Adductor-Related Groin Pain: Why Your Groin Strain Keeps Coming Back

You felt it in a change of direction, a sprint, a kick. Sharp pain high on the inside of your thigh, right where it meets the groin. You rested it. You stretched it. It settled. You went back in, and within a couple of sessions it was back.

If that loop sounds familiar, you're not doing rehab. You're doing a holding pattern. And the reason it keeps failing is that the standard advice for groin pain treats the wrong thing entirely.

What Adductor-Related Groin Pain Actually Is

"Groin pain" is a vague bucket, and that's part of the problem. The most common version in active people is adductor-related, meaning the issue sits in the adductor muscles and their tendon, the group on the inside of your thigh that pulls your leg back toward the midline. Every time you cut, kick, brake, or change direction, those muscles fire hard to control the leg.

When people say "groin strain," this is usually what they mean. And like most of these injuries, it's rarely a one-off accident. It's a capacity problem that finally showed up as pain.

The single strongest predictor of groin pain is having had it before, closely followed by weak eccentric adduction strength, which is the adductors' ability to control the leg while lengthening under load. That's the exact demand of a hard cut or a lunge in defence. If those muscles can't handle it, the tissue takes the hit.

Notice what that means. The groin isn't tight. It's under-built for the job.

Why Rest and Stretching Keep Letting You Down

Rest calms the pain because it removes the thing provoking it. It does nothing for the underlying weakness. So you come back to sport with the same under-capacity adductors that got hurt in the first place, meet the same cutting and sprinting loads, and reinjure. The strain didn't come back because you're fragile. It came back because nothing got stronger.

Stretching is the other reflex, and it's built on the assumption that the groin is tight and needs lengthening. Tightness isn't the driver here, and aggressive stretching of an irritated adductor tendon can actually stir it up. Chasing looseness in a muscle group that needs strength is effort pointed in the wrong direction.

Same story we tell about the hamstring, and for the same reason. See also: Hamstring Injuries: Why They Really Keep Coming Back.

The Fix Is Load, Built in the Right Order

Adductor-related groin pain responds to progressive strengthening, and the evidence behind this is genuinely strong.

It usually moves through stages.

First, isometrics. Adductor squeeze holds, where the muscles work hard against resistance without the joint moving. These can settle pain and let you start loading straight away, even while the groin is still grumpy. It's the on-ramp.

Second, progressive strength through range. This is where you rebuild concentric and eccentric adduction capacity, loading the muscles as they shorten and, more importantly, as they lengthen under tension. The standout exercise here is the Copenhagen adduction exercise, a side-plank-style movement that loads the adductors eccentrically. It's the single most evidence-supported exercise for this problem, shown to build eccentric adduction strength and reduce groin symptoms, and a Copenhagen-based program has been shown to cut groin injury rates in footballers substantially. If there's one exercise to know for this, it's that one.

Third, control and return to sport. Groin pain isn't just an adductor issue in isolation. It's tied up with how you control your trunk and hip together through fast, multidirectional movement. So good rehab layers in trunk and hip coordination, then gradually rebuilds the cutting, sprinting, and kicking loads your sport demands, at a rate the tissue can keep up with.

The thread through all three: you're building capacity, then giving it somewhere to go. Not resting and hoping.

One Important Caveat

Not every groin pain is adductor-related, and this is worth taking seriously. Pain in the same region can come from the hip joint itself, from hernia-type problems, or from bone stress around the pubic bone, and a few of those need a different plan entirely. If your pain is deep in the joint rather than on the inside of the thigh, doesn't behave like a muscle problem, or isn't responding to sensible loading, that's a reason to get it properly assessed rather than grinding through more Copenhagen reps. Good management starts with making sure you're actually treating the right thing.

The Takeaway

Adductor-related groin pain keeps coming back because rest and stretching never address the cause: adductors that aren't strong enough, especially under eccentric load, for what your sport asks. The fix is progressive loading, settle it with isometrics, rebuild it with strength work like the Copenhagen adduction exercise, then restore the cutting and sprinting capacity you actually need. And if it doesn't behave like a muscle problem, get it checked properly before you keep loading.

If you're stuck in the strain-rest-restrain loop, we test your adduction strength directly and build the plan off the numbers, so you know exactly what your groin can handle and what it still can't. Book an Initial Consultation and let's break the cycle.

See also: Hamstring Injuries: Why They Really Keep Coming Back and Should You Keep Training Through Pain.