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Physiorun
The Classroom
Your Weekly Running Strength Class
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This Week’s Class
Legs Eleven
A full hip and lower-body circuit built around the squeeze — adductors, glutes and everything in between.
3 rounds throughout · 9 exercises
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If you’ve ever sat through a game of bingo, you’ll know the call: “legs eleven” — a cheeky nod to a pair of matching digits that look just like two legs standing side by side. This week’s Classroom class takes that image and runs with it, a circuit built entirely around the legs — with a fair bit of squeezing along the way.
Your adductors — the muscles down the inner thigh — spend every stride quietly squeezing to stop your knee drifting inward and your leg swinging too far out. They rarely get trained directly, and today that changes, paired with glute, hinge and single-leg work that puts the rest of your lower body to work too.
Nine exercises, three rounds, one circuit — squeeze, bridge, swing, and finish strong.
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The Circuit · 3 rounds
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Squeeze & Drive
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1
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Lateral Lunge (Drop into Lunge from High Knee Position) × 30 seconds each side × 3
Starting tall balanced on one leg with the opposite knee driven up, step laterally out and drop into a lunge before driving back to the high knee. Combines balance, deceleration and sideways strength — the frontal-plane control that forward-only running training usually skips.
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2
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Foam Roller Squeeze (Adductors) × 1 minute × 3
Lying on your back with a foam roller between your knees, squeeze in hard and hold. A direct isometric hit on the adductors — the muscles that quietly control how much your knee drifts inward on every single landing.
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3
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Foam Roller Squeeze and Lift (Bridge) × 1 minute × 3
Same roller squeeze, this time adding a glute bridge lift on top. Pairs adductor activation with glute drive, training the two to fire together exactly as they need to when your leg is loaded mid-stride.
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4
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SL Bridge Iso on Roller × 30 seconds each side × 3
One foot resting on the roller, lift into a bridge on the opposite leg and hold. Challenges single-leg hip extension strength with an unstable base underfoot, stacking a balance demand on top of the glute work.
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5
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Kettlebell Swing × 1 minute × 3
A hip-hinge movement, driving the kettlebell forward through powerful extension of the hips. Trains explosive hip power and posterior chain strength together — the same hip-snap that drives your stride forward.
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6
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Side Lying Leg Lift Adductor × 30 seconds each side × 3
Lying on your side, lift the bottom leg up towards the top leg against gravity. Trains the adductor through its own full range under load, rather than just holding a squeeze isometrically.
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7
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Front Foot Elevated Split Squat × 30 seconds each side × 3
Front foot raised on a small step, lower into a split squat and drive back up. Loads the front leg through a bigger range of knee and hip flexion, building the single-leg quad and glute strength runners need for hills and speed work alike.
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8
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V-Sit Up × 1 minute × 3
Lying flat, lift the torso and legs simultaneously to meet in a V shape, then lower under control. Builds core strength and the coordination between upper and lower body that keeps your trunk stable when your arms and legs are working hard.
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9
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Standing Split Stance Calf Iso × 30 seconds each side × 3
Standing in a staggered stance, rise onto the toes of the front foot and hold. Finishes the circuit with calf and Achilles endurance — the push-off strength that has to hold up no matter how tired the rest of the session has left you.
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Watch the full class
Follow Along on YouTube
▶ Watch the Class on YouTube
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Weekly Blog
The Overlooked Squeeze: Why Adductor Strength Belongs in Every Runner’s Programme
Runners obsess over glutes and quads, and rightly so — but the adductors, the muscles running down the inner thigh, rarely get a mention. That’s despite the fact they’re working on every single stride, quietly controlling how far your leg swings out and stopping your knee from drifting inward as your foot lands.
During stance phase, your adductors work isometrically — holding tension rather than producing big movement — to keep your hip and knee aligned under load. Weakness here often shows up as medial knee discomfort or a nagging groin strain, especially once fatigue sets in and control starts to slip.
The foam roller squeeze drills in today’s circuit target this directly. An isometric squeeze is one of the simplest ways to teach a muscle to switch on and hold tension — exactly the job the adductors are doing on every single stance phase, whether you’ve trained them or not.
Pairing that squeeze with movement — the bridge lift, the side lying leg raise — teaches the same muscle to work dynamically too, not just statically. That closes the gap between an isolated squeeze on the floor and what the adductors actually have to do while you’re running.
Round it out with hip power from the kettlebell swing, single-leg strength from the split squat, and core and calf endurance to finish, and you’ve got a circuit that trains the muscle group most programmes miss alongside everything else that keeps you upright and moving forward.
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Top Tip of the Week
Squeeze Like You Mean It
It’s tempting to let the foam roller just rest between your knees during the squeeze drills. Don’t. The goal is active tension — imagine trying to crush the roller, not just hold it there.
That same cue carries into the bridge and single-leg work too — a deliberate squeeze through the inner thigh and glute at the top of every rep does more for strength than simply moving through the motion.
A muscle that’s asked to switch on hard in training is a muscle that’s far more likely to switch on automatically when you need it most — late in a run, when form usually slips first.
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Nine exercises, three rounds, one squeeze running through almost all of them — adductors, glutes and everything in between, finished off with hip power, single-leg strength and calf endurance. Give the muscles between your legs the attention they’ve been missing.
James
Physiorun
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Runner’s Injury Guides
Dealing With Something Specific?
If you’re carrying a niggle right now, these dedicated guides walk through what’s going on and how to work through it:
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