Saturday, October 20, 2007

Hitting the Inner Thigh with Sumo DL

The inner-thigh, or the hip adductors, are a socially interesting muscle group. They are only ever purposefully targeted by women. I don't really know why you'd want large inner-thighs, but if you do, I can tell you how to get them, and it's not with a Thigh Master.

Forget the isolation machines for building your legs. You can do three sets of leg-extensions, three sets of hamstring curls, three sets of hip adductors and three sets of hyper-extensions, or you can do three sets of sumo deadlift and then hit whatever you didn't feel burning bad enough (probably quads).

*Sumo deadlift demonstrated

I've heard that powerlifters who start out training in traditional deadlift and then switch to sumo stance are limited by their inner-thigh strength, and often have difficulty walking the day after training. Sounds fun, huh? Both styles of DL are acceptable in competition, and your body type determines which is most effective for you. However, if you are trying to target your hip adductors, regardless of build, you want to try sumo stance DLs.

Being very long legged, I can't bring a bar past my knees in traditional stance. Being very long legged, I'm also not a powerlifter. If, like me, all you want in life are inner-thighs that chaff together when you jog, get off the machine and as the rappers say, get low.

1 comment:

leslie said...

I can not STAND the inner thigh machine -- first of all, it makes no sense to exercise a small lower body muscle in isolation. And secondly, only fat girls use the machine! Give me lunges and squats any day of the week! Guess that means you're preaching to the choir in my case.