About Outlift

We help people build muscle. And the best way to do that is to learn how to outlift yourself, growing gradually stronger over time. At first, the muscle gains may come fast and easy. Eventually, they will slow, and we need to get smarter about it.

Building muscle is our hobby, and so we take it seriously, for fun. Not in the sense that we're competitive powerlifters or bodybuilders or anything, just in the sense that we love lifting weights, love improving. You know how people geek out about their RPG builds, min-maxing their stats and armour bonuses? We bring that same level of dedication to building muscle, min-maxing all of the details of our workout programs. That way we can level up our strength in real life, too.

And we'd be lying if we said we weren't competitive. Outlifting ourselves is great, and that's where we got our name… but we also want to Outlift all of our friends and enemies. If you want to outsmart your opponents in the gym, you've come to the right place.

I'm Shane Duquette, a husband, dad, and naturally skinny art nerd. I work a desk job, on purpose, because I'm an introverted dork who likes to write, read, and draw. If I didn't lift weights 3 times per week, I'd be a skeleton. That's why I love lifting.

My art has been used by Precision Nutrition, I've been interviewed by NPR, and my articles have been referenced on Psychology Today. I've also gained 65 pounds at 11% body fat, can bench 3 plates, and have 10 years of experience helping over 10,000 other skinny people get those same results.

My business partner, Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS, is a strength coach who cut his teeth helping college, professional, and Olympic athletes bulk up. Unlike me, he's naturally active, loves sports, and spends all day on his feet. He's gained 63 pounds:

After getting his Health Science degree, Marco learned how to train athletes from Eric Cressey, the strength coach for the Yankees. Then he started up his own strength training business, where he was the strength coach for his university football team, a few professional football players, and our Canadian Olympic rugby team. Marco's a dork, too, though, with Brandon Sanderson books lovingly arranged on his nightstand.

We also helped our third business partner, Jared, gain 33 pounds in his first three months of lifting weights. Here he is starting at 130 pounds and bulking up to 163 pounds while testing one of our programs:

Jared's main goal was to improve his health and fix his chronic tendon and joint pain. We helped him strengthen his bones, tendons, and muscles, improving his posture, mobility, and body composition. And it worked. His pain faded away once he got into the habit of lifting weights, eating a better diet, and getting better sleep.

Becoming bigger, stronger, and more muscular isn't a panacea, but it sure doesn't hurt, and it often helps quite a lot. These are important aspects of living a healthy lifestyle.

We do all of this naturally. No drugs, nothing radical or unhealthy. We're just regular dudes, so we try to choose lifts and methods that are good for our joints and longevity. Fitness is about fitness, right? And we're in this for the long haul.

We're big believers that the bodies that look the best are the ones that are the strongest and the healthiest. No smoke and mirrors, just habitual exercise, good nutrition, and a reasonable, enjoyable lifestyle. But the benefits of living well and training smartly add up over time, and we're capable of quite a lot.

You may know us as the creators of Bony to Beastly and Bony to Bombshell, our muscle-building programs for skinny people. As you can guess from the titles, those programs promise to bring people from skinny to muscular. So, as you can imagine, that creates a bit of a problem.

Our skinny clients kept growing out of our programs for skinny people. I mean, you can only go from Bony to Beastly so many times, right? So we started getting all these people politely emailing us to request more advanced content.

So this is our site for intermediate lifters who lift weights as a hobby and who want to dive much deeper into the nuances of building muscle. This is where we can help you gain your 30th, 50th, or even 70th pound of muscle. This is where we can add the third plate to your bench press, the fourth plate to your squat, and the fifth plate to your deadlift.

Here's Johnny making progress as an intermediate lifter, going from a fit physique to a strong one:

And here's Reetta making progress as an intermediate lifter, going from having an athletic physique to being impressively lean and strong:

Our main goal is to put up a ton of free lifting information, but if you want some extra help, we have a few paid programs, including our brand new Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program:

We also have our Bony to Beastly Bulking Program for skinny men and our Bony to Bombshell Bulking Program for skinny women. That's what we're famous for, after all. And if you love our articles, you'll love those programs.

Our Best,
Shane & Marco