The Best Muscle-Building Workout Program for Thin Women
If you’re a thin woman who wants to build muscle, finding the right workout program can be tricky. Most women’s workout programs are designed for fat loss, not muscle growth. For example, the most common exercise routines are yoga, aerobics, and other types of cardio, all of which are great for improving your health and fitness, none of which are very good for building muscle.
If you’re trying to build muscle, gain weight, and get bigger, you might have trouble finding good workouts. That’s why we wrote this article.
- Introduction
- Getting Fitter Isn’t the Same As Building Muscle
- How to Train for Muscle Growth
- How to Structure Your Workouts
- Full Muscle-Building Workout For Women
- The Best Exercises for Building Muscle
- How to Customize Your Workout Program
- How To Work Out at the Gym or at Home
- Should You Start With Cardio Or Weight Training Workouts?
- How to Support Your Workouts With Your Diet
- The Best Muscle-Building Program for Women
Introduction
Most women’s workout routines are for weight loss (to burn calories), fitness (such as cycling), or flexibility (such as yoga). You might start a new workout routine, try harder than everyone else, and find yourself losing weight. That can be confusing and frustrating.
When that would happen to me, I thought my genetics prevented me from gaining weight. There’s some truth to that. Some people have faster metabolisms, smaller appetites, or are naturally more active. But even if your genetics make it harder to gain weight, your frame is still eager for muscle growth. You can probably build muscle faster than almost anyone else you know.
Getting Fitter Isn’t the Same As Building Muscle
Training for Strength Versus Endurance
First of all, let’s define fitness. Fitness can mean a number of things, but in the mainstream media, it tends to mean cardiovascular fitness. This is what most workout routines are designed to improve. And that’s great. Cardio is fantastic for improving general health.
The problem is, cardio isn’t very good for building muscle. For most women, that isn’t a problem. Most overweight women are already quite strong, especially in their lower bodies. But if you’re naturally thin, it can be confusing.
You may have seen these examples already, but here’s a woman with a naturally thin bone structure who’s developed world-class cardiovascular fitness:
Below is another woman who also appears to have a naturally thin bone structure. Except in her case, she’s been lifting weights to develop her strength and power:
Both bodies are fantastic. They’re both Olympians, after all. They’re the best in the world at what they do. However, if your goal is to build muscle, you can see that you need to train for it.
I know these are just examples, but they’re representative examples of what’s seen in research. It doesn’t matter how gruelling your workouts are or how fearsomely your muscles burn with a hellish fire. If the stimulus isn’t heavy enough, it won’t cause you to adapt by becoming bigger and stronger.
Most Women Are Already Strong
There are a lot of reasons why overweight women are already so muscular. To make a long story short, though, gaining weight causes both fat gain and muscle growth. Even with a completely sedentary lifestyle, gaining ten pounds will usually result in a good 3-4 pounds of muscle and 6-7 pounds of fat.
Moreover, carrying around that extra body weight will make them even more muscular. Going up a flight of stairs while weighing 200 pounds requires lower-body strength. If you weigh 100 pounds, imagine going up a flight of stairs while carrying 100 pounds. Imagine how good that would be for building muscle in your thighs and hips. That’s what overweight women are doing every single day of their lives, often several times per day.
Overweight women are already strong. For them, getting toned actually does mean getting smaller. They tone by removing the fat on top of their muscles. That reveals that large muscles hidden underneath.
Thin Women Need to Train to Build Muscle
For naturally skinny women, though, getting curvy, strong, and fit means developing more lean muscle mass. On the plus side, we don’t need to worry about losing fat.
Furthermore, cardio isn’t all we need for general health. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends doing at least 150 minutes of cardio and doing at least two strength training workouts every week. So if you’re a naturally skinny woman who’s trying to get bigger, stronger, and curvier, you should technically be doing cardio and strength training.
This advice is confusing for another reason, though. WHO recommends that women do “strength training,” but strength training has a couple of different definitions. Let’s talk about what they mean.
How to Train for Muscle Growth
Is Strength Training Good for Building Muscle?
In the fitness industry, strength training normally means focusing on the barbell squat, deadlift, and bench press. Strength training is about trying to get stronger in a powerlifting sense. That’s not what the World Health Organization means. They’re talking about training to build muscle and become stronger.
This is an important distinction because that type of strength training isn’t the best way to build muscle. Even if your goal is getting stronger, there are better ways to gain general strength.
The best way to gain new muscle mass is to do “hypertrophy training.” Most styles of resistance training will stimulate some muscle growth, but hypertrophy training is the easiest and most effective way to do it, and it has great carry-over into general health and fitness. If you’re a skinny-fat girl, it makes for the best default.
What Is Hypertrophy Training?
Hypertrophy training (often called bodybuilding) is the type of exercise designed to build muscle. Hypertrophy training also comes with a host of other benefits: greater strength, improved fitness, better general health, greater bone density, increased longevity, and even improved cardiovascular health. However, since hypertrophy programs are designed with muscle growth in mind, these other benefits are just byproducts.
With hypertrophy training, you’ll gain a maximum amount of muscle. It’s better for improving your cardiorespiratory fitness than strength training, but that’s not what it’s for. You’re supposed to combine it with a good cardio routine.
Most of these “bodybuilding” programs aren’t designed for women. As soon as you start googling about building muscle, you’ll find bulking programs. But you probably aren’t trying to get “bulky,” so why would you be looking for a “bulking” program?
By that same token, most women’s bodybuilding information isn’t written for everyday women. If you aren’t trying to look like a female bodybuilder, there can be a disconnect there.
To be fair, a lot of the information on these sites is probably perfect for you. If you want to build a bigger butt while gaining overall strength, a bodybuilder’s approach to squatting and deadlifting is good for that.
