Illustration of a skinny person building muscle and bulking up.

Build Muscle. Gain Strength. Outlift Yourself.

If you're a guy who wants to build muscle, gain strength, and get fit, I think you'd love our newsletter.

26,258 newsletter subs and counting!

Illustration of a man doing a dumbbell biceps curl workout to build bigger arms.

We're Shane and Marco, known for founding Bony to Beastly and Bony to Bombshell, two of the most popular muscle-building sites for naturally thin people, each with tens of millions of readers.

We have fifteen years of experience coaching clients ranging from everyday people all the way up to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.

We consider lifting research, and we take it seriously, but we also delve into the darkest corners of lifting lore. There's wisdom in bodybuilding traditions, powerlifting programs, and callisthenics routines.

If you want us to walk you through the process of building muscle, start to finish, with personal feedback along the way, check out our programs. We have an unconditional 30-day refund policy on everything we sell.

If you want to peruse the blog, here are the best articles to start with:

Hypertrophy Training

If you're interested in building muscle, we've written about almost every aspect of hypertrophy training. I recommend starting with our big hypertrophy training guide.

Here are some of our more in-depth articles about hypertrophy training principles:

How to Lift Weights

If you want to learn how to lift weights, build muscle, and get stronger, I recommend starting with our article about how to get stronger at the 5 big compound exercises.

You can read about the nuances of each lift here:

Hypertrophy Workout Routines

We've got a bunch of free workout routines you can look through. The articles will teach you how to follow these routines or build your own from scratch.

Healthy Lifestyle

We've also got some articles about how to live a healthy lifestyle, eat a good diet, maintain good body composition, and combine weight training with cardio:

Common Lifting Questions

Here are some of the more common lifting questions we've gotten over the years:

If you have any questions about anything, comment on the most relevant article. I answer every comment.

Before and after photo of an intermediate lifter bulking
Before and after photo of a skinny guy becoming muscular
Skinny-Fat to Muscular Transformation
Before and after photo of a skinny-fat guy becoming lean and muscular
Women's weight gain transformation
Before and after photo of an intermediate lifter building muscle

Recent Articles

Illustration of a bodybuilder jogging to improve his cardiovascular fitness.

Concurrent Training: How to Schedule Cardio & Weight Training

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | January 18, 2023

In this article, we’ll teach you how to improve your cardiovascular fitness while building muscle and getting stronger. We want the health benefits of doing cardio, but we aren’t trying…

Read More
Image of a natural male bodybuilder calculating his natural muscular potential.

How Big Can You Get Naturally? FFMI Breakdown

By Shane Duquette | June 7, 2025

There’s an old myth that natural lifters can get up to a fat-free mass index (FFMI) of 25. The idea is that if someone has an FFMI under 25, they…

Read More
Illustration of a man with sore muscles after lifting weights.

Is DOMS a Sign of Muscle Growth?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | April 10, 2025

Most people think delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a sign of muscle growth. The idea is that if you train a muscle hard enough to make it sore, then…

Read More
Illustration showing a man doing pull-ups.

How Many Pull-Ups Can the Average Man Do? What’s Good?

By Shane Duquette | May 9, 2025

When I surveyed our YouTube audience, half could do 0–9 pull-ups, half could do 10–19 pull-ups, and a handful could do 20+. Quite a few guys were stuck at 0.…

Read More
Illustration of a natural lifter overhead pressing 225 pounds.

How Much Should You Be Able to Overhead Press?

By Shane Duquette | May 6, 2024

The common strength standard for natural lifters is to overhead press two plates, bench press three, squat four, and deadlift five. That’s a 225-pound overhead press. 100 kilos. That seemed…

Read More
Illustration of a man doing a conventional barbell deadlift.

How Much Should You Be Able to Deadlift?

By Shane Duquette | May 6, 2024

The typical goal for a natural lifter is to bench three plates, squat four, and deadlift five. That’s 495 pounds (or 220 kilos). I think that’s realistic, in theory, but…

Read More
Illustration of a man doing the bench press.

How Much Should You Be Able to Bench Press?

By Shane Duquette | May 6, 2024

We surveyed 580 guys from our newsletter. Most guys start off benching less than 135 pounds. After a year of lifting weights, they can bench 135–224 pounds, which is the…

Read More
Illustration showing a man doing a barbell back squat.

How Much Should You Be Able to Squat?

By Shane Duquette | May 7, 2024

The common strength goal for natural lifters is to overhead press two plates, bench press three plates, squat four plates, and deadlift five. That’s a 405-pound squat. 180 kilos. Those…

Read More
Illustration showing a man doing a barbell deadlift.

How Much Can the Average Man Lift?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | September 14, 2024

How much can the average man lift? There are a few studies we can look at. I also surveyed 600 of our newsletter subscribers, asking them how much they could…

Read More