Road work for thighs and rear ends and the wrong advice for women and men

Some people have naturally big thighs and rear ends due to fat, muscle, or both. They want to slim their thighs, not bulk them up. This site addresses the issue.

http://www.laststopfatloss.com/how-to-lose-weight-in-your-thighs

For those with a lot of bulk in their thighs and rear end, the standard one-size-fits all fitness advice to start by building muscle in the legs does not apply--it will just increase the disproportionate bulk, even if it is muscle. Rather than squats, sprints, and bike riding, etc., for these people (including me!) "road work" i.e. long very slow running 45-60 minutes is a better approach to these areas.

Road Work
Boxers, especially the heavier weights, do road work to keep their weight under control and build endurance for long fights. It is just running really slow over 45-60 minutes. Forget distance, it doesn't matter, you may cover just a three laps on a track in 45 minutes. The motion is almost like bouncing/jumping rope/shuffling because you are going so slow.


Joe Frazier doing road work

Somewhere out there a fitness guru is saying "Wrong! You'll lose all your precious muscle this way! You have to build muscle to increase fat burning!" Again, this is for those with too much muscle mass in the thighs, not those at the other end of the spectrum struggling to hold on to muscle .

Adding Cardio Intensity Intervals to Road Work
Slow running can work together with short anaerobic exercises like pushups to amplify the intensity without bulking up.

To add a little cardio intensity spice to long slow running without bulking legs, sprinkle in short intervals of anaerobic exercise like pushups every so often  6-8 times over the 45-60 minutes. For example, if you're at a track just drop once every lap or two and do 1-5 pushups, pop up and go right back to running slow. It is not meant to be a full chest workout or to work to failure. What this does is forces the heart to work heart to send the blood from general circulation (running) to local muscle groups (chest, arms) and then quickly back out to general circulation as you go right back to running. You make feel a little kick of light headedness and adrenaline as you switch back to running, that tells you you need more blood in general circulation, which is good

Instead of pushups during the intervals, other upper body exercises work like tricep dips on a park/bleacher bench or a couple quick pullups if there is a bar around somewhere. Or bring some dumbells and leave them on the side to do curls, kickbacks, or military presses. Best thing I find is to mix several of these exercises so you're doing 4 of one and 4 of another rather than overworking the same muscles 8 sets. Whatever the exercise, go right back to running as soon as your done.


Frequent Mis-Advice for Women
Women naturally tend to have bigger thighs and rear ends than men so it is a key area that they focus on in exercise. One of the biggest mistakes told to women is that to "tone" their thighs they should do any exercise that works the muscles there--ride the stationary bike, do squats, sprints, etc. But this is counterproductive for women shaped like "spoons" and "hourglasses" i.e. who naturally have curves and bulk, and you see the results everywhere around you jumping out of the spandex: women who have done so much leg exercise trying to slim their thighs and yet their thighs have gotten bigger than when they started. This point is spelled out in the website above and also in the book Escape Your Shape. Road work (above) is a better way to slim and tone thighs and rear end.
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Your-Shape-Smarter-Harder/dp/0743211448

Frequent Mis-Advice for those with natural thigh muscle mass
There are others, men and women, who just have a lot of muscle (rather than soft curves) naturally on their thighs and rear end (and then there are people who have both). They are usually good sprinters. I am one of them; when I was going into 1st grade and looking for Catholic school uniform pants, we had to go to Sears to get "Husky" size because of my thighs, even though I wasn't particularly chunky anywhere else. (I always wondered what Alaskan Huskies had to do with pants?) And I still managed to split a few pairs during the primary grades. So the standard advice about muscle for guys (usually written solely from the perspective of gaining muscle rather than overall body shape and proportion) to focus on squats and sprints as the foundation of muscle building doesn't work for us, it just builds disproportionately-bulky muscle in this area. Pants sizes go through the roof; yes, there is such a thing as too much muscle. A better approach is to do road work for the lower body and focus on lifting in other areas like arms, shoulders, etc. which are usually naturally less bulky in those with naturally big thighs.