Curviness is found on the path to bulkiness. If you gain 10 pounds of muscle, you may wind up looking curvier but still slender:
Depending on how skinny you’re starting off, you might be able to gain even more weight while still looking quite slender:
Regardless, at a certain point, you’ll build enough muscle that you start to look remarkably strong and curvy. Here’s a good example of that:
Now, what if you kept going? What if you gained 30, 40, or 50 pounds? That’s when you might start looking bulky. I’ve personally gained 70 pounds. Marco has gained 63. That has bulked up our physiques quite a bit. Mind you, we’re men, and we’re tall. But keep in mind that it takes quite a lot of muscle to go from skinny to bulky. You can step gracefully off the gain train long before you get there.
Furthermore, your muscles will eventually reach their genetic limit. There’s only so big that your arms can get. And if you have naturally thin bones and you’re naturally thin, you’re going to keep that bone structure even as you bulk up. That means that even at your genetic potential, you’ll still look like a naturally thin woman. You’ll look stronger and more athletic. Not bulkier.
(Here’s our article about muscle growth and strength potential for naturally skinny women.)
The Principle of Progressive Overload
Hypertrophy training boils down to challenging your strength, eating enough food and protein to recover and grow, and then challenging your strength again. And since your muscles have grown back bigger, over time, you become more capable. So you try to lift more weight or eke out more repetitions. This is called progressive overload.
Think of the old myth of Mila of Croton. Mila was determined to be the strongest wrestler in Greece, so she started carrying a calf up a hill every morning. Over time, her muscles grew bigger, making her stronger. But the calf was also growing heavier, continuing to challenge her.
By the time the calf grew into a bull, Mila wasn’t skinny-fat anymore. She had become a strength legend, not just in Greece, but also on Instagram.
How to Structure Your Workouts
You can build muscle with both light and heavy weights. But to make it as easy as possible, choose an amount of weight you can lift for 6–20 repetitions. That’s light enough that you can get at least a few reps in, allowing you to do some solid work. And it’s heavy enough to develop muscular strength instead of endurance. If you do 2–4 sets per exercise per workout, that’s usually enough to stimulate a maximal amount of muscle growth.
A challenging workout can stimulate up to 2–3 days of muscle growth. To keep your muscles growing all week long, you’d train them every 2–3 days. That means you can train with all kinds of different workout schedules:
- 2-day workout routines
- 3-day workout routines
- 4-day workout splits
- 5-day workout splits
- 6-day workout splits
We recommend starting with 3 full-body workouts each week. That will give you a good balance of stimulation (stress) and recovery (growth). 2-day routines are better for slower progress, maintenance, and general health. Training 4+ days per week is better for advanced lifters who are already near their genetic potential.
Finally, you have to train hard enough. If you’re focused on progressive overload, lifting more weight or doing more reps each workout, you’ll eventually get to the point where you’re pushing yourself extremely hard, fighting tooth and nail for progress. But if you want great results right out of the gate, make sure you’re taking your sets close to muscular failure.
If you aren’t sure how close to failure you’re lifting, try taking the set all the way to failure—to the point where your muscles don’t have the physical strength to keep going. Once you know what failure is, you’ll be better at stopping just shy of that point. If you fail at 6 push-ups, stop at 4–5. And then next workout, hopefully, you’ve grown stronger. Try to get an extra rep.
Full Muscle-Building Workout For Women
Here’s a simple example:
- Goblet squats: 3 sets of 12 repetitions.
- Raised push-ups: 3 sets of as many reps as possible (AMRAP)
- Romanian Deadlifts: 3 sets of 12 repetitions.
- One-Arm Dumbbell Rows: 3 sets of 12 repetitions.
- Bodyweight hip thrusts: 3 sets of as many reps as you can do. If you can do more than 20 reps, try doing single-leg hip thrusts.
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The Best Exercises for Building Muscle
Goblet Squats for Bigger Legs
Push-Ups for A Bigger Chest
Romanian Deadlifts for Bigger Hips
Dumbbell Rows for A Stronger Back
Hip Thrusts for Bigger Glutes
For more, we have a full article on the best muscle-building exercises.
How to Customize Your Workout Program
Your Workouts Should Match Your Goals
Let’s say you’re a naturally thin woman who wants better muscle definition, more of an hourglass figure, bigger hips, better posture, and more overall strength.
- Start with a foundation of strength. Start with the big compound lifts. Squats, deadlifts, push-ups, chin-ups, and rows are great for that.
- Add isolation lifts that suit your goals. If you want bigger hips, think of Romanian deadlifts and hip thrusts. If you want toned arms, think of biceps curls and triceps extensions. If you want bigger thighs, think of split squats and step-ups.
- You don’t need to do isolation lifts for muscles you don’t want to grow. If your waist is already big enough, you don’t need crunches. The compound lifts will give you a strong core either way. If you don’t want bigger arms, you don’t need to do biceps curls. Chin-ups and rows will give you strong arms either way.
Here’s what a few months of working out can do. Aomi did a full-body workout program 3x per week. She focused on compound exercises but added in isolation exercises that matched her goals.
Obviously, every woman has different goals. This is just one example. The point is that you can customize your workouts to build muscle where you want it most.
That’s how we designed the Bony to Bombshell Program. We give you a full workout program, but the exercises are customizable, and we can tailor the program to your goals in the community.
Do Exercises That Match Your Experience Level
If you’re new to lifting and you start attempting back squats and barbell deadlifts, things get real awkward real quick. To get around the steep learning curve, do lifts that match your experience level. We recommend goblet squats instead of back squats and dumbbell sumo deadlifts instead of conventional barbell deadlifts.
