How Well Do Leg Bands Work to Trim the Outer Thighs?

Do you do exercises with a thick, taut band around your upper legs with the idea of slimming your heavy outer thighs?

These exercises can be done while lying sideways on a floor, by walking sideways, by standing still and moving one leg at a time outward and by moving the thighs outward while seated.

If you regularly visit a gym, you’ll sooner or later see women using thick, short resistance bands for thigh exercises.

Usually, they have heavy thighs, and presumably, the motions with the bands are done with the belief that this will slim their upper legs.

Perhaps you yourself engage in these exercises, maybe even feeling a “burn” in your outer thighs throughout the sets.

If your goal is to get slimmer outer thighs with these exercises, you’re wasting your time, no matter how hot that burn feels.

Yes, the gym supplies the bands. But this doesn’t mean they’ll shrink the heft from your thighs.

Gyms often supply all sorts of gadgets – to appeal to as broad a population as possible. Gym ownership is a very competitive business, and gyms want to always have the edge on their competition.

An easy way to offer something that other health clubs in the area don’t is to provide every possible exercise gadget. This will include a variety of tension bands.

I’m all for tension band workouts, and in fact, use the classic ones myself for some shoulder routines for sculpting and stronger tendons. They’re also great for triceps extensions to build lean triceps mass and sculpt.

But for trimming the outside of the thighs? Won’t happen.

Why Thick Bands Around the Thighs Won’t Make Them Smaller

Large muscles require more energy than do small muscles just to exist. It makes no sense to work small muscles if you want fat loss.

Many people don’t understand that location of work doesn’t mean area where fat loss will occur.

Women are mislead by the burn they feel in their outer thighs while doing band exercises. They think the burn means the burning of excess fat.

Sure, the small abductor muscles are indeed working. But they’re like a little motor bike when compared to an 18-wheeler truck: Which requires more energy to work and recover: small muscles or large muscles?

To slim the thighs you need to work big muscle groups – regardless of where they’re located.

• Quadriceps
• Hamstrings
• The big butt muscle: gluteus maximus
• Back
• Chest

Exercising the tiny muscles in the butt (gluteus minimus and medius – the ones that enable you to move your leg out to the side) will not make your thighs smaller because these little muscles just don’t require enough energy to incite a raid of stored fat.

If you trade the sideways walking and the side leg lifts for squatting, the leg press, the deadlift and back and chest routines, this will crank up your body’s energy needs.

Working those large muscle groups intensely will force a raid of stored fat all over – and this includes in your outer thighs.

You can’t really believe that walking sideways with a band around your upper legs will shave inches off your thighs, do you?

Pictured below are leg exercises that will slim your thighs.

And yes, you must work HARD.

 

 

 

If you’re still convinced that the most effective way of trimming heavy outer thighs is to move your legs sideways against resistance, then ask yourself this:

Why is it that nearly all the women who perform this exercise have heavy thighs, and the women with the thighs you’d love to have are squatting, deadlifting, doing weighted walking lunges and other compound (multi-joint) work?

Lorra Garrick is a former personal trainer certified through the American Council on Exercise. At Bally Total Fitness she trained women and men of all ages for fat loss, muscle building, fitness and improved health. 

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Top image: Freepik.com/prostooleh