Can You Be a Big Workout Pants Person?

And now, today’s big story…

“You’re a boomer if you wear leggings,” the Wall Street Journal told us last month. I wear leggings, but, unlike many of their commenters, I was receptive to their message that tight workout pants no longer seem like the moment and loose ones may be the future.

I admitted to myself a while back, after living for years under the Kim Kardashian-ruled tyranny of spandex everywhere all the time, that I don’t actually enjoy wearing leggings as athleisure. They are useful for yoga and riding a bike. But if I’m going to drop my kids at school and then work at my desk, I find leggings only marginally more enjoyable to wear at home than a bathing suit. I do not find them to be especially comfortable or warm.

To be clear, the fashion industry needs to get people to buy a different kind of workout pant. We have to have exhausted nearly every iteration of legging by now. We’ve done printed leggings. Jean leggings (jeggings). Liquid leggings. Leggings with mesh paneling. Leggings with pockets! Since we ran out of colors and patterns, we decided to wear them in brown and beige. What would you have thought if I told you in 2004 that you would be wearing brown leggings in 2025? Maybe even as part of a set??

Pants silhouettes don’t change all that often, so when they do, it’s a big deal. Eras are defined by the shape of our pants: the seventies had bell bottoms; the eighties gave us “power pants” that were tapered and pleated; the nineties were all about baggy, low-rise pants (many with cargo pockets). These gave way to low-rise boot cut pants in the aughts. Then we moved into skinny jeans, then mom jeans, and now the dominant styles are wide-leg.

Changes in pant silhouettes tend to stir up a certain amount of pearl clutching. In 2006, after skinny jeans for men started taking off thanks to Hedi Slimane’s aughts collections for Dior Homme, Eric Wilson tried them out for the New York Times, writing, “The skinny jeans had a life of their own, one that was exhausting and seemed to call for a lifestyle more exciting than spending Thursday nights at doggie obedience school.” He added that some styles were “as snug as denim hosiery” and that they started to give him both body image issues and an achey back.

Similarly, WSJ commenters are warning of injury by way of big workout pants:

Yet, as someone who embraced the move from skinny to much more comfortable wide-leg denim, I was looking forward to working out wearing something other than leggings. I have sweats for the morning drop-off and working from home, but I find them too heavy for exercise (which, for me, is usually running, biking, or barre). In embarking on this experiment, I specifically wanted pants that I could comfortably take me from my morning chores (drop-off, etc.) to newslettering to jogging outdoors.

The only problem is that the market for big workout pants seems miniscule compared to that of leggings and sweatpants. I searched the internet for pants I could actually exercise in, not just lounge in, and found that many retailers don’t even distinguish, which made me wonder if I’m the fool for working out in the majority of my workout stuff.

Take these, for instance, by the brand Jaded London. They feel very “Balenciaga handbag owner rides on a plane” — but are they ALSO for exercise?

Who can say? The brand’s own website certainly can’t, but suggests this is the type of pant that WSJ commenter warned against (highlighting mine):

WSJ cited Free People Movement as a brand that has leaned more heavily into the big exercise pants trend than ye olde athleisure superpower Lululemon, the subject of unrelenting articles about their declining stock price and how generally over they are. I tried some of Lulu’s big workout pants and they did not do it for me.

It is true that FPM has leaned heavily into big pants for doing physical things. A sizable subcategory of their big workout pants seems to serve a demo I would term “hiking hotties.” My friend told me some months back that Free People catalogs are the new Victoria’s Secret catalogs. I see what she means — they are kind of intriguing in that they have a way of photographing everything so that it becomes sexual. Hiking poles? Sexual. Caribiners? Even more sexual. A dorky hydration vest? Grab yourself a fan.

In August, I was looking for UPF hiking pants for a trip to the Galápagos and the pickings were SLIM. I was willing to throw all style concerns to the wind be properly dressed as a pale person on the equator and settled on an LL Bean pair that lived up to the reviews of being functional and not-hot (in every possible way). So I can confirm FPM definitely has a lock on the category I never before could have imagined of “sexy hiking clothes.”

The best big workout pants I tried from FPM — and my favorite overall — were the “Retro Rider” pants, which are not exactly cheap at $128 but come in lots of colors and are highly functional. To be clear, these are basically a long version of the board shorts I bought from Delia’s as a tween (except the contrast sides are soft cotton instead of nylon).

I wore them to little league, to work at my desk, and ran and lifted weights in them. I was pleased. I am 5’ 10” and didn’t sag them the way some FPM models do, but still, my foot did not catch in them and result in my untimely death. The pants gave me flashbacks to all the track pants I wore for exercise in my youth, including a pair with buttons that went all the way up the sides. Remember those? Why FPM isn’t making tearaway pants so they can artfully rip them off the models in all sorts of ways is beyond me. I assume that’s coming. (The new Nike Skims line does include a pair of tearaway pants.)

If you are really into both the big pants and willing to be a bit more ”boom boom” aesthetically, my runner-up pair were these from Nike.

They make that noise wind pants do when you walk. So don’t wear them for, like, a midnight heist. But at $80, they were less expensive than many other mid-range options out there. They are double-faced and would be pretty warm for a run unless it was somewhat cold. They have roomy pockets with snap buttons so that your phone won’t go flying out during aerobic activity. If you want something more plain, they also come in black. And if you want to be really hardcore about the eighties vibe, you could get a matching jacket (Nike seems to have jackets available in black).

The world feels like it’s on fire every day, so why not wear a tacky tracksuit??

If you’re still loving your brown leggings (I get it) and this all feels like TOO MUCH, there are lots of performance joggers out there for the big workout pants-curious that are something between leggings and wide pants. The best of these I tried were by On. I had never bought anything from On but know the brand from Zendaya endorsing it. These are perfectly serviceable for sitting around but are really designed for physical activity, as evidenced by the reflectors in the back and helpful web copy that clearly states, “these pants are dedicated to enhancing the joy of running.” The On site has them in olive but the color looked gray in person to me. I like them best in black.

I focused on trying pants that weren’t wildly expensive or too cheap to last. I’m happy to invest a little bit in my workout stuff because I wear it until it falls apart, but I am not spending $1,350 on Miu Miu’s “technical poplin joggers” or $1,920 on the brand’s “mesh-trimmed technical straight pants.”

In conclusion, after tasting the big workout pants life, I’m enjoying adding a couple of pairs to my rotation. If you have big workout pants recommendations, do drop them in the comments!

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