Illustration of a skinny person building muscle and bulking up.

Build Muscle. Gain Strength. Outlift Yourself.

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 programsYour results are fully guaranteed. We have an unconditional 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:

If you have any questions about anything, drop a comment in 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 man doing a barbell bench press

The Bench Press Hypertrophy Guide

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | December 6, 2020

The bench press is the best lift for building a powerful chest. It’s also great for bulking up your triceps and the fronts of your shoulders, making it a great…

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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…

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Graph showing the percentage of male weight lifters who can bench press 225 pounds.

Is 225 a Good Bench Press? Yes, I Can Prove It

By Shane Duquette | May 7, 2024

A few years ago, Greg Nuckols asked his Stronger by Science readers how long they’d been strength training and how much weight they could bench press. He found that the…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Illustration of a man doing a sumo deadlift (outlift)

The Deadlift Hypertrophy Guide

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | August 30, 2019

The deadlift strengthens us from our forearms down to our calves. In fact, it’s such a good indicator of overall strength that it’s the only lift in both powerlifting and…

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Illustration of a man doing a barbell overhead press.

The Overhead Press Hypertrophy Guide

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | December 5, 2020

The overhead press (often referred to as the military press) is the best lift for bulking up our shoulders. It’s also fantastic for our upper traps, upper chest, triceps, posture,…

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Illustration of a guy tracking his calories with the MacroFactor calorie-tracking app.

A Review of the MacroFactor Macro-Tracking App (in 2024)

By Shane Duquette and Sunny Suba | August 23, 2023

We’ve spent nearly three years reviewing MacroFactor. We’ve used it ourselves, tested it against all its major competitors, and had over 300 clients use it to build muscle, lose fat,…

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