Thigh gaps are a fad beauty goal that encourages people to lose thigh fat or work their inner thigh muscles to get a space between their thighs. But inner thigh gaps are not a healthy goal. However, anyone can replace a thigh gap trend with a healthy goal or inner thigh exercises or weight loss goals that are more attainable.
What is a Thigh Gap
A thigh gap is a high prize beauty standard that’s been in place for a few decades. There was a time when people had a goal of getting a thigh gap no matter their body type. This small gap between the thighs was used (mostly) against women to try to create a poor beauty standard for women everywhere. New goals came and went with all beauty trends, but the thigh gap ideal never quite left. People maintain these goals of developing a thigh gap to accentuate their legs and their figures. Even with the slim thick goal that the Kardashian family brought into view, some people still hoped to attain this thigh gap.
The truth is that the thigh gap is not a great goal or standard for any woman or person to attempt to meet. Only some body types can even attain a thigh gap, and it isn’t always the sign of beauty people hope it to be. Having these gaps can also suggest unhealthiness as a person might starve themselves to achieve these looks.
Some healthy and slim people will never develop a thigh gap because their bodies aren’t built that way. Thick people who love their thighs should go on doing so because thigh gaps are not a sign of overall health. In fact, when you see people walking around with thigh gaps, you should ignore them completely. If you dream of developing a thigh gap, you should change your dream.
No one should worry about how to get a thigh gap since they are so frivolous and unattainable for many people. When creating healthy beauty and fitness goals, you should explore beyond the shallow exteriors of these ‘perfect’ body types and see what really lies at the center of this beauty standard. In reality, behind the thigh gap fad is the idea that people with muscular legs and butts have attractive bodies. Focusing on how to work your lower body muscles to get stronger is a much healthier and more realistic way to get a body you love and are proud of if you are dissatisfied with yourself and want to change. It’s important to note that all body types are beautiful, and you don’t need to work out your lower body all the time to achieve any beauty standard. The only person’s standards you need to meet are your own.
Can All Body Types Achieve a ‘Thigh Gap’
The main reason the thigh gap image is so unhealthy is that not all bodies can achieve the thigh gap, and many bodies don’t work that way and cannot have a thigh gap in any manner that is healthy.
Anything like height, genetics, and weight can affect a person’s ability to have a thigh gap. Also, no bodies store fat exactly the same way. Sure women and men, on average, store fat in specific areas, but not everyone works the same. Also, your personal lifestyle can affect where your body stores fat, and your bone structure can change whether you’re able to have a thigh gap or not.
You can’t achieve thigh gaps overnight or even in one week. So many variables can affect the likelihood of you having a thigh gap. This is why it’s important to worry about how to work out to achieve your dream legs rather than achieve a thigh gap. Thigh gaps are things left over from a time when women were supposed to appear like Barbie dolls. But women don’t look like those dolls, and even Barbie has acknowledged this change in how society treats women and what deems them as beautiful. If you don’t feel beautiful in your own skin and you want to change that, then making healthy goals is the most important step. So throw out the idea of developing a thigh gap, and replace it with getting strong muscular legs and work out to achieve your goals.
Things to Ignore When Trying to Get Your Dream Legs
When you’re working out to achieve your goals, there is a lot of things that need your focus. Work on your mindset and endurance. Focus on eating right, meditating, and taking care of your mental health.
It would help if you didn’t think about developing an actual gap between your legs since you may not be able to based on unchangeable factors like bone structure. Try your best not to focus on any bad feelings you may have about your body. Instead, it would be best if you used this time to really appreciate your body and all that it can do. Creating a healthy workout habit is about making great physical and mental progress as you learn to care for yourself more healthily.
What a Healthy Diet Should be When Trying to Get Healthier Legs
When you’re working on getting your dream legs, you should definitely eat right. Certain foods are super important for developing muscle. Depending on how much muscle you want to build, you might want to up your protein and carbohydrate intake. Also, staying hydrated is ultra important when working out.
