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Where to Find Jeans That Fit Your Muscly Legs


We asked where you buy jeans that actually fit if you have the butt and legs of someone who works out a lot. Standard sized jeans that fit your waist may not be able to squeeze over your quads, and it turns out athletes of many sorts (lifters, cyclists, and more) have this problem. Today, we present some possible solutions.

So far, we haven’t heard from anyone who has tried brands that cater specifically to athletes, like Barbell, so those are still a mystery. That kind of makes sense: when you’ve been disappointed by jean after jean, buying pricey ones online is a gamble.

The caveat that applies to all of these recommendations, of course, is that we’re all shaped differently and have difference preferences for how jeans fit. So view these as a starting point for finding the right jeans:

Levi’s 541

If you’re looking for a men’s or looser style, the most popular choice seems to be the Levi’s 541 Athletic Fit. It’s designed to solve exactly this problem, with “extra room through seat and thigh” and 1 percent elastane blended into the denim so they stretch. We also got a few votes for the 569, the 527, and 502's with stretch.

Denizen

I promise Levi’s is not paying us to write this. Denizen, a Levi’s brand sold at Target and a few other places, makes jeans that fit muscular lower bodies fairly well, even though that doesn’t seem to be their goal. In other words, they have:

  • Women’s sizing (men might like them too, but you’ll probably have to shop the women’s section to find them)

  • ...with “curvy” styles

  • ...and a lot of stretch in the material.

“Curvy” is a code word for cuts that are larger in the hips for the same size waist. It works great no matter what those curves are made of (fat, muscle, wide pelvis) so don’t think about whether you’d consider yourself a curvy person, just whether you need extra fabric and stretch in the butt and thigh area. I own a pair of these that are labeled “curvy skinny,” which sounds like an oxymoron, but they fit like a dream, and I wouldn’t call myself either curvy or skinny.


Old Navy and Gap

Old Navy’s Rockstars with built-in sculpt and Curvy Skinny jeans have their fans, for similar reasons as Denizen. Gap’s True Skinny jeans, too. Some folks just said that these two stores are generally good for finding jeans that fit their butts and quads—just look for the stretchiest styles and ignore the fact that most of them are labeled “skinny.”

Honorable Mentions

These jeans were each mentioned once, so I can’t confirm whether they fit into any particular pattern, but know that there’s at least one happy customer out there:

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