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 guy doing exercise to reduce inflammation.

Does Exercise Reduce Inflammation? How? And How Much?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | March 2, 2024

Exercise both increases and reduces inflammation. The stress of exercise causes a surge in inflammation. This inflammation helps you recover and adapt. When that inflammation fades, it drops down to…

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Illustration showing a skinny man with belly fat.

The Guide for Skinny Guys With Belly Fat

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | September 23, 2020

Why do some skinny guys have belly fat? If you aren’t overweight, why is fat accumulating, and why is it clustering in your midsection? There are a few reasons this…

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Illustration of a buff weightlifter confused at why he isn't losing weight.

Why Aren’t You Losing Weight in a Calorie Deficit?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | May 31, 2023

If you ask about why you aren’t losing weight in a calorie deficit, the common answer is: “Because you’re not in a calorie deficit. You need to eat fewer calories.”…

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Illustration of a bodybuilder doing hypertrophy training to gain muscle mass.

The Hypertrophy Training Guide: How to Lift for Muscle Size

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | October 15, 2023

Hypertrophy training is designed specifically for stimulating muscle growth. It’s by far the best style of training for building muscle. Bodybuilders use it to build more aesthetic physiques. Powerlifters use…

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Illustration of the best muscle-building exercises to use in a hypertrophy training program.

The Best Hypertrophy Exercises

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | October 20, 2023

Different exercises are designed for different goals. Powerlifters use the squat, bench, and deadlift to demonstrate their maximal strength. Olympic weightlifters use the snatch and clean-and-jerk to demonstrate their explosive…

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Illustration of a bodybuilder doing an Arm Day workout to build bigger arm muscles.

The Best Arm Day Workout for Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | October 22, 2023

Arm Day is an entire workout routine focused purely on arm exercises. It’s what allows the Bro Split to stimulate more arm growth than almost any other workout routine. Arm…

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Illustration of a skinny guy using an upper-body workout routine to build bigger muscles.

The Best Upper-Body Workout for Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | October 28, 2023

An upper-body workout trains most of the muscles in your upper body. When you split your body in two, you could train it half as much but twice as often,…

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Illustration of a man doing the dumbbell bench press exercise during his chest workout.

The Best Dumbbell Chest Exercises & Workout

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | December 12, 2023

You can bulk up your chest perfectly well with just dumbbells. In fact, you could make a strong argument that dumbbell chest exercises are better for your chest than the barbell,…

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Illustration of a bodybuilder doing chin-ups first in his hypertrophy workout.

Exercise Order: Which Exercises Should You Do First?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | February 2, 2024

The conventional wisdom is to start each workout with the big compound lifts, then move to smaller assistance exercises, and then finish with isolation exercises. That’s a perfectly fine way…

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