Cable Hip Abduction Benefits and Anatomy

Cable hip abduction is an exercise that strengthen glute medius muscle group.

Hip adductors are the muscles in your inner thigh that stabilize your stride as you walk forward, support balance, and alignment. Hip abduction helps you run, play sports, your ability to stand up and sit down, and get on and off of a bicycle.  

The glute medius is one of the most underdeveloped, weakest muscle in your lower body. Gluteus medius is also the prime mover of abduction at hip joint.

By neglecting the glute medius muscle, you are exposed to a lot of other damage down the chain. Most of that in the knees, if you have weakness and instability up at the hips, it’s going to affect the position of the. Most often will result in too much torque, and pain, and injury in the knee.

You’re not going to target your hips through your squats or deadlifts. But those exercises are still going to be severely impacted by your ability to have a strong hips in order to perform them at their best.

Having strong hips will greatly assist in big lifts like the squats and deadlifts.

Cable Hip Abductor Muscles Worked:

Gluteus Maximus
Gluteus Medius
Hips
Legs
Tensor Fasciae

 

Execution:

– Stand tall with one shoulder next to the cable machine
– Attach a low pulley to your ankle that’s farthest from the cable machine.
– Gasp the edge of the machine with your opposite hand
– Move leg to opposite side of low pulley by abduction hip as high as comfortably possible. Return and repeat. Turn around and continue with opposite leg.

Reps:

• Perform 1–3 sets of 8 to15 repetitions

Cable Hip Abduction Tips:

Stand up straight and focus on moving only at the hip. Keep your torso as still as possible the entire time

Keep your chest up tall and move only through your hip.

Squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement before lowering your leg back to the starting position