[saef]

Recently I was standing in the shower, thinking nothing in particular, when I noticed that my feet now turn outward. (They didn't use to.) In fact, it's an effort for me to make them point straight forward & parallel, and I have some difficulty turning them inward & pigeon-toed.

I happened to mention this to the Pilates instructor & a gaggle of trainers, and they told me this might be due to my taking spin classes four times a week & training my outer thigh muscles, so that they have become quite strong, while my inner thigh muscles are relatively week. Also, in some mat routines in Pilates, I discovered that indeed, my inner thigh muscles were singing out when other parts of my legs felt good.

So I've got a two part question for anyone who's read this far:

1) Have you ever had any experience with using a "corrective" exercise to balance more highly trained parts of your body? If so, what did you do, and how long before your body evened out a little more?

2) Do you know of any serious exercises that focus on the inner thigh? I am hoping for something that's not high-impact. (And please don't make me haunt garage sales all summer looking for a used Thighmaster.) Does that vaguely kinky-looking abductor/adductor (or whatever they call it?) machine at the gym really deliver, or is it a massive paperweight, as some of those machines really seem to be?

I need this. It's summer, I plan to wear some dresses, and I need to keep my knees together when seated.

Also it worries me to think that parts of my body could be maybe even overtrained while others aren't doing their share.

[SCraver]

I take an ab class at the gym and they make us do crunches = laying on our backs with the yoga ball between our feet and our feet straight up in the air. You have to squeeze with your inner thighs to keep the ball up and it seems to get my inner thighs screamin'.

Squats - with your feet in a pliate (sp?) position - so you point your feet out. Those squats use the inner thigh (they also make my inner thighs scream).

[saef]

SCraver, that's exactly what I want, screaming inner thighs.

Also, I like both these suggestions because they don't require equipment. I could even do the pliee (that may be the spelling but with an accent mark in there somewhere, which I don't know how to type) squats at my cube in the office, when no one is looking.

[SCraver]

Lol! My boss would look at my like I was mad if I did squats in my cube... maybe I will try one day, just to see!

Yeah - I like to use as little equipment as possible - 1.) don't want to buy it, 2.) anything I buy then takes up space I don't have and 3.) I like using all those good stabalizer muscles to do my exercises.

You can do ones, too, where you stand and balance on one foot and point the other foot and lift to the side, so you are trying to push the inside of your foot up toward the ceiling. You can do the same thing laying down - you lay on your sideand bend you top leg so your foot is resting in front of you for balance, and lift the bottom leg up. (Do those make sense?) (You can do the standing one in your cubie, too!)