Can Women Pull Their Groin? Adductor Strains, Pregnancy, and Safety

Yes. Women can and do pull their groin. The injury happens to the same muscle most often as in men—the adductor longus, which runs from the pubic bone to the inner thigh—and it can occur during sprinting, cutting, kicking, or even a sudden slip on wet pavement. What differs is the surrounding context: women have narrower adductor strength reserves by body weight, a different pelvic geometry, and a set of female-specific risk states such as pregnancy and postpartum pelvic laxity. Most groin pulls recover fully with progressive loading in 2 to 8 weeks.

What a groin pull actually is, mechanically

A groin pull is a strain, meaning overstretched or torn muscle fibers, of one of the five adductor muscles on the inner thigh. The adductor longus accounts for the majority of acute groin strains in athletes, and its weak link sits at the proximal musculotendinous junction—the point where muscle transitions into tendon just below the pubic bone.

The failure mechanism is eccentric loading at long muscle length. When a woman plants one foot and changes direction, the planted leg's adductors must decelerate a thigh that is being forced outward, called abduction. The muscle is simultaneously stretched and contracting hard—the highest-force condition a muscle can face. Laboratory studies place this eccentric peak close to 80 to 100 percent of maximal voluntary adductor force during side-cutting, and animal models show muscle fibers fail at strains of roughly 10 to 15 percent beyond resting length.

In plain terms: the groin pulls when the inner thigh is caught trying to brake while the leg is dragged outward.

The adductors also co-activate with the abdominal and hip flexor muscles to stabilize the front of the pelvis. That is why a groin strain seldom exists alone—it often travels with hip flexor or lower abdominal complaints, and why clinicians assess the whole "pubic" region rather than just the inner thigh.

How common are women's groin strains, in numbers

Groin injuries account for roughly 4 to 19 percent of all sports injuries, and the exact share depends heavily on the sport. A 2015 consensus on groin pain terminology chaired by Doha-based experts described adductor-related pain as one of four main clinical entities, alongside iliopsoas-related, inguinal-related, and pubic-related pain.

The sex gap is smaller than most people assume. In sports where men and women compete under identical rules—ice hockey is the best-studied example—female players show groin injury rates close to male rates, with published hockey cohorts reporting roughly 10 to 15 percent of all injuries in the hip and groin region for men and roughly 5 to 12 percent for women. In soccer, the male-to-female groin injury ratio across comparable playing styles runs from roughly 2 to 1 to 4 to 1, narrowing at elite levels.

Three number sets define the problem:

• Recurrence: roughly 15 to 25 percent of groin strains recur within 12 months, most in the first 2 to 3 months after return.
• Strength asymmetry: a side-to-side adductor strength difference above 10 percent is a commonly used return-to-sport threshold in clinical practice.
• Concurrent hip pathology: 20 to 30 percent of athletes with long-standing groin pain have an additional hip joint finding, such as a labral tear or cartilage damage, which changes the treatment plan.

Why the female anatomy changes the picture

Wider hips mean a larger angle between the femur and the knee, the Q-angle, which alters load transfer through the hip during single-leg landing. A larger Q-angle increases the pull of the adductors against the pelvis during landing and cutting, so the same jump can impose a slightly higher relative demand on a woman's inner thigh musculature.

Pelvic shape matters too. The female pelvis is broader and shallower, which changes the lever arms of the adductor origins and shifts some load toward the pubic symphysis—the cartilage joint where the two halves of the pelvis meet. Stress at that joint is a recognized source of groin pain, and it becomes more relevant during and after pregnancy.

Strength reserves are the largest modifiable difference. Absolute adductor strength is lower in women, largely because of smaller muscle mass, and a lower absolute reserve means a given external force consumes a bigger share of available capacity. When fatigue drops available force by even 10 to 15 percent, the margin shrinks fast.

Pregnancy and postpartum: a distinct risk window

Pregnancy is the clearest female-specific groin risk state. The hormone relaxin rises in early pregnancy and peaks in the first trimester, loosening ligaments across the pelvis. The pubic symphysis can widen by up to about 10 millimeters in late pregnancy, and the sacroiliac joints become more mobile. The result is a pelvis that moves more, while the adductors and pelvic floor must stabilize it.

Pelvic girdle pain affects roughly 45 to 50 percent of pregnant women at some point, per the European guidelines on pelvic girdle pain published in 2008, and inner-thigh pain is one of its common presentations. The mechanism differs from a classic athletic strain: repetitive microtrauma from a loose pelvis, not a single explosive eccentric load.

Postpartum, the picture improves but does not resolve instantly. Most pelvic pain improves substantially within 6 to 12 weeks after delivery, yet a minority—roughly 5 to 10 percent—report persistent symptoms at 6 months. Return to running is often gated on pelvic floor assessment, because adductor and pelvic floor function are mechanically linked through the same pelvic ring.

In plain terms: pregnancy does not tear the adductor, but it changes the scaffolding around it.

