Best exercise for losing weight on hips and thighs?

[muminthecity]

I have recently lost just over 3 stone with a combination of Slimming World and visiting the gym. The weight loss is really showing on my stomach, waist and arms, but my hips and thighs are still huge! Can anyone recommend a particular exercise that is good for these areas? Something that I can do either at the gym or at home? (The gym I go to is very modern and fully equipped with every machine known to man!) Thank you in advance

[kaizen]

Try doing a ski squat against the wall too and gradually extend the time, and if you want to be really mental follow 30 secs ski squat with 10 jump squats, then 30 secs followed by 9 jumps, then 8 etc etc until you are weeeeeeeeeeping and then have this

[kaizen]

I agree with squats and lunges with kettle bells- I must have done literally thousands in the last 2 years n have an arse n thighs like bloody rock . Try holding the movement down too for a couple of seconds to really engage the muscles and do them slowly for max effect.

Same works for tricep dips too - much harder and more effective if you slow down n hold at the bottom for 2 secs.

[ErrolTheDragon]

Squats and lunges are a great way to screw up your knees & hips especially if ... you are over 35.

I'm 52 and have done the 30 day Shred a couple of times through and now Ripped in 30, thet have loads of squats and lunges and my joints feel better than before I started. (the thing that screws up my hip is running on level tarmac). For anyone who prefers exercising at home, and especially if you don't have much time, these videos are good for all-over toning and strength, include warm-up/cooldown, show you how to do the moves with good form and what to avoid (esp with the legwork)and there's always a support thread (sometimes several) on MN.

[Elenashephard]

Do Squats and lunges and perform hip extensions, also in order to work away that thigh fat, you have to work out your entire body.

[muminthecity]

Thanks again everyone, especially Pan and CoteDAzur for the interesting debate . FWIW I do swim, but not very often as I find it a bit boring! I prefer to go swimming with DD, swim a few lengths, play around with DD for a bit, do a few more lengths, go down the water slide with DD etc .

I have started doing squats. They are bloody hard, and I can definitely feel it in my thighs! Will keep going with them and try to build up the amount I can do.

On a positive note, whatever I have been doing so far is having some effect. Last night I tried on a pair of skinny jeans which, a couple of months ago, I couldn't pull up past the tops of my thighs. They now fit perfectly!

[snowlie]

Exercise will help to build muscle on hips and thighs if you do enough and the energy expenditure may help you to lose fat, as long as you don't eat back all those calories burned but there is no way to target fat loss on the body to a specific area, unfortunately!

[Sleepwhenidie]

To really hit the thighs and bum in the gym, Novice is spot on, the stepper machine is fantastic (evil, but fantastic). Less impact on the joints than the treadmill but hard work. Do intervals and you will shift fat pretty quickly,

[CoteDAzur]

That's the spirit

[Pan]

I've thought of nothing else since, Cote.

[CoteDAzur]

Pan - Conversation moved on a bit from there and the link I posted was relevant to what mercury & I were talking about. Lovely to see you share my enthusiasm for this fascinating subject, though

[EarthtoMajorTom]

Best ever exercise for toning thighs is an hour's walk a day with a dog pulling you along on a lead.

[Pan]

Yay for you Cote! But overall weight loss wasn't Scot's enquiry. She was fairly specific about her request.

[mercury7]

i cant claim to have relied on just swimming to stay in shape, currently i also spend an equal amount of time on the treadmill, in the weights room and do a fair bit of walking, if i spent all that time swimming i suppose my body compostion would be different?

No doubt my shoulders would also be in a bad way from endless hours of front crawl and no weight training!

[mercury7]

thanks for the link Cote:o
I've been reading around the subject a bit and I have to say that for me there's nothing new in that article.
It's interesting but inconclusive!
(my money is on the selection process theory at the end)

[CoteDAzur]

Aha! I found it

Swimmers have more body fat than runners despite same levels of calorie intake & output. Studies and theories

Fascinating stuff!

[mercury7]

thanks Cote,on the first one it does occur to me that there is no mention of food intake with the swimming group?

And still no-one seems to be able to put forward a mechanism whereby the 'fundamentally different physiological challenge of being horizontal in water compared with being upright on dry land' could lead to runners being leaner than swimmers?

I just find swimming so much more do-able!
An hour of continuous running is bordering on torture for me, but an hour of continuous swimming makes me want to do another hour.

Horses for courses :o

[CoteDAzur]

I love swimming, too

[CoteDAzur]

This study is interesting.

So is this:

As a form of regular aerobic exercise, swimming has lots of benefits. It uses large muscle groups, can be maintained continuously for long periods of time, and is easy on lower-body joints because it doesn't involve bearing body weight. (...) The problem is that your body gets a fundamentally different physiological challenge from being horizontal in water compared with being upright on dry land, thanks to the hydrostatic pressure and high thermal conductivity of water, according to Hirofumi Tanaka, director of the University of Texas's Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory.

The temperature of the water can also make a big difference. University of Florida researchers found that swimmers consumed 44 per cent more calories after exercising in water at 20C than in water at 33C, which may explain why many studies have failed to find weight-loss benefits from swimming regimens.

[mercury7]

we'd need a controlled experiment with sets of identical twins where one twin takes up running and one takes up swimming:o

I know Dara Torres does alot of other training...but so too would other athletes at the same level?

whatever..I love swimming even if it's not as 'good' as running, I think I was a dolphin in a previous life:o

[CoteDAzur]

I guess I wasn't clear. I am not overweight now and and I was certainly not overweight as a swimmer. But the body type that I and my fellow swimmers developed was not that of a runner. Think Rebecca Adlington, then compare that to any Olympic runner.

And trust me when I say that Dara Torres did not make that six-pack core with swimming Swimmers do a lot of other types of training.

[mercury7]

sure there are competitive swimmers who have more fat than other athletes but that's more likely to be because there's very little performance cost to having some extra adipose tissue if you are a swimmer, so swimmers can afford to be fatter.

The fact that you dont heat up when exercising in water just means that your heart rate can be lower at any given level or exertion as compared to say running.

When you run part of the extra demand on your heart is due to the need to get rid of the extra heat generated by muscular effort

[mercury7]

Cote, I know we've discussed this subject before, but, well, are you telling me this woman isnt lean?

www.google.co.uk/search?q=Dara+Torres&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=I9H2UaPPF42r0AWQo4GYBQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1762&bih=934


lots of competitive swimmers are very lean, I see lean people in the pool, I see quite podgy looking people who do alot of running
I'm looking leaner since I started swimming alot.

all anecdotal I know:o

[Pan]

Yes, Ian Thorpe and the rest of the swimmers would look more at home in Marine World, wouldn't they? The science, and use of eyes, indicates other wise? Maybe those post-pool snacks just caught up on you?

[CoteDAzur]

Nothing wrong with disagreement but there isn't much debate here. Yes, calories are burnt but a swimmer's body doesn't get lean like a runner's. It gets shaped like the body of a swimmer. More like a dolphin than a cheetah

(I really wish this were not true, by the way)

[Pan]

Well darn it I am going to disagree there Cote. The calorie burn is one thing (and research indicates it's comparable, depending on lots of variable factors - speed, current fitness etc) but Scots was asking about being long/leaner/slender. Swimming, by it;s very nature involves a stretching out of big and smaller support muscles, rather than the heavy impacting action of muscles fighting gravity all the time, which means consistent resistant muscular effort - nothing like the benefits of swimming.