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 skinny guy deciding how long to bulk for, wondering how long it will take to build muscle.

How Long Should You Bulk For?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jul 17, 2023

In theory, you could bulk slowly over several years. That’s what some natural bodybuilders do. They eat in a small calorie surplus as part of their regular lifestyle, only stopping when they need to lean down for a bodybuilding competition. However, they have fierce appetites and large stomachs, making it…

Before and after illustration of a skinny guy using creatine to build muscle and gain weight.

Before & After Creatine: How Much Extra Muscle Will You Gain?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jul 15, 2023

Creatine helps you build muscle, sure, but how much? Creatine has thousands of studies proving its effectiveness, and every expert recommends it, but most people don’t know how whether it will help them build 5% or 50% more muscle. One way to get an idea of how well it works…

Illustration of a skinny guy taking creatine to gain weight and build muscle.

Should Skinny Guys Take Creatine to Build Muscle?

Once upon a time, I was 23 years old and 130 pounds at 6 feet tall. I was skinny and underweight, with a BMI of just under 18. I was hunchbacked from all my time spent hunched over my desk studying graphic design. My roommate, Shane, was similarly thin, so…

Illustration of a skinny guy building bigger arms by doing weight lifting exercises.

How to Build Bigger Arms

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jul 8, 2023

I’ve managed to bring my arms from 10 inches up to 16 inches. But I got off to a rough start. During my first two years of successful bulking, I gained 40 pounds at 11% body fat, bringing my bench from 65 to 225 pounds and doing chin-ups with 50…

Illustration of a natural skinny guy building muscle as fast as he can.

How Fast Can You Build Muscle Naturally?

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jun 14, 2023

You may have heard that natural lifters can gain 20 pounds of muscle in their first year, 10 in their second, 5 in their third, and then a few pounds per year until they reach their natural potential. That doesn’t seem to be true for the average man, and you…

Illustration of a muscular barbarian man bulking up and then cutting.

A Beginner’s Guide to Bulking & Cutting

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jun 11, 2023

Bulking and cutting are key terms in the muscle-building industry. Bulking is when you gain weight to facilitate muscle growth. Cutting is when you lose weight to burn fat. Some people do them in sequence, bulking, then cutting, and then bulking again. Bulking is controversial, and understandably so. The average…

Illustration of a skinny guy with a fast metabolism flexing his burning biceps.

Do Skinny People Have Faster Metabolisms? Yes, Sometimes

By Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS | Jun 6, 2023

There’s a common myth in the fitness industry that skinny people don’t have faster metabolisms, they just don’t eat as much food. According to this line of thinking, there’s no such thing as a fast or slow metabolism. Rather, your metabolism is determined by your height, age, weight, lean mass,…

Illustration of a skinny guy building muscle by doing a clean bulk.

How to Clean Bulk: The Nutritious Way of Building Muscle

By Shane Duquette | Jun 5, 2023

Clean bulking is when you approach bulking with a monk’s asceticism, eating only the purest foods and carefully avoiding culinary hedonism. It may sound like I’m poking fun. That’s true. But there’s also truth to be found in clean bulking. There are no shades of grey. No nuance. This is…

Calisthenics Vs Weights: Which Builds More Muscle?

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

Both calisthenics and weight training can stimulate muscle growth. That’s not answering your question, though. Resistance bands, bodybuilding, and powerlifting all stimulate muscle growth. So can cardio. So can flexing your muscles (study). We’ve helped thousands of people bulk up over the past decade, some using weights, others with pure calisthenics.…

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.