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:
- How to build muscle (for everyone)
- How to bulk up (for skinny people)
- How to recomp (for overweight people)
- How to do cardio
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:
- Progressive overload
- The best hypertrophy exercises
- How to structure your workouts
- How many reps should you do per set?
- How long should you rest between sets?
- How many sets should you do per workout?
- How often should you work out?
- How close to failure should you lift?
- How fast should you lift and lower weights?
- Which isolation exercises do you need?
- How to do supersets
- How to do giant sets
- How to do drop sets
- How range of motion affects muscle growth
- How to do long-muscle-length training
- How to do lengthened partials
- Stimulus-to-Fatigue Ratio
- Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFR)
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:
- The front squat
- The bench press
- The deadlift
- The overhead press
- The chin-up
- The dip
- The loaded carry
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.
- Full-body workouts vs body-part splits
- What training split should you use?
- 3-day full-body workout guide
- 4-day workout splits
- 5-day workout splits
- 6-day workout splits
- The Bro Split
- The Upper/Lower Split
- The Push/Pull/Legs Split
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:
- How to gain weight with a fast metabolism
- Is lifting weights good for burning fat?
- How much protein do you need?
- Can bulking cause insulin resistance?
- Are pre-workout supplements healthy?
- How exercise improves inflammation
- How to sleep for muscle growth
- How to schedule weight training with cardio
Common Lifting Questions
Here are some of the more common lifting questions we've gotten over the years:
- Are chin-ups good for your biceps?
- Does the bench press work your triceps?
- Is 225 a good bench press?
- How much should you be able to squat?
- How much should you be able to overhead press?
- How much should you be able to deadlift?
- How much should you be able to bench?
- Should you have protein right after working out?
- How many calories does it take to build a pound of muscle?
- How many calories does weight training burn?
- Why aren't you losing weight in a calorie deficit?
- What's the best calorie-tracking app?
If you have any questions about anything, comment on the most relevant article. I answer every comment.
Recent Articles
What’s Progressive Overload & How Should You Do It?
Progressive overload is one of the foundational principles of both strength training and hypertrophy training. When you lift a challenging amount of weight, you provoke muscle growth, making your muscles…
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4-day workout splits are my favourite for intermediate lifters. 3-day splits are almost always better for beginners, but once you get to an intermediate level, adding a fourth day makes…
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The “anabolic window” is an old bodybuilding term. A few years ago, it was pilloried by the evidence-based fitness community, and perhaps rightfully so—the requirements were woefully strict. As so…
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Recomp is short for body recomposition, which is when you build muscle and lose fat at the same time. It’s the holy grail of the fitness industry. It’s actually pretty…
Read MoreThe Best Short Head Biceps Exercises
The short head of your biceps is the simple head. Unlike the long head of your biceps, it doesn’t cross the shoulder joint. Well, it might, but it seems to…
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If you’re following a good hypertrophy training program, you should be able to maximize your rate of muscle growth with 9–22 sets per muscle per week. But that depends on…
Read MoreHow to Build Bigger Biceps
Our biceps aren’t big muscles. They’re a mere fraction of the size of our quads, glutes, shoulders, and chests. But they’re disproportionately prominent. Building bigger biceps can make us look…
Read MoreHow to Do Lying Dumbbell Biceps Curls
The lying biceps curl is a variation of the dumbbell curl. The difference is that it works your biceps through a deeper range of motion, challenging your biceps under a…
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