These variants are easier to learn, you won’t feel as awkward doing them, they build just as much muscle, they’re safer, and you won’t need to commandeer a squat rack.
Also, remember that some bodyweight exercises are great for building muscle. Think of exercises like push-ups, chin-ups, crunches, and planks. For example, push-ups are just as good as bench presses for building your chest, shoulders, and triceps, and they’re better for improving posture.
Again, though, start with beginner variations. You can ease into push-ups by starting on your knees or by raising your hands up on a bench. You can ease into chin-ups by using a stool to start in the top position, then lowering yourself slowly down.
If you to delve deeper into the art of training for muscle growth, check out our full beginner workout for women.
How To Work Out at the Gym or at Home
How to Work Out at the Gym
Pretty much every naturally skinny woman we’ve ever met has found the gym intimidating. We’re no exceptions to that. I was absolutely terrified of going to the gym for the first time.
It’s not that skinny women are cowards. It’s just that the gym seems like a place where people are judged based on the size of their muscles… and we have naturally smaller muscles. If you aren’t confident about the size of your muscles, this makes the gym a very intimidating place. And then there are the big musclebound bros.
If you do have the courage to get yourself to the gym, you’ll soon learn that the gym isn’t all that intimidating. Even the bros are often kind and welcoming. And the ones who aren’t are usually too busy admiring their biceps or flexing their glutes in the mirror to even notice you.
I didn’t know that, though. So my solution was to build muscle at home. That’s how I gained my first 20 pounds. Interestingly, long before we met, Cassandra had done the same thing, bulking up with bodyweight workouts at home. That’s what gave us the confidence to step foot into the gym.
How to Work Out at Home
This is by far the simplest way to build at home. All you need are some heavy adjustable dumbbells that go up to 60–100 pounds and a lifting bench. That’s all you need to do our Bony to Bombshell Program. In fact, you don’t even really need the bench. We have plenty of members who do the program with just two adjustable dumbbells.
When buying adjustable dumbbells, the fancy option is getting some IronMaster ones. However, you can get simple ones like the ones pictured below. Are they perfect? No. Will they help you gain 20+ pounds of muscle? Absolutely.
I used a setup like this for several years while living in a small condo in downtown Toronto. I didn’t have much space, so I’d carry the dumbbells and bench into the living room, do my workout, and then store them in the closet.
You don’t even need the dumbbells. You could probably get away with just 3 kettlebells—light, medium, and heavy. That will be enough to gain your first 10 pounds of muscle, after which you can keep building your home gym.
How to Build A Barbell Home Gym
Nowadays, now that I live in a bigger house with a spare room, I’ve built myself a simple barbell home gym. If you have a spare room or garage, and you have $500–1500 available, this is a great way to build a home gym that you can use for a lifetime.
Here’s how to build a simple barbell home gym.
In the long run, this is cheaper than getting a gym membership. But it can certainly be a large upfront cost, especially if you don’t know yet if you’ll adopt weight training as a long-term habit. Here’s the home gym I built that my wife and I train in.
Should You Start With Cardio Or Weight Training Workouts?
In an ideal world, you’d eventually have a lifestyle that involves both cardio and hypertrophy training. However, if you’re currently fairly sedentary, it might make more sense to ease into this a little bit more slowly.
If you had to pick just one type of exercise to help you get bigger, fitter, and stronger, you should choose hypertrophy training. That isn’t true for everyone, but if you’re naturally thin, it’s probably true for you. It was for us.
The good news is that lifting weights will also raise your heart rate, allowing you to make cardiovascular improvements as well. If you do three weight training workouts per week, each lasting about an hour, that will count for about 90 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. That’s more than enough for a beginner to improve their cardiovascular fitness. Pair that with a short daily walk, and you’re off to a killer start.
How to Support Your Workouts With Your Diet
The Importance of a Calorie Surplus
After you’ve challenged your muscles with a good workout, they’ll want to adapt by growing bigger and stronger. You need to fuel that adaptation with energy. If you’re overweight, you can get that energy from your stored body fat. If you’re lean or thin, you’ll need to get that energy from the food you eat. Your body can then invest that extra energy into building muscle.
There are two ways to eat more food:
- You could add a little food to your diet. It doesn’t take much. 250 calories are often enough to get the scale moving, at least at first. That’s a large handful of trail mix, a smoothie, or apple slices dipped in peanut butter. If it isn’t enough, or if you stop gaining weight, add a little more. Keep weighing yourself and adjusting as needed.
- Count your calories. Another approach is to count your calories with a calorie-tracking app. It used to be a real pain, but modern apps make it quite convenient. If you want to give it a try, we’re affiliated with MacroFactor. We’ve found it to be the best calorie-tracking app for building muscle. You can get an extended free trial with the code “b2b”.
Whatever approach you choose, weigh yourself every week, and add more food whenever you need to. Every pound of muscle you build will burn around 12 more calories per day. So after you gain 10 pounds, expect to need around 120 more calories. Plus, your metabolism may adapt as you get used to eating more foods.
Your appetite will change with you. Don’t worry about needing to eat more food. That was a big fear of mine, but maintaining muscle wound up being much easier than I expected.
The Importance of Protein
In one study, half the participants ate 0.5 grams of protein per pound bodyweight per day. The other half ate a whole gram of protein per pound bodyweight. Twice as much. For a 130-pound woman, that’s 65 grams versus 130 grams of protein each day.
After four weeks, the group eating an average amount of protein lost 7.7 pounds of fat but failed to gain any muscle. That’s great! Their workout routine was enough to preserve all of their muscle mass.
If we look at the other group, though, the results are incredible! Not only did they lose 11 pounds of fat, but they were also able to gain 3 pounds of muscle.
