I saw the T Nation article “Build Crushing Inner-Thigh Strength” by Brandon Holder and caught my interest to see if it contained the exercise I do to target inner-thigh development. The exercise was not included in Brandon Holder’s list.
I got the inner-thigh exercise from Jeff King, 1983 AAU Mr America who was making a seminar tour in 1984 that stopped at our city, Jeff had phenomenal inner-thigh development and I asked if there was a specific exercise he did to target that area. He said there was a leg press movement he used. I added the exercise to my leg day and began to notice the results. I am the only person I have seen do the exercise to this day.
In the leg press (incline leg press is the only machine I have used to do this), I position my feet fairly wide with my toes pointing 180 degrees from each other. In the case with every incline leg press I have used I need to move the weights further away from the plate I push. I place my heels on the plate and my toes hang over the weight bar. As the weight comes down I make my knees align in the direction of my toes. I go as low as I can go (as a split with bended knees). I usually did 10 reps as I did with all leg press exercises at that time in my training. I started with light weight as it felt as if I would pull a groin muscle by going too heavy. As I became acclimated to the movement over the weeks I added weight. I found my working weight about half of what I used for the traditional leg press. The exercise seems to minimize the contribution of the glutes in pushing the weight. I did 3 sets of 10 reps with the working weight, warming up gradually (you know, don’t want to pull a groin).
The major benefit of this inner-thigh movement is that it is a compound movement, and in my opinion that means it will grow muscle and not just tone an area. I had access to a seated adductor machine but felt it wasn’t nearly as effective to build size.
A possible side benefit was that after a year of having the inner-thigh leg press as an integral part of my leg training I began to notice my sartorius head of my quads stand out when I flexed. Maybe not causation, but there was correlation.
Do any of you have a favorite exercise to target you inner-thighs?
