Do you have thigh abundance and are convinced this is due to muscle even though you don’t or hardly work out with weights? Size can mean fat, muscle or both.
I was inspired to cover this sometimes sensitive topic after catching an Instagram post of a woman’s thigh next to her husband’s.
They were the same size even though he was seven inches taller.
The post attracted a slew of responses from what clearly seemed to be plus-sized women talking about their big thighs and how strong their legs were.
Either the strength causes the bigness, or, they were strong because of the bigness. Bottom line: Many commenters associated thick or “fat” thighs with strong legs.
Fat thighs equal strong thighs?
I read a lot of the comments. None mentioned how they knew their legs were strong. They merely said their legs were strong.
None gave any metric or references to gauge strength, such as, “My first-time ever squat was 135 pounds,” or, “I can sled push as much weight as most of the men at my gym.”
It’s quite possible that many women, sour over the size of their thighs, have convinced themselves that the girth is the result of natural strength.
This makes accepting hefty thighs easier to do, when numerous attempts at weight loss have not panned out.
This psychology is easy to understand. “It’s all muscle under there,” they might say.
Or, “I do well on hikes; my thunder thighs are strong and capable.”
Naturally Strong Legs
So many women in the comments were describing their legs as strong, without mentioning any workouts. Presumably, they don’t work out.
Otherwise, someone with strong legs from, say, kickass CrossFit routines would (you’d think) mention this.
Certainly, natural leg strength varies from one individual to the next, due to genetics.
Leg strength can also be influenced by activities of daily living, one’s job, workouts and amount of excess fat.
What many people don’t realize is that leg strength – such as with the barbell squat, deadlift and picking heavy crates off the floor – is significantly influenced by body proportions and invisible factors such as tendon insertion points. The entire body is a lever system.
Women may think their overweight legs are strong based on activities that don’t actually require strength — as in force production — but instead, cardiovascular fitness.
Hiking all day doesn’t take strong legs per se. A person could be capable of hiking all day and be squatting only 85 pounds.
Marathon runners spend hours running nonstop, yet based on their appearance, I wouldn’t bet the farm they could leg press the same amount of weight that bodybuilders do, or squat impressive loads.
Women have to ask themselves, “What have I done that leads me to believe I have strong legs?”
Another good question: “What action would prove my big thighs are strong?”
My response: Go to a gym and see what you can do. Sustained and paced activity on a cardio machine does not demonstrate strength. It demonstrates endurance.
Activities of sustained and paced movement recruit slow-twitch muscle fiber.
Brief bursts of power, such as the deadlift exercise, or pushing a heavily weighted sled as quickly as possible, recruit fast-twitch fiber. So does sprinting across a parking lot.
Nobody can just walk into a gym, who’s never worked out before, and squat the same loads that someone who’s been training for a while can. The barbell squat is complex.
However, it IS possible for a very overweight woman to leg press, on her first try, a substantial amount of weight. I’ve witnessed this as a personal trainer.
But these women were BIG – not thick thighs, not plump thighs, not heavy thighs, but we’re talking morbid obesity.
Women with thick thighs from excess fat (not morbid obesity) may still have a head start with the leg press, but not all of them will.
So much depends on genetics, body proportions, ratio of fast-twitch muscle fiber to slow (we’re born with the ratio; it can’t be changed with exercise) and incidental gains in strength generated from one’s job.
“It’s Muscle, Not Fat”
Another point to consider is that some of the commenters might’ve thought that the thunder in their thighs was muscle rather than excess fat.
It’s possible to have a good amount of muscle under excess fat, but not without training to get that muscle in the first place.
There’s an easy way to determine if the heft or plumpness if fat or muscle.
Ask a personal trainer at a gym to take a body fat reading of your thighs. This is very simple, done with a skinfold caliper.
If your thighs are muscle and don’t have excess subcutaneous fat, the caliper reading (taken at the front and about mid-thigh) will be below a certain value.
- <15 mm: typically lean at that site
- 15-25 mm: average range
- >25-35+ mm: increasingly higher subcutaneous fat
The Problem with Illusion
If a woman, who doesn’t strength train or regularly engage in wind sprints or box jumping, thinks she has strong legs, this could easily discourage her from working out.
You can get strong legs from training without making thick thighs even bigger. In fact, training will reduce their circumference.
You can’t have truly strong legs without working out – with the exception of women I’ve worked with who weighed around 300 pounds.
But that comes with a hefty price. They could leg press 400 pounds, but struggled to climb a staircase and were not able to even trot across a parking lot. Even getting out of the leg press machine was difficult.
Truly strong legs mean being able to perform all sorts of feats, from a variety of weighted squats to jump squats to leaping over puddles to deftly dashing up a flight of stairs. And being able to take off in a bolt.