When you’re gaining weight, you would build muscle either way. A calorie surplus is a powerful muscle-building tool. But eating more protein would yield more muscle growth and less fat gain. You may even lose fat while building muscle. Maybe.
How Much Protein Should You Eat?
Now, the next thing to keep in mind is that you can only build muscle so fast. Once you’re eating enough protein to fuel that muscle growth (and keep your hair and nails healthy), then eating extra protein won’t do anything more. That cut-off point is usually around 0.7 grams of protein per pound body weight per day.
For example, a skinny woman who weighs 120 pounds would need to eat at least 84 grams of protein per day to maximize her rate of muscle growth. There’s nothing wrong with eating even more protein, but it wouldn’t further improve her results.
The Best Muscle-Building Program for Women
The best way to build muscle as a naturally skinny woman is to lift weights, following a well-designed hypertrophy training program full of exercises that challenge the muscles you’re most eager to grow. Usually, but not always, that means following a program designed for women.
But the best program for you depends on your goals. We’ve had some female clients who want to bulk up their shoulders and arms. That’s no less valuable, just less common. That’s where customizable programs and in-person coaching can help.
Then you’ll want to combine that type of lifting with an abundant and nutritious bulking diet. One with plenty of whole foods, protein, and enough calories to sustain muscle growth.
The newer you are to lifting, the more exciting this news is. You may think your genetics are keeping you skinny, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You may not be hungry, but your bone structure is. It’s eager to explode into muscle growth. You can build muscle at an incredibly rapid pace. This is due to newbie gains. You can see examples of naturally thin women building muscle here.
If you want us to walk you through the entire process of bulking muscle, check out our Bony to Bombshell Program. It includes a full training program, tutorial videos teaching every exercise, a full diet guide, a complete recipe book, and coaching from us in our online member community. We’ll be with you every step of the way. Results guaranteed. Unconditional refund policy.
GET THE GOOGLE SPREADSHEET OF THE
FREE female BEGINNER’S FULL-BODY WORKOUT
Get the workout as a Google spreadsheet. You’ll be able to pick from exercise alternatives, fill out the sheet, and get our beginner’s warm-up.
Plus, we’ll make sure you’re on the Bony to Bombshell newsletter, and send you all of our best women's muscle-building content.
Shane Duquette is the co-founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, and has a degree in design from York University in Toronto, Canada. He's gained sixty pounds at 11% body fat and has over ten years of experience helping over 10,000 skinny people build muscle, get stronger, and gain weight.
Cassandra González Duquette is a certified nutritionist (CNP) who studied at the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Toronto, Canada. She's personally gained 22 pounds, going from 97 up to 119 pounds.
Marco Walker-Ng is the co-founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's also a certified trainer (PTS) and nutrition coach (PN) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and performance, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
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I really liked the article, but when I got to the crossfit part I was very surprised about what you say about it….just because bodybuilding is for some people,like you guys, the best way to bulk, crossfit has it benefits on body too.I am a little sad about that part of the article….
Hey Luisana,
I actually think CrossFit is really cool! They took weightlifting and made it more intense, challenging, cardio-y, and community oriented. They kind of turned it into an extreme sport. They did a great job of popularizing this unique style of weightlifting too, and getting more people into weightlifting is a great thing—especially since most people aren’t really interested in building muscle, so who cares if CrossFit isn’t very good for that.
That’s not to knock CrossFit. I mean, take soccer. Soccer is a sporty way to be active and healthy with your friends. It also has a higher injury rate than bodybuilding. It’s also not very good for building muscle. Soccer is awesome though. Just not awesome for building muscle.
Same thing with CrossFit. Super cool, just not very effective for building muscle (at least when compared with things like bodybuilding and strength training).
Some very cool studies out there showing that CrossFit is rad for making people fitter though. Very impressive increases in v02 max and whatnot. So impressive that the American Military was considering replacing their basic fitness training with Crossfit. The injury rate was too high though, if I recall correctly.
So I totally agree with you that CrossFit, when used properly, can be fantastic for you 🙂
Hello I’m interested in the program, I am a college student. Do u have something that is more afforable.
Hey Shundelle, we have a student discount and a payment plan. So instead of 197 all at once, you’d be looking at more like 40 per month over the course of 4 months 🙂
This program sounds pretty interesting. What kind of payment plans do you offer and will I automatically find this option at checkout? Thank you!
Hi Annette,
At this time our payment plans are set up manually, but in the future we are planning to bring it to the checkout page. I’ll send you an email about the payment plans now 🙂
I love these articles! As someone who’s naturally skinny (~95lbs, 20 years old, 5’4”) and eats more than most people I know who weigh a lot more than me, it’s great to get advice on how to gain weight/build muscle in a way that will work for my body type! The weight racks are definitely my worst nightmare especially when I start by picking up only 10lbs weights… but thanks to you guys at least I know how to use em!
…and soon you’ll be picking up 15 pound weights. Then 20. And eventually those 100 pound ones 😉
I was told you can’t build muscle if your skinny due to not having anything to build which doesn’t sound right to me but I wouldn’t know myself, any good advice/info about this?
Hey Lupe, you can absolutely build muscle when you’re skinny! You build the muscle out of the protein and the calories that you eat 🙂
There’s no need to get fat first or anything like that. Start with a weight training program, then start eating more protein, then start eating more calories. Once you’re eating enough calories to gain weight, you’ll start packing on the muscle 😀
I so wish I could afford to buy this guide 🙁 Student life….
