Chris and I are going to demonstrate an exercise that is phenomenal for strengthening the knee and knee joint. We want to strengthen the inner thigh. Those are called adductors. They add to the midline. So, when you work on the inner thigh, there’s a lot of machines out there that you sit down in.

When you sit down in the machine, your knee is usually bent or straight, but the pressure’s here above the knee. So, we’re not strengthening the muscle across the joint. It’s very important that we train the muscles across the joint so that we can work on stability.

Now, we’re going to work on stability on both sides.

As Chris stands strong on this right leg, he’s going to work on the stability of that leg. As we hook up this cable attachment to his ankle, we’re going to work on the inner thigh strength across the knee and up into the groin. He’s going to pull this toe up to help protect the knee and keep this knee locked.

We’re going to bring this heel across in front of the other toe. Come out slow to where it’s comfortable so you feel the stretch, exhale, pull back across. Always up nice and tall. His chin is up. He’s working on his posture. There’s no way you can do this exercise without engaging your core. But again, both legs are working solidly because he has to have all the pressure on his right glut, hamstring and quad, stabilizing the ankle on the block and the reason why we are on this block is so that he doesn’t have to hike up his hip to drag his foot past the other foot, so now he can be in a more stable or neutral position with the hip as he pulls across.

So again, these muscles coming from the groin across the knee joint are going to get stronger, which is going to help you prevent injury, be more efficient as a runner, and perform better. Simple as that.

So, here we have Maria doing the same exercise, we just want to demonstrate with the male and female that we’re doing the same exercises.

Women are not going to get big and bulky by doing strength training workouts. Bulk comes from what? It comes from muscle covered by fat. Right. So, if we watch what we eat and we exercise properly, we get nice, defined muscles, nice toned muscles, and there’s no fat over them, so we don’t get bulky.

But as Maria runs 45 miles a week if she’s not strengthening the inner and outer thighs they will get worn out, they will get tired. She will suffer some form of knee injury, especially tendinitis or maybe IT band syndrome, but this strengthening of the inner thigh is going to allow her to perform and function at a much higher level.

Let’s get two more reps. nice and tall, again working the stabilization on the leg as she’s standing up.