Muscle-Building For Skinny Women
All three of us are naturally skinny, we've each gained 50–70 pounds, and we've been helping skinny women build muscle full-time for the past eight years.
We created this program as 3 previously skinny guys who were asked many times to create a women's program after the success of our brother program, Bony to Beastly.
Bony to Beastly was named one of the ten best health blogs by Medical News Today, we've been on CTV and WHYY (NPR), and our work has been referenced by Psychology Today, ZME Science, and Big Think.
Helping skinny people build muscle is what we do best, and we help skinny women build muscle better than anyone else on the internet.
Our clients have ranged from physicians, dieticians, professional athletes, and our Women's Canadian Olympic rugby team. What we're most proud of, though, is helping over 3,250 members and our millions of readers go from skinny to muscular. That's our passion, and it's what we're best at: helping everyday skinny women build strong, beautiful physiques.
I'm Shane Duquette (centre), the co-founder and creative lead of Bony to Bombshell, with a degree in Design (BDes) from York University. I do the illustrations, most of the writing, and most of the design. I'm a desk worker, an art nerd, a husband and father, and a daily margarita drinker. I blew up in the bulking scene when I gained 55 pounds of muscle in just over two years, naturally and at 11% body fat. (You can read more about me here.)
Marco Walker-Ng (left) brings the expertise. He has a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences from the University of Ottawa (BHSc), he’s a certified personal training specialist (PTS), and he’s certified to give diet advice through Precision Nutrition (PN). Marco also has over ten years of experience working as a strength and conditioning coach, and he's personally gained over sixty pounds, naturally and at under 10% body fat. He's also got a fine arts degree, though. (You can read more about Marco here.)
Jared Polowick (right) is the third co-founder and, up until recently, was our business and marketing lead. Jared gained 33 pounds in three months. As of January 2019, Jared shifted to an advisor role so that he could start up his own site, Outlive, with the goal of helping the general public improve their general health.
Now, to be clear, your results may vary. This doesn't mean that you should expect to get the same results that we did. All we're trying to say is that we've been there and done this, we've helped thousands of other people do it, and we're professionally qualified to help you do it, too. Will you look exactly like us? No. You're not a man. But we can help you build muscle, gain strength, and build a lean and beautifully feminine physique. You'll become the best version of you.
(If you want to learn more about how Shane gained 55 pounds, how Jared gained 45 pounds, and how Marco gained 63 pounds, here are our ectomorph transformation stories.)
WE'RE THE BULKING SITE FOR SKINNY WOMEN
Only around 3% of people are trying to gain weight. And it's safe to assume that the majority of people making up that number are men.
Statistically speaking, that makes us pretty weird. Who wants to learn about eating more and getting bigger, right? Well, we do.
So if you're trying to gain weight and you're a woman, you might be feeling pretty alone.
When you go to a fitness website, it's probably intended for someone else. If you see a before/after transformation, all the photos are of women losing tons of weight to reveal a toned body. If you try to learn about nutrition, you keep face-palming because every piece of advice is centred around how to eat less, not more.
Ectomorphs have unique challenges:
- The Small Stomach Problem: Feeling stuffed, bloated, or sick when we try to eat more food. Or being physically unable to fit enough food in our stomachs. (Here's how and what to eat.)
- The Female Hardgainer Problem: Not being able to gain weight no matter what we try. Sometimes we even lose weight when trying to bulk up. (This article explains why that happens.)
- Skinny-Fat Purgatory: Successfully gaining weight… only to realize that we're just getting fatter. (Here's our article for skinny-fat women.)
- The Newbie-Gain Plateau: Quickly gaining 10 pounds, plateauing, and then the weight disappearing as soon as we get sick, stressed, or go on vacation. (Here's our newbie article on how to break past plateaus.)
- Skinny-Paralysis: Wanting to bulk up, but feeling so far behind and so overwhelmed that we get stuck in the "research" phase for years. (Our female ectomorph bulking program gives you a full plan.)
We ran into all of those issues personally, and we coach women through them every single day.
Our Approach to Bulking
We believe in leveraging science, expertise, and experience.
- Marco has a degree in health sciences (BHSc), is a certified personal training specialist (PTS), is qualified to give nutrition advice (PN), he interned with Eric Cressey (of the New York Yankees), MKin, and he's currently continuing his education with Zac Cupples, PhD.
- We've both gained over 50 pounds of muscle and still have abs. When it comes to bulking, we've been there and eaten that.
- Marco has 10 years of experience as a top strength and conditioning coach, working with people both in person and online.
- We look into every significant muscle growth (hypertrophy) study that gets published, and we're signed up to every high-quality research review: ERD, MASS, Weightology, and S&C Research.
- Our Bombshell bulking program has been tested on over 3,250 female clients and has been refined after eight years of testing.
Strength and size. We aren't interested in helping you become strong for your size. We're interested in helping you become bigger, curvier, and stronger. That's an important distinction for ectomorphs, given that we start off smaller. That's also why classic strength training tends to be a bad option for us.
We bridge the gap between health and aesthetics. One of the things we're famous for is our approach to aesthetics. We believe in developing conspicuous strength and health. We want to help you build a strong, healthy body that also looks strong, feminine, and healthy.
Most strength programs are designed for men and are focused on the benching, curling, and the overhead press. This is great for building up the chest, biceps, and shoulders, but inevitably leads to a masculine physique.
Most bodybuilding programs from women suffer from focusing too little on the big compound lifts. They're great for developing individual muscles, but they do an inefficient job of making guys curvier and stronger.
We want a program built around big compound lifts that includes plenty of lower-body work and allows us to build muscle quickly, leanly, and efficiently.
- Squats (goblet, front, and high-bar)
- Deadlifts (conventional and Romanian)
- Heavy hip movements (glute bridges, hip thrusts)
These aren't the only lifts we do, but these are the movements we focus on becoming strong at. For example, we also do plenty of step-ups, but they're used as an accessory lift for the squat.
Marco also builds our programs to improve posture. That doesn't necessarily require dedicated posture work, just a lifting program that develops the muscles that hold our bodies in the correct position.
By the time you gain your first 10–20 pounds, we want you to be standing taller, lifting heavier, sleeping more soundly, and looking far better.
You'll have a smile as wide as your hips.
We stand behind everything we sell with a full guarantee. No matter how skinny you are, and no matter how many times you've failed in the past, we promise that we can help you build muscle. If you're in any way unsatisfied, we have an unconditional 90-day refund policy.