Hip Abduction
Seated with pads outside your knees, or standing with a cable at your ankle, you push your leg out to the side against resistance to train the outer hip.
Equipment
- Primary muscles
- Abductors
- Secondary
- Glutes
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Logged as
- Weight × reps
- Primary muscles
- Abductors
- Secondary
- Glutes
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Logged as
- Weight × reps
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Why do it
This is the most loadable way to train your hip abductors, the muscles on the side of your hips. The seated machine works both sides at once with a fixed path and small weight steps, which suits beginners and high-rep finishing sets; leaning your torso forward shifts more of the work onto your glutes. The cable version trains one leg at a time while you stand on the other, so your standing hip has to steady you as well. Both respond better to slow, controlled reps than to heavy, fast ones.
How to do it (Machine)
Sit with your back flat against the backrest and the pads against the outside of your knees or thighs, legs together.
Hold the handles or the edge of the seat.
Push your legs apart against the pads as far as they comfortably go.
Bring them back together slowly under control. Leaning your torso forward slightly shifts more of the work onto the glutes.
Attach an ankle strap to a low pulley, stand side-on to the machine and strap it to your outer ankle.
Hold the frame for balance and stand tall on the inner leg.
Lift the strapped leg straight out to the side as far as you can without leaning.
Lower slowly back across the standing leg, then switch sides. Keep your toes pointing forward so the glute medius does the work.
Common mistakes
Letting the pads slam together
Letting the weight snap your legs back skips half the work. Bring your knees in slowly and stop just before the stack touches down.
Lifting your hips off the seat
Rocking your pelvis to force the pads open moves the work out of your hips. Stay seated against the backrest and use a weight you can move cleanly.
Leaning sideways on the cable
Tipping your torso away from the working leg makes the lift look higher while the hip does less. Stand tall and stop where you would have to lean.
Turning your toes up
Rotating the leg so your toes point up shifts the work to the front of the hip. Keep your toes pointing forward so the side of the glute does the lifting.
Sets, reps and progression
How many sets you do and how close to failure you take them depend on your goal and your week, not on the exercise. These guides cover it:
Alternatives that train the same thing
Same movement, a different angle or piece of equipment.
