Muscle-Building for Skinny Guys

Animation of a skinny guy bulking up, building muscle, and becoming muscular.

Illustration of a skinny ectomorph building muscle

We Help Hardgainers, Skinny & Skinny-Fat Guys Bulk Up

For the past 12 years, we've specialized in helping skinny guys build muscle, get strong, and gain weight. People say it's a small niche, but if this bulk goes according to plan, we'll soon be the biggest community on the internet.

I'm Shane Duquette, and I gained 55 pounds in a little over two years. I was lucky. I had the help of my business partner, Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS, PN, a naturally thin strength coach who'd already gained 60 pounds. We also helped our other business partner, Jared Polowick, gain 50 pounds.

Before and after photos showing Shane Duquette's ectomorph muscle-building transformation

Before and after photos showing Marco Walker-Ng building muscle as a skinny ectomorph.

Before and after photo of a skinny guy bulking up and gaining muscle

We're the founders of Bony to Beastly (for skinny men), Bony to Bombshell (for skinny women), and Outlift. We've helped over 10,000 skinny people build muscle, with clients ranging from college students to senior citizens, MDs to PhDs, and office workers all way the way up to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.

Before and after photos showing a skinny fat transformation.

Before and after photos showing the results from doing the Bony to Beastly Program

Before and after photo of a skinny guy leanly building muscle and bulking up in one year

Before and after photo of a skinny guy bulking up his shoulders and becoming muscular

The proof is in the smoothie, too. We consistently get the best bulking transformations on the internet. Check out these muscle-building transformations from guys doing the Bony to Beastly Program.

Bigger, Stronger, & Fitter

Bony guys are defined by their scaffolding. We're here to help you fill out that frame with muscle, reaping all the long-term health and fitness benefits as you bulk up.

Maybe you're a "hardgainer," where no matter how much you eat, you can't gain weight. You aren't crazy. There's genetic variation in stomach size, appetite, and metabolism. Many of us are genetically predisposed to thinness. We need to find a diet that suits us.
Maybe you're an "ectomorph," with thinner wrists and narrower shoulders, worried your frame can't support muscle growth. We had that same fear. It isn't true. Thin guys tend to be able to build muscle faster than other body types.
Maybe you're skinny-fat, getting bigger and smaller without ever getting leaner or stronger. That's frustrating. You're one of the rare few who eats the right amount of food, yet it's being stored as fat instead of muscle. We need to reverse that, and we can.

We're the Costco of muscle. You can find anything you want, but everything is in bulk. We write about how to eat a healthy weight-gain diet, how to train for muscle size, and how to live a lifestyle that supports muscle, strength, and overall fitness.

If you want us to walk you through the entire process of bulking up, check out our Bony to Beastly Program. We'll teach you everything you need to know, including diet, training, and lifestyle. We'll answer all your questions, give you feedback along the way, and support you through every step of the process. Your results are fully guaranteed.

We've also written hundreds of free articles about how to build muscle, eat a good diet, and live a healthy lifestyle. Feel free to drop a comment. I answer all of them.

Thin Genetics

Thin guys often have different genetics, giving us different struggles and goals and influencing how we eat, lift, and live.

The Art of Bulking

The only way to get bigger is to gain weight. The best way to gain weight is to prioritize muscle growth—to bulk. Nobody knows bulking better than we do.

How to Train Your Muscles

One of the best ways to improve your results is to improve your training. The more muscle growth you can stimulate, the more calories your muscles will gobble up, leaving fewer to store as body fat. We'll show you how to stimulate more growth.

Plus, you may want to develop a certain muscle. Perhaps you're tired of having a thin neck, lanky arms, or a small chest. The best way to develop a specific muscle is to train it. We'll show you how.

How to Eat a Good Diet

It isn't hard to learn about how to eat a nutritious diet. However, most of that advice is for overweight people struggling to lose weight. We have the opposite problem. We need an abundant diet that's rich in calories and nutrients, supporting our health and muscle growth.

How to Build Muscle at Home

Gyms are great, but you can build just as much muscle at home. I've bulked with adjustable dumbbells in my small apartment. Now I lift weights in my barbell home gym. In a pinch, you can even bulk with bodyweight workouts. You can use whatever you have, but be smart about it.

How to Improve Your Appearance

I know, I know. We're supposed to work out to develop our inner beauty and fortitude. But it doesn't hurt to look great while we do it. Most of the advice on the internet is either politically correct or distorted by the manosphere. That's why we've consulted with the top attractiveness researchers and conducted our own surveys.

How to Get Leaner, Fitter & Healthier

All of our articles consider health and fitness. We're not in the bodybuilding or powerlifting scene. We're part of the fitness industry. We're natural lifters who want to be strong, fit, and healthy. Still, there are two things naturally thin guys need to know:

Muscle-Building Supplements

Supplements are overrated but helpful. We don't sell supplements or use any affiliate links, keeping our supplement recommendations as unbiased as possible.

