Hi there;
I was also interested in Freestyle and found a lot of threads in the forums by searching "freestyle training" or "freestyle methods". There is a book by George Snyder that has been in several editions, it's available at his website (
http://www.gsnyderproductions.com/freestyle.htm), it costs about $35.
I'm also pretty much a pear, and wanted to trim down my lower half, and so after some education on the forums, I decided to order the book - it wasn't really worth it, IMO. It's got a LOT of cheesy photos of girls from Snyder's gym and from various weightlifting competitions. He has a fairly run-of-the-mill nutrition section. And pretty much the entire message is: work your lower body with less weight and more reps 4-6 days a week. I found more useful information about Freestyle on this monster thread:
http://69.0.137.118/dc/dcboard.php?..._id=243752&mesg_id=243752&listing_type=search
I adhered very closely to a Freestyle rotation I adapted using Cathe leg workouts, running, and some step workouts (I'd be happy to share my rotations if you are interested). I did six weeks. I ate pretty clean (only a couple of small "cheats" here and there), and although I think my legs seemed more defined, I actually ended up ADDING an inch or so to to my hips and my legs were definitely bigger, too. Arg! I noticed it happening within the first few weeks and stopped using weights altogether but it didn't help. To be fair, I think I add muscle pretty easily; lots of other women have apparently had good results.
So, for this next go-round I decided to cut carbs (this has worked astonishingly well for me in the past- unfortunately I'm one of these people who can barely get away with anything, food-wise!) and I started P90X.
What I learned from reading many, many posts on the forums is that working out is important, and you can definitely select programs that will define your lower half and burn calories. But if you want your lower half to be smaller, it all comes down to diet. Bummer.
Dee
