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 programs. Your 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 bodybuilder doing some light warm-up sets before doing his heavier weight training.

How to Warm Up Before Lifting Weights

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | December 16, 2020

What’s the best way to warm up before lifting weights? Should we do cardio? Does that help? Is it necessary? And should you stretch? Some research shows that stretching can…

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Illustration of a man doing a heavy partial back squat

How Range of Motion Affects Muscle Growth

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | March 1, 2020

There are three conflicting ideas about how the range of motion we use while lifting weights affects our muscle growth: The first idea is that lifting with a larger range…

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The Most Popular Lifts (According to Google)

By Shane Duquette | May 23, 2020

Which lifts are more popular? I’d always kind of assumed that with people who are into strength training, squats would be the most popular, but that with people who are…

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Illustration of a bodybuilding using the leg press exercise machine to build muscle.

Exercise Machines Vs Free Weights for Gaining Muscle Size

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | July 14, 2020

Are exercise machines as good as free weights for stimulating muscle growth? It’s often said that free weights engage more overall mass, do a better job of activating our muscles,…

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Illustration showing a man with a stubborn, lagging chest.

How to Grow Stubborn Muscles

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | October 11, 2020

How do you know if a muscle is stubborn? Much of the time, when someone thinks they have a stubborn muscle, it isn’t actually stubborn, they just aren’t training it…

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Illustration of a man doing a leaning biceps curl.

The Sissy Curl: A Barbell Alternative to the Preacher Curl

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | April 28, 2020

Our biceps are the limiting factor in even the humblest barbell and biceps curl variations, and so every variation of curl will reliably provoke at least a little bit of…

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Illustration of a man flexing his back and biceps.

Is German Volume Training (10×10) Good for Gaining Muscle Size?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | June 10, 2020

German volume training (GVT), also knows as the ten sets method, is commonly used during bulking phases as a way to increase muscle growth. But how does it compare against…

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Illustration of a man doing a double-dumbbell front squat.

Are Dumbbells or Barbells Better for Building Muscle?

By Shane Duquette | March 20, 2020

Both barbells and dumbbells are great for gaining size and strength. However, they aren’t quite the same thing. Each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the…

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Illustration of a man flexing his biceps

Chin-Ups Versus Curls for Biceps Growth

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | February 7, 2020

On the one hand, chin-ups are the bigger compound lift, they allow us to load our biceps far heavier, and they use a larger overall range of motion. On the…

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