Dr. Bret Contreras

And then abduction is simply raising your leg out to the side like you're doing a jumping jack.

When you're bent over though, you can also do hip abduction.

That's like doing the seated hip abduction machine.

Yep.

So the squeezing in, you're adducting.

Those are your inner thigh muscles.

And you can think of adduction as adding to the body or

Whereas abducting, you think of the word taking away from the body.

That's where you spread your legs outwards against resistance.

So when you're upright or leaning forward, then you involve the gluteus maximus more and a little bit less of the gluteus medius, or it might be the posterior fibers of the gluteus medius, not to get too complicated, but...

But basically the glutes do – the gluteus maximus mainly I would say does – hip extension is by far the most popular.

And then hip external rotation is more in sports.

We don't have a lot of exercise that involve hip external rotation.

There's a couple of good ones, but they're not very common.

And then hip abduction –

especially transverse plane hip abduction or the horizontal plane hip abduction like the seated hip abduction machine is effective too.

So it's a very versatile muscle.

You don't even have to focus on pelvic tilt.

That's a more advanced concept.

Same with like transverse plane hip abduction.