Calculators

Ideal Weight & Muscle Measurements Calculator: This calculator asks for your height, wrist circumference, and goal body fat percentage, then it tells you your ideal body weight and muscle measurements.
Natural Muscular Potential Calculator: This calculator uses your height, wrist circumference, and ankle circumference to estimate how big you can build your muscles.
Bulking Calorie Calculator: This calculator lets you pick how leanly or aggressively you want to bulk, includes macronutrient recommendations, and has an option for hardgainers (who have especially hellish metabolisms).
Cutting Calorie Calculator: This calculator lets you pick how quickly you want to lose weight, includes macronutrient recommendations, and is optimized for gaining/maintaining muscle.
Body Recomposition Calorie Calculator: This calculator gives you recommendations that will help you build muscle and burn fat at the same time.
At-Home Body Fat Percentage Calculator (Navy Method): This method accounts for muscle growth, making it the easiest and best way to monitor your body fat percentage if you lift weights. All you need is a measuring tape.
FFMI calculator: FFMI is like BMI except that it measures lean mass. It's how bodybuilders compare their muscularity with one another. An "athletic" FFMI is good enough for most people, though.

Kick back, relax, and enjoy some moderately heavy reading. We'll teach you everything you need to know to go from lean to mean, from stick to thick, from Bony to Beastly.

Our Recent Articles

Men with different body shapes, levels of muscularity, and degrees of leanness. Illustrated by Shane Duquette.

How to Build an Attractive Physique

By Shane Duquette | Aug 24, 2024

Most men want to have an attractive physique. Few know exactly what that means. When they guess the degree of muscularity women prefer, they’re off by thirty pounds (study). Many have a deeper misunderstanding, failing to connect their appearance to their fitness and strength. Some shun attractiveness, mistakenly thinking it’s superficial.…

Illustration of a bodybuilder cutting after bulking.

How to Cut After Bulking

By Shane Duquette | Aug 8, 2024

There’s a long tradition of bulking up and then cutting away the fat. It’s popular with all types of lifters, from bodybuilders to powerlifters, because it’s the most reliable way to build muscle and then get lean. Body recomposition and maingaining can also work well, for a time, but bulking…

Illustration of someone slowly maingaining to build muscle leanly.

Maingaining: How to Build Muscle Without Gaining Fat

By Shane Duquette | Aug 6, 2024

Maingaining is when you slowly build muscle without gaining fat. It’s usually set in opposition to bulking, where you eat in a calorie surplus to support muscle growth. Bulking is a more powerful, reliable way to build muscle, but it often comes at the cost of gaining body fat. Maingaining…

Diagram showing the three macronutrients and giving the best food sources for each.

How to Count Macros: Beginner Guide

By Shane Duquette and Cassandra Duquette | Aug 2, 2024

Counting macros is when you count how many grams of protein, carbs, and fat you eat. You can do that by looking at nutrition labels, weighing your food, or following recipes with pre-calculated macros. Most people plug those macros into a calorie-tracking app. Tracking macros used to be a bodybuilding…

Illustration of a guy who is skinny and strong.

Can You Be Skinny and Strong? Yes, Kind Of

By Shane Duquette | Jul 12, 2024

Some skinny guys with good strength genetics are stronger than they look. However, they would be even stronger if they built more muscle. I’m a naturally skinny guy who was underweight into his twenties and then gradually gained 70 pounds. I’ve struggled to bench press an empty barbell. I’ve also…

Illustration showing someone bulking fast versus someone bulking slowly. The fast bulker is like a hare. The slow bulker is like a tortoise.

How Fast Should You Gain Weight While Bulking?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jun 29, 2024

Bulking faster almost always causes faster muscle growth, but if you bulk too fast, you’ll gain more fat. Bulking slower gives you a better chance of making lean gains, but you’ll also build muscle more slowly, and you might go through periods of not building any muscle at all. Most…

Illustration of a skinny person building muscle fast.

How Fast Can Skinny People Build Muscle?

By Shane Duquette | Jun 20, 2024

I want to talk about how quickly skinny people can expect to build muscle. It’s a contentious topic. I’ve gained 70 pounds and spent the past decade helping over ten thousand skinny people bulk up, and I’ve noticed that most experts either get this wrong or forget to even mention…

Before and after illustration showing a man bulking up his jawline by chewing tough mastic gum.

Can Chewing Gum Help Your Jawline?

By Shane Duquette | Jun 5, 2024

I don’t have a jawline. My jaw just blends straight into my neck. I’ll show you in a second. But I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. George Lucas created wonderful things without a chin, so I didn’t see why I needed a jaw. Still, whenever I saw an ad about…

Illustration of a skinny guy bulking up and building muscle. Illustrated by Shane Duquette.

What Does Bulking Do?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | May 27, 2024

Bulking is when you gain weight to support muscle growth. Not everyone needs to gain weight to build muscle, but some people do. That’s because you need to do two things to build muscle: Any good muscle-building program combines those two things. What sets bulking apart is that the diet…

If none of these articles tickle your fancy, we've got dozens more.

Or if you're ready to start building muscle, check out our bulking program.