maratoolSide Leg Raises
How to do the side leg raises
- Stand next to a chair, which you may hold onto as a support. Stand on one leg. This will be your starting position.
- Keeping your leg straight, raise it as far out to the side as possible, and swing it back down, allowing it to cross the opposite leg.
- Repeat this swinging motion 5-10 times, increasing the range of motion as you do so.
Muscles worked
The muscle under tension is the adductor group down the inner thigh, which pulls the leg back toward the midline and controls the hip as it opens.
A stretch loads it at the far end of the range it normally works in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Every exercise for:Adductors
How this movement works
Force comes toward the body — you draw a limb, or your own bodyweight, in against whatever resists it. What changes between sessions is how far into the position you can get and hold, not how much is loading it.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
What you need
No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.
Every exercise using:Body only
These train the adductors too, using equipment this one does not:
- Thigh Adductormachine
- Adductorfoam roll
- Band Hip Adductionsband
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 13 adductors exercises in this database, 8 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.