Hi Kirsty,
We do have a student discount, or a payment plan to help make things a bit easier. If you’re interested, shoot us an email at us@bonytobombshell.com and we can give you the details 🙂
I would Love this to build up my skinny fat body! Except I don’t love the price, are there any sales,black Friday sale, coupon code for this book?! I really need this 🙁
Hey Ashlie,
Glad to hear you’re interested! We don’t have sales, per se—we don’t feel like that would be fair to our other members who paid full price—but we can set you up with a payment plan if that helps. If you’re a student we also have a student discount option. Send us an email at us@bonytobomshell.com.
If the full coaching program is still outside of your budget, don’t worry—we’ll be coming out with more articles, videos and newsletter content—all totally free—to help you even if you aren’t a member 🙂
Thank you so much for this article! I’ve been following you guys for awhile. I’m sooo excited!! Finally someone understands my pain, no girl I know wants to gain weight. I am planning on purchasing the program, maybe as a Christmas present for myself! I would say I’m “skinny fat”…can’t wait to get a flat stomach and gain about 15-20 pounds of muscle everywhere else!!
So glad you’ve been liking our articles, Michelle! Your goals sound right in line with what we can help you accomplish, so I’m stoked to get you into the community. 15-20 pounds is a big goal too, so you’re going to have some really gnarly transformation shots after a few months 😀
I want to gain weigth but I dont want abs, I love my flat belly , and an hourglass figure (I dont like the skinny -muscular figure , no offense), is it posible to get a plan only for thick legs ans bigger butt?
Hey Nora,
Luckily, it’s easier to have a flat stomach than to have abs, so not only is it possible to achieve, it’s easier to achieve. The reason you may not be seeing that look with a lot of fitness celebrities is because they find having abs more impressive, and for someone who is into fitness, that can be a fun goal to strive towards.
Can you get a plan that helps you build the body you’re looking for? Absolutely! Your goals line up quite well with our default Bony to Bombshell program, and we could also help you customize it to fit you even better 🙂
I hope you decide to join us!
Im interesting on this program. I have one question. Do I have to go to the gym to do these exercises or can I do them at home.
Hey Krystal, glad to hear you’re interested!
You can do the workouts at home so long as you have some heavy things to lift. I’d recommend getting some heavy adjustable dumbbells and an adjustable bench, but really any heavy things will do 🙂
I hope you decide to join us!
Best,
Shane
This was a great artical and I love the idea of your program. I’m 16 and have always been skinny, small and underweight for my age group. I eat as much as anyone and I love playing sports and would consider myself moderately fit. I’d love to be stronger and have a curvy body but as you’ve explained, cardio and things that I enjoy like running, yoga, Zumba, dance, netball, soccer do not help to gain muscle. I want to be strong but I also want to be fitter and still participate reguarly in those activities. How would that work if I did your program????
Hey Bella,
That’s awesome! Sounds like you’ve got a really healthy lifestyle.
You’re right. That stuff is great for your health and fitness… but it won’t do much to change your appearance or build muscle.
If you could make time to do three hourlong workouts per week (we’d tell you exactly what to do) then you could still do perfectly well with the program—perhaps better than average actually because you’re so fit 🙂
Is this program good for a 42 year old skinny fat person(me)? Will I have the same results?
Absolutely!
Results won’t start to diminish until around 60, but just to make sure your tendons and ligaments are ready for heavy lifting, if you sign up we’d start you a little lighter for a month just to keep things optimally safe 🙂
I hope you decide to join us!
Really identified with this program. I have been doing BodyBeast for the last 6 months and have seen changes in my body, but not as much as I’d like. I teach yoga and practice regularly. Can you customize these programs? I just would like to gain a lot of muscle mass and am not at all scared of getting bulky!
You can absolutely customize the program! We can help you do it, too—coaching and customization is included. I’ve gained 55 pounds, Jared 45, Marco 70, and we’ve helped many people gain several dozen pounds each. We can definitely help you get as bulky as you wish in exactly the way that you wish 🙂
Hi there,
I’m very interested in this program as someone who has struggled to put on weight, especially in some areas as opposed to others. I’ve had issues with being underweight recently, and have increased my calorie intake pretty significantly to gain weight. I’ve had some good results from that, but I still find the weight going most easily to my lower stomach- not great. I love to run and dance, and I practice yoga regularly. I thought some of those things would help build more leg/booty muscle, but I haven’t gained as much as I’d like. I’m a student, so I’d definitely appreciate a program with a discount or payment plan. I like the look of this- it seems so different than other fitness media that has weight loss in mind. I notice I look much more like the women in the before/after pictures on this website than many others.
Glad to hear you’re interested in joining us, Lydia!
Ermm, yeah, gaining weight primarily in the lower stomach definitely isn’t a good sign. Fortunately, I think that’s just because you haven’t been doing exercise that causes muscle growth. Running and dancing are great for your health, but they’re cardio activities, so they cause your body to develop more blood vessels, improve blood flow, etc. None of these adaptations have anything to do with muscle mass, so if you gain weight while doing them it makes sense that you’d gain fat instead of muscle, and research supports this. Similar deal with yoga—also not a muscle-builder.
So you may find that your genetics are better than you assume, and that you actually build muscle quite readily in all the right places when you train for it!
I’m going to email you with some student and payment plan options 🙂
Thanks so much! Also, what kind of equipment is needed to do the exercise part of the program?
Just some dumbbells, ideally adjustable dumbbells that can go pretty heavy—you’re going to get strong quickly. And then perhaps an adjustable lifting bench too, but that’s a little bit less important. With those two pieces of equipment you can do the entire program and get perfect results 🙂
Hey there!! I’m really encouraged to buy this program (assuming I can afford it…I’m a student as well). I already sent an email asking about the student discount. I’ve always struggled to even just maintain an excercise routine. I used to do those 30 day challenges but they either failed to show results or were just too much for me. I’m always tired and get tired really easily when exercising. How long would it take for this to show results??
