Copenhagen Adduction
The Copenhagen adduction raise is a side plank with your top leg resting on a bench: you let your hips and bottom leg sink slowly towards the floor, then lift them back up into a straight line. It works the inner-thigh (adductor) muscles through their full range, with the most effort on the way down, and the muscles down the side of your trunk hold your body steady.
Also called: Partner Copenhagen, CAE, Copenhagen Raise, Dynamic Copenhagen · Equipment: bodyweight · Pattern: isolation
Step by step
- Set up side-on to a flat bench and lie on your side with your forearm on the floor and your elbow directly under your shoulder.
- Rest the inside of your top leg on the bench with the leg straight: the ankle and shin for the long, harder lever, or the inside of the knee for a short, easier lever. Your bottom leg sits under the bench.
- Press the top leg down into the bench and lift your hips until your body forms a straight line from head to feet. Bring your bottom leg up to meet the underside of the bench.
- Let your hips and bottom leg sink slowly towards the floor, taking about two seconds, until your bottom foot lightly touches the floor.
- Keep your chest facing forward and your hips stacked one above the other, with no rolling backwards, throughout the rep.
- Press the top leg into the bench again to lift back into the straight line, bringing the bottom leg back up to the bench. Breathe out as you lift and in as you sink.
- Complete all reps on one side, then turn over and repeat on the other side.
- Press the top leg down into the bench
- Straight line from head to feet
- Hips stacked, chest facing forward
- Sink slowly, lift with the inner thigh
- Knee on the bench first, ankle once you own it
In VALDA, these cues are one tap away on the exercise while you train.
What it trains
| Muscle | Role | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Adductors: adductor longus | Prime mover | A |
| Adductors: adductor magnus | Secondary | C |
| Adductors: gracilis | Secondary | C |
| Quadratus lumborum | Stabiliser | C |
| Gluteus medius/minimus | Stabiliser | C |
| Rectus abdominis | Stabiliser | C |
| Obliques (internal/external) | Dynamic stabiliser | C |
Evidence grades: A = strong research base · B = good · C = limited · D = coaching consensus.
What goes wrong, and the fix
Hips sagging or piking
Fix: Use the short lever, knee on the bench, until you can hold a straight line.
Trunk rolling backwards
Fix: Stack your shoulders and keep your chest facing the wall in front of you.
Dropping into the bottom
Fix: Take about two seconds to sink to the floor, then lift back up.
Starting on the long lever with lots of reps
Fix: Start on the short lever with a few reps per side and build up over several weeks.
Holding your breath
Fix: Breathe out as you lift and in as you sink.
What the research says
Strength · first choiceSport performance · first choiceMuscle growthRehab & prehabGeneral fitness
- Strength — In an 8-week trial with young footballers, adding this exercise to normal training raised eccentric inner-thigh (hip adduction) strength by about 36%. Attendance was over 90% and soreness ratings stayed low.
- Season-long programmes — A trial of 652 semi-professional footballers used a programme built on this exercise, with three difficulty levels, three times a week in pre-season and once a week in-season. Across the season, an average of 13.5% of those players reported groin problems at any one time, against 21.3% of players who trained as normal.
- Warm-up alone — In a trial with young footballers, a standard team warm-up made no difference to eccentric hip adduction strength. Swapping this exercise into the same warm-up gave about 9% more strength than the standard version.
- Frequency — In a small trial of adolescent rink hockey players, twice a week built more adduction strength than once a week, and the gain held through three weeks without the exercise.
- Building up — The published programmes used three difficulty levels and built up over several weeks. Many coaches begin with the knee on the bench and a few reps per side, because the exercise is new to most people's inner thighs.
- Sport and practice — All of these trials were in football or rink hockey; none has been run in ice hockey. A survey of 50 football teams found most used the exercise and about two thirds had adjusted the sets, reps, progressions or frequency, mostly to manage overall player load.
Swap it mid-workout
With VALDA Pro, FLEX offers alternatives like these when you swap an exercise mid-workout.
The studies behind this guide
Graded A (strongest: trials and reviews) to D (coaching consensus). What each study found, in brief.
- A
The dynamic Copenhagen (lower-and-raise) progression drove a 35.7% increase in eccentric hip-adduction strength over 8 weeks (RCT, n=24), with a starting dose of ~3–5 reps/side.
Ishøi et al. (2016) · Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports
- B
The Copenhagen Adduction elicited the highest adductor-longus EMG (~108% MVIC) of eight hip-adduction exercises — the activation basis the dynamic version exploits through full ROM.
Serner et al. (2014) · British Journal of Sports Medicine
- B
A single-exercise Copenhagen Adduction programme with three progression levels, 3x/week in a 6-8 week pre-season and 1x/week across a 28-week season, was associated with a lower average seasonal prevalence of self-reported groin problems (13.5% vs 21.3%) in 652 semi-professional male footballers (cluster RCT).
Harøy et al. (2019) · British Journal of Sports Medicine
Log the copenhagen adduction in VALDA, with these cues one tap away while you train and your history for it in one place.
Get started freeGeneral information about exercise technique, not medical advice. If you have an injury or a health condition, your healthcare provider is the right person to ask.