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.

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

Illustration of a bodybuilder eating a bulking meal to build muscle.

The Best High-Calorie Bulking Meals (With Recipes)

By Shane Duquette and Cassandra Duquette | Mar 4, 2024

One of our most popular articles is about how to eat a good bulking diet. It covers all the most important principles—how to choose nutritious foods, what macros to aim for, how to calculate your calorie needs, how to adjust those calories based on your results (or lack thereof), and…

Illustration showing a plant-based bodybuilder building muscle on a vegan diet.

Can You Build Muscle on a Vegan Diet?

By Shane Duquette and Cassandra Duquette | Mar 1, 2024

A new study by Pinckaers and colleagues found that plant-based protein wasn’t as good as animal protein for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This is just one of several studies, so it probably shouldn’t have, but it sparked some controversy online. Muscle protein synthesis is when your body adds protein to…

Illustration of a skinny bodybuilder staring at a tub of whey protein, wondering how much protein he should eat at breakfast.

How Much Protein Should You Eat at Breakfast to Build Muscle?

By Shane Duquette and Cassandra Duquette | Feb 28, 2024

There are two recent studies that I found interesting. The first looked at whether going from a low-protein breakfast to a moderate-protein breakfast would improve muscle growth. The second looked at the effects of going from a moderate amount of protein to a massive amount of protein. If we look…

Photo of Shane Duquette and Jared Polowick's bodies before Bony to Beastly.

How We Went From Skinny to Muscular (+70 Pounds of Muscle)

By Shane Duquette | Feb 28, 2024

Jared and I were skinny graphic designers. We didn’t know anyone who ate a good diet, lifted weights, or exercised. We didn’t know anyone fit or muscular. But I was clinically underweight and suffering from early signs of cardiovascular disease, and Jared had crippling tendonitis that prevented him from working…

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

The Best Bulking Programs for Skinny Beginners in 2024 (Reviewed)

By Shane Duquette | Feb 27, 2024

In this article, we’re reviewing the five best bulking programs for skinny beginners. 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,…

Illustration showing a bodybuilder doing optimized lateral raises to build bigger side delts.

The Best Side Delt Exercises Are Weird Lateral Raises

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

The overhead press is the best overall shoulder exercise. If you want a minimalist workout routine, that’s all you need. If you really want to build bigger side delts, though, it pays to include an exercise that trains them directly. Lateral raises are the best exercise for your side delts,…

Illustration of a bodybuilder holding a heavy barbell and a light dumbbell.

Should You Lift More Weight or Do More Reps to Build Muscle?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Feb 21, 2024

The top search result for this question is wrong, and it’s bugging me. There’s this old myth that heavier weights are better for building muscle while lighter weights are better for gaining endurance. That’s not quite right. Both low-rep and high-rep sets can be equally good for building muscle. Anywhere…

Illustration showing a skinny guy who gained too much fat while bulking.

Does Bulking Make You Fat?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Feb 20, 2024

Bulking can make you fat if you gain weight too aggressively for too long. Eating in a calorie surplus is great for building muscle, but any calories that aren’t invested into muscle growth will spill over into fat gain. If you’re eating so much food that you’re gaining fat, you…

Illustration of a skinny man with no abs doing ab workouts to build a bigger six-pack.

The Skinny Guy’s Guide to Building Bigger Abs

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Feb 17, 2024

It’s common for skinny guys to be lean and still not have abs. That’s because there are two parts to having good muscle definition: body-fat percentage and muscle size. Our body fat percentage is fine, but our abs aren’t big enough. If you try to search for information about how…

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.