Video: Adductor minimus muscle (3D)

Hello everyone! It's Megan from Kenhub here, and in today’s tutorial, we're going to be looking at the functions of the adductor minimus muscle, which is the muscle seen here isolated on your screen.

I want to start off by introducing a few key points about this muscle. First of all, when we look at the adductor minimus muscle here from an anterior view, we can see clearly that it’s located on the medial aspect of the thigh, which is what we could also describe as the inside of your thigh. It’s functionally classified as one of the adductor group of muscles, all of which are located on the medial aspect of the thigh.

The adductor minimus is one of the less well-known muscles of this group due to the fact that it’s considered to be a variable muscle. This means that it varies in size, shape, and attachment. We may also sometimes see it described as part of the larger adductor magnus muscle, rather than as a separate entity itself.

The fibers of the adductor minimus have their origin on the inferior pubic ramus of the pubic bone. They then travel from here almost horizontally to insert into the medial margin of the linea aspera femoris, medial to the large gluteus maximus muscle.

With regards to its innervation, the adductor minimus muscle is innervated by the posterior division of the obturator nerve L2 to L4, which is this nerve seen here highlighted in green.

Now that we’ve covered some basic important facts about this muscle, let’s move on to talk about the actions of this muscle.

The adductor minimus acts specifically on the hip joint and as the name suggests, the contraction of this muscle adducts the thigh at the hip joint. This means that the action of this muscle facilitates the movement of the thigh towards the midline of the body – as you can see here.

In addition to adduction of the thigh, the adductor minimus also facilitates another movement of the hip joint. It also acts upon the hip joint to externally rotate the thigh. As you can see here, this movement is basically the rotation of the thigh laterally or away from the midline of the body.

The last movement that’s carried out by this muscle is not a very significant one in the sense that this muscle is not a huge contributor to this movement, but it’s still worth to mention. The adductor minimus, in addition to the other two actions we’ve just seen, also facilitates slight flexion of the hip joint. Meaning it works with the major flexors of the hip joint to move the thigh forward or anteriorly. As you can see here, this functionally means to decrease or reduce the angle between the femur and the torso.

Now that we’ve seen the actions of the adductor minimus, let’s just quickly recap the main points about this muscle.

We know that it’s one of the adductor muscles of the thigh and that it acts on the hip joint. It adducts the thigh at the hip by moving the thigh towards the midline of the body. It also facilitates the external rotation of the thigh by rotating the thigh laterally. Finally, it also slightly flexes the thigh.

So that brings us to the end of our tutorial on the functions of the adductor minimus muscle. I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial, and if so, don’t forget to go to our homepage and subscribe for more videos like this one.

Thanks for watching and see you next time.