How to Take Care of Your Mental Health While Working Out
It’s important to make healthy goals when working to change your body. If you want to get more fit, try to make goals that are focused on actions you can take and not results you want to force. For example, if you’re focusing on just strengthening your legs, maybe you should make a goal to go to the gym three times a week. You can also make your goal to try a new leg workout once a week. There are tons of healthy ways to motivate yourself to get stronger.
While working on your legs, you might find that you want to build your overall strength. Once you start working on your whole body, your options for goals expand even more. You can try to lift heavier weights or practice new deadlifts. You can make goals to do a workout only using kettlebells or barbells.
Always try to focus on your actions and not the results you’re trying to achieve. It’s far more important to value your body’s ability to build strength than to try to embody an image that isn’t you.
When caring for your mental health, you want to really focus on besting yourself. Try to beat your own personal goals, and try new types of workouts. Suppose you ignore cardio during weight lifting. Try adding a short jog to the end of your workout every other time. If you only do cardio and squats, try throwing in some push-ups to give your legs a break every now and then. Really focus on your own growth while you work out. Focusing on other people’s bodies or random internet goals will not help you become the best version of yourself. Stay positive, healthy, and active, and you will be able to feel so many benefits that working out has to offer.
What Exercises to Perform to Achieve Toned Thighs
Wide Stance Squats
If you’ve done regular squats, you know that you make your feet shoulder-width apart most of the time. However, you let your feet space out a bit more when doing wide stance squats. Wide stance squats cause more glute muscles to activate. If you want to target more of your quads, you can bring your stance to be more narrow. This wide stance squat workout is great since it can help your legs and butt gain muscle. Also, you can do these at home or in a gym, and you can add weights to it if you wish, but you don’t have to.
Pilates Leg Lifts
Pilates leg lifts are a challenging and valuable workout, and this workout requires you to own a soft mat to lay on like a yoga mat. When doing this workout, form is crucial to ensure you get as many benefits as possible without injuring yourself.
To perform Pilates leg lifts, you need to lay down on your mat on your side. Make sure everything is in line. Your ankles, hips, shoulders, and ears should be directly on top of one another so you aren’t leaning any way or becoming unbalanced. Then, you can move your legs slightly in front of you, so your whole body forms a slight ‘banana’ shape. When you do this, you can put your arm under your head and lay your head on it, and you can use your other arm to help your balance by putting it in front of you so your hand is on the mat in the space right in front of your abs.
When you begin this workout, take a deep breath in and allow yourself to exhale slowly. You should only feel your core and your legs engaged during this workout, do not strain your neck by lifting your head and don’t use your arms to push up either. Instead, you want to tighten your abs and lift up both your legs together, only a few inches off the ground. The entire time you lift your legs, make sure your feet, ankles, and thighs are all staying connected. Then you can raise your legs and lower them back to the ground. You can repeat this exercise for as many repetitions as you like, but you should always practice this on both sides to make sure you don’t become unbalanced.
Bridge Raises
Bridge raises are great exercises to enhance your legs, core, and arms, and they offer a lot of benefits if you do them correctly. It would be best if you had a mat to perform this workout.
You’ll want to sit on your mat with your hands shoulder-width apart and your fingertips pointing away from your butt. It would help if you started this exercise by positioning yourself, sitting up but having your feet planted flat on the floor in front of you. After you get your hands and feet in place, lift your butt off the ground while slightly bending your elbows. Once you get towards the top of this movement, you can straighten your elbows and squeeze your glutes super hard to raise yourself into the reverse tabletop position. When you’re doing a bridge raise right, you should have the form of a small bridge or little table, where your legs and torso make a straight and flat surface.
You want to focused on tightening your abs while doing these workouts and really squeezing your glutes to raise yourself as high up as possible. It might take a few times before you feel you’ve really developed a handle on the form of this workout because it isn’t the most comfortable position to workout. You should hold this position for 20-30 seconds.
Lateral Lunges
Lateral lunges are killer workouts since they help you develop stronger muscles while providing you with balance and stretching benefits as well. This workout helps your glutes, quads, hamstrings, adductors, and abductors all at once. If you want strong legs, lunges are great exercises to practice.
