind of leg tightness issue.
The idea is to relengthen the fascia in all the muscles of the system, either with a fascial manipulation and stretching or with deep massage and stretching (not usually as effective though).
On my links page of my site you can find schools that have structural integration bodyworkers, http://www.backfixbodywork.com
And on the home page menu just under the Olympic Athlete testimonials are some free in depth articles describing the application of thorough fascial relengthening in sports medicine, performance, and especially in re-lengthening built up accumulated shortness. On the free articles page (link is just above the testimonials) there’s an article called stretching tips and one about improving yoga performance, and at the bottom of the page differences in deliberate and significant fascial relengthening, from massage, and how it helps chiropractic.
Well main thing is stretching the whole groin complex will help your athlete out alot. What helped me was doing the stretches where you lay down n the ground and kinda put your one foot on top of your quad while the other one is laying back to stretch the quadripcep hurdle style kinda. ANd lean back on that stretch. Umm doing leg swings helped me out alot as well basicly before he even thinks about running or doing anything athletic make sure he grabs a fench and does some leg swings on both legs to the side and to the front. Hope that helps.
I like that groin area releasing idea, and also, it’s been my experience that the lower legs and bellies of the thigh muscles affect the groin, so lengthening all the legs helps the groin relengthen easier and further. From the top side, lengthening the abs, psoas and illiacus, as well as pevic sides muscles helps the groin as well. Sorry if my insistence is a bit much. I’ve been trained to think in large muscle groupings because the fascial body suit is such a big whole-body thing.