I am generally quite slim but my thighs are enormous(skaters legs) which makes it hard to buy jeans and makes me look bulky on the ice. Does anyone have any excercises or other advice on how to reduce big thighs. I have heard aminiphilline cream decreases fat around the thighs has anyone any experience with this?

If your thighs are muscular with very little fat, there is virtually is going to reduce the size of your thighs, other than overall weight loss (which may not be feasible if you you already have a low BMI or percentage of body fat).

i have the same problem!!! i am not a huge person at all. Im barely 5 ft 1 in tall and pretty petit on my upper half of my body if i keep my weight down but even when i seem to be at my thinist my thighs and Hips still make me look bigger! For a couple months my thighs got fairly small for me by basicly eating healthy and running quit a bit for me. Then i let my eating habits go over halloween... not a good holiday In my opinion... I also did a lot of leg exercises. just the normal ones like squats and such. i wish there was more ways to get them slimer than that though especially because running is not my thing.

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*lenney*

Sometimes you just have to deal with what you're given. If your genetic propensity is to have short, chunky muscles as opposed to long, slender muscles then there's not a great deal you can do abut it without compromising your jumping ability. That said, some people have said that following the New York Ballet videos has helped elongate their muscles, so you could try that.

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~ Trust your dreams not your doubts ~

running actually gives you bigger calfs though. and i'm pretty sure running also gives you big thighs, if you train properly, because you want to build up those muscles in your thigh to protect your knee. Unless you're a Kenyan runner.

but there is a bright side: apparently, when a guy looks at a girl, he subconsiously looks at her hips, and if they're big, they make for good child bearing hips, and so he'll be able to spread his seed around and make more mini mes. (that's about hte only thing i remember from bio 1)

or, if you want, you could always take up hockey and play goalie. Mike Richter, the old NYRangers goalie had the biggest thighs i've ever seen, they were like tree trunks, no joke. he was also an incredible goalie until the knee prioblems and concussions set in.

Unfortunately for me and my saddlebags, I've always been taught that "spot reduction is impossible!" That is, you can't target a certain area for fat loss because only aerobic exercise burns fat, and it burns it all over (well, wherever you have fat to burn).

All of that said, ballet and Pilates are both supposed to build long, lean muscles. I have the NYC Ballet Workout video and it's quite enjoyable, at least compared to the typical workout video--gorgeous dancers, nice lighting and camera work, and Peter Martens's narration is delightfully purry. The DVD is even better because you can turn the narration on & off and select between 2 music tracks.

As others have said there's not much that you can do to reduce 'big' muscular thighs (my problem though I do have fat on top of the muscle which makes it worse ). My coach used to refer to them as 'froglet legs'.

Stretching helps in that you don't get as much bulking so things like yoga, ballet and pilates are good for this but don't expect twiglet legs because it's not going to happen I'm afraid

The REAL problem is clothes manufacturers. They seem to think that we're all a certain shape and that we don't exercise. I can't get my thighs into trousers or my calves into boots. Yes, I need to lose weight but having small feet means that they only do boots for children in my size which means that I can't even zip up boots (not good as I also horse ride).

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The best whisper is a click

Have to agree on the clothing complaint. I'm very thin in the torso and will never ever have hip flab, but my butt and thighs are HUGE. Makes for an interesting experience when trying to find pants...

But I really like them though. It must have influenced my thinking on what's healthy/attractive, cause when I see a person whose thighs don't touch, I immediately think that they're too thin, heh. I also like the look of thicker legs on the ice, since it seems that the skater is sinking down into the ice more.

yea, that seems to make sense. i was watching a competition once, and one of the skaters had such skinny legs, it was disgusting. she didn't look very nice, it all looked too sharp and edgy. but then when i saw some of the other skaters with bigger thighs, they looked more fluid, more graceful.

it's the same way with gymnastics. I personally think that svetlana khornika (sp?) is too skinny. She just doesn;t look very pretty when she performs. She's too bony.

I too suffer from Skaters Butt and its companion disease, Skaters Thigh. I'm bottom-heavy, with a small to normal sized waist, so I know what you mean about finding pants. After years of buying pants big enough to fit my butt and having the waist taken in several inches by a tailor, I discovered that Lands End makes custom jeans and chino-style pants! They're great! They have software that lets you put in a few measurements, pick the features you want, and answer a lot of questions (where are your pants usually too big; where are your pants usually too tight; pick the picture that looks like your butt; etc.) and they make up pants for you. They're kind of expensive at around $54 US, but the cool thing is you're not paying a tailor for alterations, and you can keep sending them back for tweaking until they're exactly right. They'll pay for return postage, too, or you can return them at any Sears. I love them! Lands End custom clothing page

Hey! I am wearing Lands End pants right now. I really like the co. b/c they have petite sizes and will usually hem pants at no extra charge. Their online outlet is great; there's always a good selection of stuff.