Hey Sabrina, I know we already answered your email, but I’ll answer here too for the sake of anyone else who’s reading the comments.
How long will it take for this program to produce results? You’ll have measurable results within a week—you’ll see your weight move up on the scale, usually by 1-3 pounds in that first week, then 0.25–1 pound per week thereafter. That’s to get “measurable” results though—proof that you’re on the right track—not the results that will have your colleagues wondering if you got extremely high end glute implants.
To get remarkable visual results it usually takes about 5 weeks, or around 5 pounds. Sometimes 10 weeks. If you check out the transformation shots that we post around the website (some are in the sidebar) you can see some transformations and their timeframes 🙂
The longer you stick with it, the more dramatic your results become. Here are Aomi’s before/after shots at the three month point, for example.
Hi,
I’ve been a Cardio Queen (swimming, biking, running) and healthy eater all my life (I’m 47). I finally made the plunge last year into CrossFit, and the gym I belong to has a great focus on Olympic lifts. In August I joined their Barbell club and am so pleased to slowly see strength gains. I want to be able to do 3 strict pull ups by the end of 2016.
I have made it a goal also to change my body composition to be 21.7% (yes..that exact!) fat, which means I need to decrease my current % by 4.5. Why I’m writing you is that I’m searching for a solid meal plan (or cook book) to achieve my protein intake goals (a gram for each lb. in body weight.) Does BtoB offer such nutritional guidance?
-Jennifer
Hey Jennifer,
Sounds like you’re in pretty impressive shape! Swimming, biking, running, CrossFit, Barbell Club? Damn! That’s awesome 🙂
A huge part of program is nutrition. How much to eat, what to eat (although we’re not restrictive at all), how to manipulate your appetite, one on one coaching… and a ton of helpful recipes.
I hope you decide to join us! We’d love to help you get to 21.7% 😉
I have to say that calisthenics works. I can’t lift due to a spine injury from a previous car crash. But calisthenics helps keep my BMI below 21 and body fat percentage at 22.
Glad to hear it’s working for you, Aquarius 🙂
So glad to read this article. I’m about to start bodybuilding exercises at the gym this week, and it’s good to know that it really works for so many people! Hope that in a few months I’ll be part of this team!
Great call, going with a bodybuilding-type program, Anne! Good luck with it, and I hope you soon become a part of this team as well 😀
What about pilates reformer, will, that make you smaller or bigger?
That’s a bit of a trick question. The answer is neither. More endurance-y types of exercise like pilates aren’t really related to body composition at all. The adaptations it will cause your body to make have to do with cardio: more blood vessels, more red blood cells, a more efficient heart, etc.
So you’ll probably stay looking about the same. This is good if you like how you look, bad if you’re looking for change.
I left my email address for info about your payment plan. Thank You!
I’ll shoot you an email now 🙂
It’s amazing to visit this website and reading the views of all
colleagues on the topic of this piece of writing, while I am also keen of getting experience.
Hi Shane. I’m in! How do I sign up again?
Sign up for the program? http://bonytobombshell.com/weight-gain-program-for-women/ 🙂
Hi! I just found your website and am reading up on your plan. I’m a skinny woman, who married a skinny man, and just recently joined him in the gym this week. How intimidating- just as this article described! He was guiding me with very similar advice as you give here. I’m looking to gain muscle throughout, but I would also like to increase endurance while hiking (or jogging/running). Should I encorporate any cardio into your suggested routine (lift, rest, repeat)? Or will this exercise regimen be enough to help increase my endurance on top of muscle building?
Hey Emma, that’s awesome! Sounds like you and your husband are on the right track by doing something really healthy like this together 🙂
If you hike and jog and whatnot then you probably don’t need much extra cardio in addition to your lifting for the sake of your health—your lifestyle already sounds pretty balanced in that case. But since you want to improve your endurance with cardio and hiking, yes, adding in some cardio could help with that.
A good place to start is by adding in a couple 20-minute steady state cardio workouts each week, trying to keep your heart rate between 120–150 during that time. Try to do them on non-workout days, but if you must do them on the same day as you lift, do them beforehand. You can increase the length of those cardio workouts by 5 minutes per week and you can also add in a third cardio workout. Do this until you reach your desired fitness level, and then you can reduce the quantity of the workouts to just one per week to maintain that level of fitness 🙂
I hope that helps!
(If you have enough on your plate with the lifting right now, you can always add this stuff in later.)
Hi Ive done yoga for over 10 years but would love to get stronger, and also get rid of my lower back ache… the two muscles either side of my spine seem to work overtime. I’m a complete beginner at weights, don’t think I’d have the confidence in the gym! All that said, in interested in the programme, could you send me details of how to spread the cost please?
Hey Nikki,
Yoga is awesome, and it should set you up well when you start a program designed to get you stronger 🙂
Yeah, your spinal erectors. When muscles are sitting at the right length they activate when they should, when they’re stretched too far they activate too infrequently, and when they’re in a shortened position they activate too often. It’s common for people’s hips to be tilted forward, and this stretches out the hamstrings and abs, shortens the lower back muscles. This will often make the hamstrings feel tight, your abs look a little distended because they can’t contract properly, and your spinal erectors will suffer from overuse because they’re pretty much always contracted.
Weightlifting can help with this, provided that you lift with really good technique and work to improve your hip mobility/strength. We can help you with that.
And yes! I’ll shoot you an email now 🙂
I tried emailing you about the Student Discount and the Payment Plan but it said that there was a “Domain Error” 🙁 Any chance you guys know what’s up with that?
