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 with a huge bowl of food. Illustrated by Shane Duquette for Outlift.

How Many Calories Do You Need to Build Muscle?

By Shane Duquette | May 18, 2023

To build muscle, you need extra calories. Those calories don’t always need to come from food. Many of us carry quite a lot of extra energy in our guts. If…

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Illustration of a skinny person building muscle.

How Many Calories Does It Take To Build a Pound of Muscle?

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

A pound of muscle contains about 1,200 calories of stored energy (study, study). However, just like a mason spends energy laying stones, it also takes energy to construct that muscle,…

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Cartoon illustration of a bodybuilder going for a jog to improve his cardiovascular health.

Does a Calorie Surplus Help With Cardio?

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

You need an abundance of energy to build muscle. You use that energy to convert protein into muscle mass. You can get that energy by eating more food or by…

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Illustration of a muscular bodybuilder climbing through the mythical anabolic window.

The Anabolic Window: Both Fact & Fiction

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | September 18, 2023

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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A male bodybuilder doing a Pull Day hypertrophy workout to build bigger back muscles.

The Best Pull Day Workout for Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | June 26, 2023

Pull Days can give you a wide back, a sturdy torso, and big biceps. They’re tricky, though. You’ve got a glorious mess of muscles back there, all of them yearning…

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Illustration of a lifter flexing his chest muscles during his Push Day workout.

The Best Push Day Workout for Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | June 23, 2023

As an underweight beginner, I gained my first 20 pounds from doing poorly programmed Push Days. Only Push Days. No Leg or Back days. The only exercise I knew how…

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Illustration of a weight lifter doing a 6-day workout split to build muscle.

The Best 6-Day Workout Split for Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | June 21, 2023

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.…

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Illustration showing people with low and high body-fat percentages.

The P-Ratio: How Body-Fat Percentage Affects Muscle Growth & Fat Gain

By Shane Duquette | January 18, 2021

There’s a common rule of thumb that we should get lean before we bulk, and then stop bulking once we reach around 20% body fat. The idea is that as…

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Illustration of a man doing chin-ups.

What is Stretch-Mediated Hypertrophy? A Quick Research Breakdown

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | May 21, 2020

For at least a few decades, bodybuilders have been known for favouring exercises that challenge their muscles at long muscle lengths. “Go deep and feel the stretch.” For instance, bodybuilders…

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