Skating will bulk up your thighs a lot more than jogging will (my thighs were smaller when I jogged and didn't skate), so if you really want slender thighs, you can just stop skating. Right. Didn't think so.

Jogging is good, not because of what it does or doesn't do to your leg muscles, but because it is aerobic and burns fat and increases your metabolism. The only way to lose fat is through calorie reduction and aerobic exercise, and spot reduction is impossible. Meanwhile, if your legs are already all muscle, then just start focusing on what they can do, rather than how they look.

ITA, doubletoe! My family's genes are more on the Mary Lou Retton side, but I find that since there are no good mirrors in most rinks (unlike in ballet studio), I hardly think about how my body looks. (Plus, more importantly, I'm too busy trying to stay vertical! )

As soon as I hit 12 my thighs started getting bigger then I started skating. My problem with pants is I need them extra small in the waist, very short length wise and bigger in the thighs. When I wear regular skirts from the malls I need the smallest size possible, if not then it falls down.

Maybe you can wear clothings that give the illusion of slimmer thighs. You can also concentrate your workout more on your lateral shoulders to make them look wider to diminish the emphasis on the hips/thighs.

I wouldn't worry about trying to reduce them but I think you can try to camoflauge them by what you wear. You want to elongate your leg so when you wear pants, maybe consider wearing a leg with a boot cut bottom or flair and match your shoes and stockings to your pants (or boots) so they aren't chopped up. Don't wear short skirts, go for a bit longer than the knee. Dark colors work well to hide the thighs. There are also lots of new jeans out there with stretch denim. This might help you!

For on-ice styles, try dresses with a slightly longer skirt-not one that falls right below the panty line. Don't go for dresses with lots of frill or fullness in the skirt because they'll draw attention to the thighs. Also avoid the box type skirts because they are too sleek and will make your thighs look like they're bulging out. For tights, try the convertable kind or over-the-boot style that you can pull down over the tops of your boots or that cover the entire boot. The white skates make the legs appear shorter and chunkier so covering them will help. I usually wear over the boot tights or leggings that I can pull down to cover the laces of my skates. I have big thighs and calves and this seems to work well.

If you practice in pants or leggings, try some dance pants that have a slight flair at the bottom or go for all the same color of leggings and matching top/sweater/jacket so you have a long line. Consider boot covers that match the leggings. There are lots of online companies that have dancewear and you'll probably find something that works for skating. I love Discount Dance Supply and Just for Kix. There is also Dance Distributors, all of which have websites. I've ordered from all of them and they have fast shipping and good customer service.

You can do more cardio type workouts to trim all over your body but "spot reducing" and other things like creams don't seem to work, from what I've read. You can find ways to minimize how they look but I would be proud that you're strong and athletic. ~AF

OK, I've heard of (and have) "skater's legs," but what is "skater's butt?"

NCSkater02, it's a bigger butt than average (think J-LO bubble-butt) from skating.

Just muscular, really.

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yeah big thighs do come with skating.. and so do skating butt's. i have no problem with the butt thing, i think it looks good to a certain extent, but the thighs are a problem. Mine are practically completly muscle but since im a dancer, my coaches want me very lean but not " sticky". for the running thing, if u look at people in the olympics, u nottice that the sprinters have the bigger thighs and the long distance ones are more lean. I think thats cool and could help if ur thinking that running makes ur thighs big. but its true stick legs dont look healthy and guys dont like it much either im sure.

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x marks the spot

Look at any picture of Brian Boitano's butt. Big and round, but it's all muscle.

Think how glorious male skaters always are from behind.... mmmmmm.....

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

As some of you may know from watching the short documentary film made about me and my faux pairs partner, I have a thing for male skater butts. I have 2 photo albums of nothing but butts! My friend Michele, in addition to being a lovely adult skater, is also a pretty good amateur photographer. When she & I went to Worlds, we were blessed with seats right near one end of the rink where all the men would do their back crossovers to set up jumps on the other end. That was the perfect spot for getting a lot of great pics. Those legs reaching out in the crossovers, the butts coming right at us. Oh my!

I've had skater's thighs my entire life (I'm actually have muscular legs for even a skater), but I've never developed hips at all, and I'm really pretty small...so nothing ever fits. The only jeans I've ever found that fit decently well are Gap Long and Lean (but even in the size 0, I get that horrible thing where your belt, to keep your pants up, is tighter than the waist of the jeans....) Do custom jeans really work out well? I have a friend who got a pair of Levi's customs and really liked them, and I'm thinking maybe I should try the same...It's frustrating b/c I can't wear juniors (since apparently they don't think teenagers ever have any leg muscle at all), but misses and petites are way too big in the waist. What have you guys done for this?

And on reducing the size of your thighs, if they're mostly muscle, why not embrace that? I have friends with no muscle that try and fail to develop any, and I know that my thighs as dispropotional as they are, are a result of years of hard work. Maybe that's me just trying to make myself feel better, but if there's little I can do about it, why not accept it?

Uh, share?