Hey Victoria, I’m not sure what happened there. I’ve got your email attached to this comment though, so I’ll send you the student discount and payment plan options now 🙂
Hi there. I’ve been reading your articles and I have to say I really like your approach to muscle building. I’m interested myself in starting lifting weights as a complement to my current training (I do a lot of pole dance/fitness which is similar to calisthenics in many ways and actually allows for a lot of progression but it works the upper body a lot more than the lower body). So I’m really looking to improve my lower body strength! I was looking to buy some heavy dumbbells as you have suggested but I really struggle to find some suitable ones online? Most of them only seem to go up to 10-15kg (22-33lbs) each, or the heavier ones I’ve seen were extremely expensive. Or do people buy a set and separate weight plates to make them heavier? Or do you think it would make sense to get only one heavy dumbbell, as I’m mostly interested in lower body exercises?
And – this might sound dumb – if you order heavy weights online, how are you even supposed to carry the package?
So are there any particular weight sets you’d recommend? I’m based in the UK if that makes any difference.
Thank you!
Hey Jules,
Very good question! I have adjustable dumbbells similar to these ones. It can take a little hunting to find ones that allow you to go heavy enough, but I’m really happy with them.
Should you get just one if your goal is primarily working the lower body? That’s a very interesting question! I would say, yes, that could work. Although you’d still have more options if you had two of them—e.g. you could do split squats with a weight in each hand—you don’t need a second one. So that would depend on your budget.
If you order them online, they should bring the package right to your door (or perhaps right inside). From there, you can open the package and carry everything separately. However, some shipping companies do suck at this, so you might see the person really struggling to get it to your door. That’s ultimately their responsibility, though.
Does that help / answer your questions?
Yes, that helps a lot! I think I’ll get one for now and perhaps get another one later on if I feel I’m not getting as much out of it anymore. Thank you very much! 🙂
Excellent. My pleasure, Jules! 🙂
Hi!
I have been working on gaining weight for nearly 5 years. This past January, after a change/loss in life, I am able to get more sleep time uninterrupted. Before, I gained strength, not weight. But, I am gaining weight now. My arms are bigger and I see muscle definition. I feel stronger. I have muscle lines on thighs and shapely lower leg. I have a cleavage definition starting! My waist is one inch smaller. BUT I feel like I’m popping out of my shirts!
Also, I notice pant thighs and backside are fitting tighter. My butt moved upward.
I am seeing results…. but I got so used to being thin and underweight that it is starting to feel like a psychological stress to feel— bigger.
I lost nearly 30 lbs very quickly after a death in the family 5 years ago. That is when the unintended weight loss happened. If I got the slightest bit fearful or worried, weight would drop, then I would get worried about losing the weight I needed. I am healthy.
After that I had saggy skin… and still do. I could see ribs all over.
I really do feel as though I am building – especially the muscle I lost.
Can you get to a point where the body is happy with the muscle (I want to keep it and have it for just being healthy) and then becomes able to burn off the excess “skinny fat” jiggle that is left?
I have adrenal fatigue so I adapt all work out around it, as not to worsen the adrenals.
My diet had always been healthy. I have to stay with a GAPS (gut health) diet and a diet based on my needs.
That’s awesome, Drea!
Sounds like you’re gaining muscle while, if anything, losing fat! 😀
Sleep is a pretty cool thing. For example, people who sleep more will gain more muscle and less fat when gaining weight. More sleep is also associated with less fat gain in the general public, although in our case I suspect it would have the opposite effect, making it harder to gain any weight at all.
On the flip side, we have stress. More stress means more fat and less muscle when gaining weight. And like you noticed, when we naturally skinny people are overly stressed, it makes it almost impossible to eat enough to even maintain our weight!
I’m so sorry to hear about the death in your family, and I really hope that things are going better now.
Now for your question. Can we get to a point where our body more easily maintains muscle mass, allowing us to focus on getting rid of fat? Yes! Absolutely. The trick will be to lose weight (about a pound per week) by going into a calorie deficit while eating plenty of protein (about a gram per pound bodyweight) and following a good weightlifting program. The calorie deficit will cause the weight loss. The protein will feed your muscle. The lifting will tell your body that it should get rid of fat instead of muscle.
Your question might be about a set point. Meaning, after building muscle will it want to stick around? The answer there is yes as well. This is referred to as “muscle memory.” Once you build muscle, you will be “naturally” more muscular thereafter.
Does that help / answer your question?
And congrats again on the gains!
hi i am asanda from South Africa and i read ur article it was so interesting and informative, do you have the program here in South Africa coz i really want to join it, please. thank you
Hey Asanda, our program is international! We wrote the program from Canada, but you can sign up from anywhere in the world, and you’ll see that everyone in the community is from everywhere. We’ve love to have you! 🙂
Ok i see you guys have payment plans. How can i get on this payment plan , also im a mom of 3 girls and have tough time knowing when , what and how to eat . do you guys have eating plans included in the program
I just sent you all the details 🙂
(For anyone else reading, you can email us@bonytobombshell.com and Sunny will set you up.)
So glad I stumbled across this blog!
I’ve always been naturally slim (when I was younger I even got called ‘stick’) and lots of women say ‘oh I wish I had your figure’ but I’d love to be stronger and fitter.
Up to now I’ve done quite a lot of cardio – my favourite is BodyAttack and I love dance based classes like BodyJam and Zumba but I find if I do too much cardio I just lose weight and look way too skinny.
So I’m trying to build more muscle by eating more protein and lifting weights. I’m only 2 weeks in but already seeing an improvement and this blog is very useful.
So glad you’ve been finding the articles helpful Stacy 🙂 Cardio, of course, is great. But for your heart health rather than for your muscles, bones, tendons, etc. So definitely don’t give that up if you’re enjoying it. But finding a way to add more lifting to your life is a great idea.
