Build Muscle. Gain Strength. Outlift Yourself.
If you're a guy who wants to build muscle, gain strength, and get fit, I think you'd love our newsletter.
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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. We have an unconditional 30-day 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 often should you work out?
- 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 week?
- How many exercises should you do per workout?
- 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?
- 2-day workout routines
- 3-day workout routines
- 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
The Best Dumbbell Leg Exercises & Workout
Dumbbell leg exercises are great for beginners. They’re perfect for gaining your first 30–40 pounds of muscle. Think of exercises like goblet squats, dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, and step-ups. Our main Bony…
Read MoreThe Best Dumbbell Lat Exercises
Your lats pull your elbows in closer to your body, meaning that the best dumbbell lat exercises are some variation of dumbbell row. And dumbbell rows are fantastic. That’s all…
Read MoreFull-Body Workouts vs Splits: Which Builds More Muscle?
A new meta-analysis by Ramos-Campo gathered together all fourteen studies comparing full-body workout routines against split workout routines. This is the latest study, and it includes all of the previous…
Read MoreThe Best 6-Day Workout Split for Building Muscle
6-day workout splits can be remarkably good for building muscle. With so many training days to play with, you can take several different approaches, ranging from minimalism to total maximalism.…
Read MoreThe Best 5-Day Workout Splits for Building Muscle
5-day workout splits can be incredibly good for building muscle if you program them properly. When you’re training this often, it’s easy to beat up your hands, tire out your…
Read MoreThe Best Upper/Lower Workout Split for Building Muscle
When I first met Marco, he had just finished studying under Eric Cressey, the head strength coach for the New York Yankees, and was working as the strength coach for professional…
Read MoreExercise Order: Which Exercises Should You Do First?
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…
Read MoreHypertrophy Training Volume: How Many Sets to Build Muscle?
If you’re following a good hypertrophy training program, you should be able to maximize your rate of muscle growth with 10–20 sets per muscle per week. But that depends on…
Read MoreWhat is Training Volume?
With weight training, training volume is how many hard sets you do per muscle per week. For example, if you do 5 sets of bench presses, 5 sets of push-ups,…
Read More