The thighs contain some of the largest muscles in the human body. The thigh muscles allow the lower body to bend, flex, and rotate. They also bear most of your body’s weight and keep the hips and legs aligned, in addition to providing and assisting with enough balance. Thigh muscles can be grouped based on their function and location…
- Hamstrings – The hamstrings allow you to extend your hip to move your leg behind your body, such as when you walk and put one leg behind you. They also let you flex your knee, for instance, when you are squatting.
- Adductors – Adductors allow you to bring the thighs toward each other, which is called adduction. They help you stay balanced, keep the legs and hips in alignment, and allow rotation through the hips and legs.
- Sartorius – This helps you flex and rotate the thigh from the hip joint. You use it when you cross your legs to rest one ankle on the opposite leg. Other examples include sitting cross-legged on the floor or bending and rotating your leg to look at the bottom of your foot.
- Quadriceps – The quadriceps allow you to flex your hip or extend the knee.
The pectineus muscle (a flat and quadrangular muscle located in the middle of the thigh) helps to flex or move your leg towards your body. When the pectineus muscle contracts, it aids in flexion and adduction of the thigh at the hip joint. Flexion, also simply known as bending a joint, brings the thigh forward and upward to flex at the hip joint, whereas adduction moves the limb towards the middle of the body.
A pectineus muscle sprain is an injury directly to the ligaments surrounding the pectineus muscle which is located within the inner thigh area. For instance, if you are exercising your thighs excessively, there may be a risk of overstretching or tearing the ligaments of the pectineus muscle. Ligaments are the bands of tissue that connect two bones together in a joint.