Muscle-Building for Skinny Guys
by Skinny Guys

Animation showing a skinny guy building muscle.

If you're a skinny dude who wants to build muscle, bulk up, and gain weight, I think you'd love our newsletter. It kicks off with a 5-part series that covers:

  • How to lift for muscle growth
  • How to eat for lean weight gain
  • How to thrive with skinny genetics
  • How to get stronger, healthier, and better looking

After that, we'll send you 1–2 newsletters per month to keep you updated on the latest muscle-building research, methods, and workouts—all of it 100% focused on building muscle as a naturally thin guy.

22,192 newsletter subs and counting!

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 give us a little more time. If this bulk goes according to plan, we'll soon be the biggest niche 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 skinny strength coach who had 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 (for post-skinny people). We've spent the past 12 years helping over 10,000 skinny people build muscle, with clients ranging from college students to senior citizens, from MDs to PhDs, and from office workers to professional 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 protein shake, too. Check out these muscle-building transformations from guys doing the Bony to Beastly Program. We consistently get our clients the same results we did. Sometimes better.

The Skinny on Building Muscle

Illustration of a skinny fat ectomorph surfing

If you've been surfing the world wide web, searching for how to build muscle as a naturally skinny dude, hoping to find community, muscle, and everlasting abs—welcome! That's what we're all about.

  • If you're a so-called hardgainer, where no matter how much you eat, you find it nigh impossible to gain weight, we get it. We're the same. We've got an article on why it's so hard for us to gain weight.
  • If you've got an "ectomorph" body type, with thinner wrists and narrower shoulders, and you worry that you won't ever be able to become visibly strong, we had that same fear. Fortunately, we actually tend to build muscle pretty well, especially while making our newbie gains.
  • If you're skinny-fat, getting bigger and smaller without ever getting leaner or stronger, we've been there. We can guide you out of the dreaded skinny-fat labyrinth.
  • Or if you're just a regular dude who wishes he wasn't quite so thin, we can help you bulk up. That's what we do best, and we do it better than anyone else.

People call us the Costco of muscle. You can find anything you want, but everything is in bulk. We write about things like how to eat more calories, how to eat a good bulking diet, and how to lift for maximal muscle growth.

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 Bulking Articles

Illustration of a skinny guy doing an aggressive bulk, building muscle as quickly as he can.

The Aggressive Bulking Guide: How to Build Muscle FAST

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Mar 19, 2023

If you’re a skinny guy desperate to bulk up fast, I get it. I remember hungering not for food but for muscle. I was too eager to heed any of the many warnings. I bulked up as fast as I possibly could. And to my great surprise, it worked. I…

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Illustration of a tub of weight gainer powder.

The Skinny Guy’s Guide to Bulking Supplements

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Mar 19, 2023

Over 5,000 shares and 500 comments later, here’s our revised supplement guide for skinny guys trying to build muscle in time for last summer. We’ll cover supplements that speed up muscle growth, such as creatine. We’ll review supplements that help skinny guys bulk up, like mass gainers. We’ll talk about pre-workout…

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The best bulking books, courses, and programs for skinny guys trying to build muscle.

The Best Bulking Programs for Skinny Guys in 2023 (Critically Reviewed)

By Shane Duquette | Feb 8, 2023

In this article, we’re reviewing the five best bulking programs for skinny guys. To get this list, we started by surveying our readers, the vast majority of whom have successfully bulked up. They’re naturally skinny, they’ve tried different bulking programs, and they know firsthand what worked for them. From there,…

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Illustration of a skinny old man bulking up and becoming muscular.

Are You Too Old to Bulk? How Does Age Affect Muscle Growth?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Feb 3, 2023

How old is too old to bulk? Can older guys build muscle as quickly as younger ones? We can start by looking at the research that initially shocked hypertrophy researchers, then gradually became conventional wisdom. Next, we can look at what we’ve seen while helping over ten thousand skinny guys…

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Cartoon illustration of a skinny guy bulking up and becoming muscular.

The Bulking Guide for Skinny Beginners

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

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to bulk up, even if you’re skinny, and even if you’re a total beginner. This is our specialty. We’ve spent the past decade helping over ten thousand skinny guys build muscle. Marco is a strength coach with a Health Science degree, and he…

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Illustration of a skinny beginner doing a 3-day full-body workout routine to build muscle and bulk up.

The Full-Body Workout Guide for Beginners

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jan 25, 2023

If you’re a beginner, 3-day full-body workout routines are perfect for gaining muscle mass and strength. They’re also incredibly good for your health. Once you reach an intermediate level, they remain great, but a few more good options open up. Until then, full-body workouts are the best. There’s nothing better.…

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Illustration showing a skinny bodybuilder flexing his back, doing a back double biceps pose.

How to Train Your Back Muscles

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Dec 12, 2022

Our backs are made up of layers of overlapping muscles, all of which can work together, but all of which have different functions. Even within the same back muscle, there can be different regions that respond better to different exercise variations. For example, your upper lats have a slightly different…

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Illustration showing an overweight man cutting fat and revealing his muscle underneath.

The Cutting Guide: How to Burn Fat While Building A Bit of Muscle

By Shane Duquette | Nov 21, 2022

Cutting is when you burn fat while keeping your muscle. You may even be able to gain a bit of muscle while cutting, especially if you’re overweight, out of shape, or new to lifting weights. Whether you’re bulking or cutting, the goal is to be strong, muscular, lean, and healthy.…

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Illustration showing a skinny guy who bulked up like a Hollywood actor.

Hollywood Bulking Transformations ARE Realistic for Skinny Guys

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Oct 4, 2022

There are a ton of articles talking about how Hollywood body transformations are unrealistic. There’s some truth in that. Most guys are overweight. For them, even just dieting down to a healthy body-fat percentage can be surprisingly difficult. Most Hollywood transformations are coming at it from the other side, though.…

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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.