Grading and the recovery timeline

Groin strains are graded clinically and by imaging. Grade 1 involves a small number of disrupted fibers and mild pain with resisted adduction. Grade 2 is a partial tear with clear weakness and pain on walking. Grade 3 is a complete tear or rupture, rare in the adductor longus but possible at the tendon origin.

Grade 1 strains typically resolve in 1 to 3 weeks. Grade 2 strains usually need 4 to 8 weeks, and grade 3 or tendon-origin injuries can require 8 to 12 weeks or longer. These windows overlap and shift with age, training history, and whether the injury is a first episode or a recurrence.

MRI is the reference standard for grading, detecting edema and fiber disruption with high sensitivity for grade 2 and 3 injuries. Ultrasound is cheaper and faster but operator-dependent, and it misses deep or small injuries more often. Imaging does not always change management for a clear grade 1 strain; it matters most when the diagnosis is uncertain or recovery stalls.

One underappreciated finding: a meaningful share of clinically diagnosed groin strains—roughly 20 to 30 percent in some case series—show no acute muscle injury on MRI at all, with pain instead arising from the tendon, the pubic symphysis, or the hip joint itself.

Groin strain or something else? Differential features

Not every pain in the groin is a pulled muscle, and the distinction changes treatment. The table below contrasts the most common alternatives in women.

The single most dangerous item on that list is the femoral neck stress fracture. It presents with groin pain that mimics a strain but worsens with impact and can progress to a complete fracture if loading continues. Risk climbs in women with low energy availability, which the Female Athlete Triad framework defines in part as consistently consuming less than roughly 30 kilocalories per kilogram of fat-free mass per day.

Common misconceptions, corrected

The most persistent myth is that women "don't really" pull their groin—that groin pain in women is always gynecological or pelvic floor related. The epidemiology contradicts this: in comparable sports, women sustain adductor strains at rates within a factor of 2 to 4 of men.

The second myth is that stretching prevents groin pulls. Static stretching before activity has weak evidence for injury prevention, and the mechanism fits: the adductor fails under load at long length, so the fix is strength at long length, not passive length alone. Eccentric strength training—the Copenhagen adduction exercise being the best-studied example—reduced groin injury rates in a landmark trial of male soccer players, published by Harøy and colleagues in 2019, by roughly 41 percent. Women's trials are smaller but directionally consistent.

The third myth concerns rest. Complete rest beyond a few days slows recovery because collagen remodeling in healing muscle responds to progressive load. The modern approach is relative rest with early pain-free activation, not bed rest until the pain vanishes.

What to actually do

• In the first 48 hours, protect the muscle with relative rest and pain-free isometric squeezes, such as pressing the knee into a ball at 50 to 70 percent effort. Use ice only for comfort, 10 to 15 minutes at a time.
• Avoid aggressive stretching of the inner thigh for the first week. The injured fibers are already strained; adding passive length does not speed healing.
• Start eccentric adductor work between days 7 and 14, progressing from short-lever Copenhagen holds to full-lever repetitions over 3 to 6 weeks, 2 to 3 sessions weekly.
• Screen for female-specific contributors: low energy availability, iron status, menstrual dysfunction, and postpartum pelvic floor function. Each alters the tissue's capacity to absorb load.
• Return to sport only when sprinting is pain-free at full speed and side-to-side adductor strength asymmetry is under 10 percent, ideally confirmed with a handheld dynamometer.
• Treat recurrence as a loading problem. A second strain within 3 months usually means the first rehabilitation stopped at pain relief rather than at capacity.

Seek urgent care for these red flags:

• Groin pain that prevents weight-bearing entirely after a fall or collision.
• Night pain that wakes you from sleep, or pain that worsens steadily despite rest.
• Pain with a visible bulge in the groin during coughing or straining.
• New groin pain with fever, or with unexplained weight loss.
• Postpartum groin pain accompanied by loss of bladder or bowel control.
• Groin pain in a female athlete with absent periods and a history of stress fractures.

Limits of the evidence

The honest caveat is that most groin injury research has been done in men, and the return-to-sport thresholds above—including the 10 percent asymmetry cutoff—were derived largely from mixed and male cohorts. Applying them to women is reasonable but not perfectly validated. Normative adductor strength values for women are less well established, and the Copenhagen exercise trials in female athletes are smaller and fewer.

The pregnancy literature has the opposite problem: pelvic girdle pain is well documented, but specific rates of adductor strain during pregnancy are not precisely quantified, because imaging is used sparingly in pregnancy and diagnoses are mostly clinical. What is clear is that the mechanism—a looser pelvis demanding more from the same stabilizing muscles—is real, measurable, and modifiable with supervised loading.

The safest summary for a woman with groin pain is this: take the strain seriously, load it progressively, and check the hip joint, the pubic bone, and the pelvic floor at the same time. The muscle is usually the source, but not always the whole story.