Hip condition
Groin strains are tears in the adductor muscles of the inner thigh, and they are the commonest muscle injury in football and every sport built on changing direction. Most heal in a few weeks. Two things make them worth taking seriously anyway: they recur more often than almost any other muscle strain, usually because players return when the pain stops rather than when the strength returns — and “groin pain” is an address shared by several very different conditions, not all of which are muscles.
Tap any that apply to you — this is guidance, not a diagnosis, but it tells you how quickly to act.
Several of those point away from a simple muscle tear. A bulge that appears on coughing, pain radiating to the testicle or urinary symptoms all need assessing on their own terms — and deep pain that worsens run after run must have a bone stress injury excluded. Getting the right diagnosis first saves months of treating the wrong thing.
Good news — that reads like a straightforward adductor strain. Most settle within a few weeks with early movement and progressive loading. The part worth getting right is the end: returning on strength rather than on comfort is what stops it happening again.
The adductors run from the pubic bone down the inner thigh, and their job is to pull the legs together and control them when something pulls them apart. Adductor longus is the one that tears most often, usually right where its tendon meets bone:
Protect it for the first few days — stop the aggravating sport, use cold for comfort, and walk within a pain-free range — then start loading it early rather than resting until it stops hurting. Adductors respond well to being asked to work gently while they heal, and poorly to being left alone until the pain fades. The simplest starting point is an isometric squeeze: a ball or cushion between the knees, a gentle squeeze held for several seconds, repeated within comfort. From there the work progresses through longer levers and eventually to the Copenhagen adduction exercise, a side-plank variation with the top leg supported, which is the exercise with the strongest evidence behind it for both recovery and prevention. Two cautions worth naming. Do not judge readiness by comfort — pain settles well before strength returns, which is precisely why groin strains recur so often. And if your groin pain does not behave like a muscle injury — no clear moment of injury, pain that spreads, or symptoms beyond the muscle — have it assessed before assuming what it is.
Groin pain is an address, not a diagnosis — location narrows it considerably. Tap yours:
That is the classic adductor pattern. Tenderness along the inner thigh with pain on squeezing the legs together is a muscle problem, and it responds to graded loading. The plan is straightforward — the discipline is in finishing it rather than stopping when the pain does.
Pain here belongs to a different group of problems. The pubic bones, the tendons attaching around them and the inguinal region all produce pain in this area, and they are treated differently from a torn adductor. This is the pattern that most often gets months of muscle rehabilitation without improving.
Deep groin pain you cannot localise often comes from the joint itself. Hip impingement, a labral problem or early joint wear all announce themselves this way — and so, occasionally, does a bone stress injury. This one earns imaging rather than another rehabilitation block.
Groin strains treatment is a loading programme with a diagnosis attached to the front of it:
Tap each card to reveal the truth:
A groin strain is a tear in the adductor muscles of the inner thigh — the group that pulls the legs together. Adductor longus is injured most often, usually where its tendon meets the pubic bone. It happens when the muscle is stretched while contracting: a lunge for a ball, a sudden change of direction, or a kick across the body. Groin strains are the commonest muscle injury in football and in most change-of-direction sport.
A mild adductor strain typically settles in one to two weeks, a moderate one in three to six, and a severe tear can take two to three months. What matters more than the grade is what happens in the final third of that time: adductor strains have a high recurrence rate, and most repeat injuries happen in players who returned when the pain stopped rather than when strength returned.
Groin strains treatment means early protected movement rather than complete rest, followed by progressive adductor strengthening — the squeeze-and-hold family of exercises, then longer-lever work such as the Copenhagen adduction exercise. Return to sport is judged on adductor strength compared side to side and on pain-free change of direction, not on the calendar. That progression is also what prevents the next one.
Often enough that it is always worth asking. Groin pain is an address shared by several conditions: the hip joint itself, the pubic bones and their surrounding tendons, the inguinal region, and non-musculoskeletal causes including hernias and urological problems. A lump that appears when you cough, pain radiating to the testicle, or deep pain that intensifies week by week in a runner all point away from a simple muscle tear.
Build and keep adductor strength, in season as well as out of it. Programmes built around the Copenhagen adduction exercise have been shown to reduce groin problems substantially in footballers, and the protection fades once the training stops. Alongside that: increase change-of-direction and kicking volume gradually, and have a hip that keeps producing groin pain examined properly rather than repeatedly rehabilitated.
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