Just wanted to point out our two beginner articles on nutrition and lifting, you might find a lot of value in them:
http://bonytobombshell.com/beginners-nutrition-guide-for-women-looking-to-build-muscle-gain-weight/
http://bonytobombshell.com/beginners-workout-for-women-looking-to-build-muscle-gain-weight/
PS cool blog, I hope you keep up with it!
Hi, I am 46 yrs old, 5’0” and weigh 99lbs. I have a BMI of 19.5 & BF of 22%. I have exercised most of my adult life.. taking breaks on occasion for a month or 2 at a time. This year I lost down to 96lbs due to extreme stress & lack of eating. I started concentrating on weights only (although I love to jog) but I felt I was wasting away. I’m currently on a break, week 4. But I lift at home using 15lbs for upper body & 25lbs for lower body for 15-30 minutes a day 5-6 days a week. So I have visible (baby) muscles all over but I can’t seem to eat enough to gain anything, even fat. When I’m stressed I eat very little. Not only that I find it very difficult to drink fluids. 8oz of water is a lot for me. Any suggestions…. any & all appreciated
First of all, I am so glad that I found so many articles about dealing with being skinny and not only that, that I could find a program that can actually work for me as well. Great job!
I was wondering… As I grew up, I did not manage to correct my body position, by that I refer mainly to my spine and shoulders. I actually begun thinking that it is too late to correct them now (I am 28), but I see in some before/after pictures here that the position seems corrected. Is that the case with anyone lifting weights? I also have to mention that I have back aches quite often and I feel that my bad posture is to blame, but is very difficult to stand straight all the time, as well as constraining, tense, unnatural – because all the years of standing the wrong way.
Thank you!
A big part of postural is muscle imbalances and weakness. So doing the right exercises, which we’ve included, can help a lot with posture. So you can see a lot of progress very quickly.
The smaller nuances that most people only care about for aesthetic reasons may take years to fix though. Some bony adaptations have happened. It can be worked on, but after your initial improvements from muscle strengthening, which is usually enough to remove common aches and pains, your postural progress will take more commitment.
PS just to be clear, you can’t will your way into good posture. It’s a strength thing first, then gets into little rehab exercises related to breathing, etc.
You sound like you could get a lot of benefit from the program!
I would love to get this program.. is there still the option of a payment plan?? Thanks
Hey Sherri,
We’ve JUST released a new and improved version of the entire program, and we’ve also included the payment plan as an official payment option 🙂
https://bonytobombshell.com/weight-gain-program-for-women/
I hope you decide to join us!
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I sent an email as well, and it seems this comment thread may be a bit old at this point, but I’m hoping to get some input or before after type stuff from or about women who are athletes in a pretty strength (red twitch??) oriented way. Hearing from distance athletes was encouraging, but not quite the same. I’m an avid backcountry snowboarder, climber, and do a bit of surfing and a bunch of other stuff. Generally trying to kill my self outside. I have plateaued or quit most strength training programs because as much as I want more curves, I just fall off when it becomes a leg day vs powder day choice. I also have very frequent but usually minor injuries I’m recovering from. I can stay lean and fairly strong, but my butt just disappears and I drop 5ish lbs in about a week if I have a tweaked knee or a touch of whiplash. Anyway, maybe someone else had similar concerns. Thanks!
I’m 16 and currently weigh 96 lbs. I have somewhat of an hourglass figure but I’m extremely thin. I want to build bigger legs, arms and bum. I still don’t understand if using body weight workouts at home will work out or if I need to use more weights and resistance bands!
Hey Isabella,
Weight training tends to be the easiest way to build muscle. Resistance bands are popular right now, but they aren’t as good as weight training (as explained here). They do still work, though.
Bodyweight training is a good option, and for skinny beginners, it’s more than enough. It’s more difficult than weight training, but you can build muscle just as well. Here’s our article on how to build muscle and gain weight with bodyweight workouts. If you can buy a couple of adjustable dumbbells in the near future, though, it will become even easier to build muscle. The workouts can be shorter, simpler, and less painful. But starting with bodyweight works great 🙂
Is there any free guide which I can use? because I’ll not be able to afford to buy the program as I am just a middle school student. Also is it okay for 15 year olds to participate in this program?
Hello,
For my height & weight, my bmi is below par and people always use to call me broomstick or giraffe. I’m someone who is physically active, I love cycling, running and trekking. But all of them demands more endurance. But I cant do them without losing weight, confused whether to focus on weight or stamina. I wanted both. 🙁
Hey Aarthy, you can absolutely train for both strength and endurance! It’s true that having a lower body weight can help with running, and having a higher body weight can help with strength. Even so, building muscle while doing a mix of strength and endurance training will help you get better at both goals 🙂
Hi! I was actually wondering how you would define a “skinny” or “naturally thin” woman. Maybe you’ve specified it somewhere and I just overlooked it? By looks? By BMI? By how the woman personally “feels”? As your program is designed for thin women, I am actually unsure if I’d fall into this category or not. Thanks!
I’d define “skinny” as someone who’s underweight or weaker than average. I think that’s what most people mean when they say “skinny.”
I’d define “naturally thin” as someone who tends to lose weight or wind up thin when they aren’t paying attention. So you could have someone who’s in perfect shape, but if they get stressed or busy, they might lose a bit of weight. Someone’s whose propensity is to lose weight instead of gain it.
You’d like our program if you want to get bigger and stronger, even if you aren’t thin. It’s made for people who also tend to have trouble eating enough calories to gain weight, though. It’s made for people with that natural propensity to have a lower body weight.
[…] with thicker body types who can quickly reach their leg goals with a decent amount of exercise, skinny girls tend to have a hard time gaining and sustaining […]