To do lateral lunges, you want to stand so your feet are hip-width apart and then take a huge step to your side with your right leg. You’ll want to bend your right leg and lower yourself on that side until your right thigh is parallel to the ground or your knee looks like it’s at a 90-degree angle. You should try to do this movement in just a few seconds.
After getting there, you can push yourself back to your starting position and alternate the same steps on your left side. Repeat this move 10-12 times on each side to get a full workout. You can always practice more repetitions or add weights if you want to really challenge yourself.
Scissor Kicks
Scissor kicks are great exercises that build core strength and leg muscle. These workouts are excellent for strengthening your core and legs.
When performing scissor kicks, you’ll need to lay down on an exercise or yoga mat. Then you need to lay your head back and allow your feet to rise about six to twelve inches off the ground. Typically the closer your legs are to the ground, the more challenging a workout can be, but this workout is quite the challenge no matter what.
After raising up your legs, remember to keep them completely straight and engage your core. Then, allow one leg to fall back close to the mat and start alternating which leg is in the air. It should look like you’re kicking your legs in the air alternating with each other, and you should keep your arms and head, and neck on the ground so you don’t accidentally strain any muscles.
Dumbbell Step-Up
Dumbbell step-ups are great workouts, and they’ll strengthen your quads, glutes, adductors, hip flexors, hamstrings, calves, and core. You can work out so many different muscles doing this exercise, so it’s easy to understand why it’s so popular.
You’ll need dumbbells and something high to step on when performing this workout. So you can do this at home if you own a set of dumbbells, but it’s usually beneficial to step onto something like a workout bench, and typically those are found in gyms unless you have an awesome home gym.
When doing dumbbell step-ups, you’ll want to stand in front of the thing you’re stepping on with a dumbbell in each hand. Most step-up routines work with an eight-inch block, but the most important rule is not to step up onto any platform that causes your leg to flex deeper than a 90-degree angle.
When you step up to your platform, keep your heel flat on the step, and your knee should lean slightly outwards. Then you will step up with your other leg, but keep your torso long and tall. Use your core muscles to help enhance great posture by tightening your abs. When you bring your second leg up, do so by just straightening the leg on the platform, and avoid bending your leg to accommodate the height. As you step down from the box, only move one leg down at first and make sure your shoulders stay back and your head stays up. Then, lower your leg slowly down to the ground.
Sumo Deadlift
Deadlifts are great workouts that can work your entire body, but they’re especially beneficial for your legs and glutes. You can perform sumo deadlifts with dumbbells or barbells, but it’s essential always to use lighter weights when you’re learning a new workout like the sumo deadlift.
Start with a stance just a little wider than shoulder-width apart to do this workout. You’ll need to rotate your toes away from the midline, so they’re pointing out 30 to 45 degrees. Bend at your hips and keep your chest up while pushing your hips back and reaching down to grab your dumbbells with an overhand grip. Then you want to take a deep breath while tightening your core and stand up while keeping your spine straight. You can squeeze your glutes, too, to help encourage proper form. While you stand, thrust your hips forward and raise the dumbbells as you straighten your legs to stand. Allow the dumbbells to hang around your mid-thigh level when you’re standing upright. Then, slowly lower yourself back to the floor, and you’ve completed one repetition. You can repeat as many repetitions and sets as you feel comfortable doing.
Conclusion
Depending on body shape, some people will never be able to develop a thigh gap. If you have narrow hips or naturally thick thighs, you shouldn’t focus on things like extreme weight loss to develop a thigh gap. It’s much more gratifying and useful to focus on strengthening yourself while maintaining a healthy weight.
Thin thighs are not an indicator of health, and leg fat is natural, especially for women, as their bodies tend to store more fat in their hips and legs. Your body image should be built on what makes you feel strong, healthy, and proud. It’s much more important to keep your mind set on positive body image goals rather than trying to match the body structure of some random person on the internet. If you want to change your body and lose weight or develop thin thighs, or toned thighs, use healthy diets and the workouts above to achieve strong and lean muscles in your legs and glutes.
