Muscle Building For Skinny Women

The results of a skinny woman building muscle.

If you're a skinny woman who wants to gain weight, build muscle, and become stronger, 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 gaining muscle and strength as a naturally thin woman.

8,119 newsletter subs & counting!

Illustration of a woman doing barbell back squats to gain muscle and strength.

We Help Skinny & Skinny-Fat Women Gain Muscle

For the past ten years, we've specialized in helping naturally thin people gain weight, build muscle, and become stronger. We've had clients ranging from everyday women all the way up to our Canadian Olympic women's rugby team. If you're finding it hard to gain weight, build muscle, or become stronger, this is the site for you.

This isn't a general site where we help the average person become fitter. Those sites are great, but if you're anything like us, they also drive you kind of crazy. They tend to assume that we're overweight and eager to get thinner—that we have a natural propensity to overeat. But we don't. We're naturally thin. We find it hard to gain weight. We don't need weight loss advice mixed into our strength training advice.

Here at Bony to Bombshell, we write about how to eat more calories, not fewer. About how to train for muscle mass and strength. About how to overcome the struggles of being naturally thin. And we help our clients make "bulking" transformations like these:

Before and after results of a woman building muscle and gaining weight.
Women's weight gain transformation
Before and after photo of a woman's muscle-building results.
Before and after photo of a woman's weight gain transformation

You may know us as the founders of Bony to Beastly (for skinny men) or Outlift (for everyone). Bony to Bombshell is our site for naturally thin women. 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.

Before and after results photo of a skinny man building muscle.

Marco is a naturally skinny strength coach who had already gained 63 pounds. He'd also coached clients ranging from everyday people all the way up to college, professional, and Olympic athletes.

Before and after results of a skinny guy bulking up.

Before I met Marco, I felt lost. Whenever I would try to exercise, I would lose weight. I found it so frustrating that after every failed attempt, I would spend years festering in inactivity before I could muster up the motivation to give it another go. When Marco taught me how simple this could be, I was blown away. And I gained 55 pounds while keeping my abs. I then reproduced those results with my roommate, who gained 45 pounds.

Before and after photo of Cassandra González Duquette building muscle and gaining weight.

When we realized how many other people were struggling to gain weight, we created Bony to Beastly and Bony to Bombshell. That was ten years ago, and since then, we've helped over 10,000 naturally skinny people build muscle. I also married a naturally skinny nutritionist, Cassandra. Not only has she gained 20 pounds herself (as a new mother), but she's also helped us improve our nutrition and workout program.

 

Some of Our Popular Articles

Every article on this site is about how to gain muscle and strength. Here are some of our more popular ones:

 

Our Muscle-Building Program for Women

If you’re ready to start building muscle, we can guide you through the entire process. The Bony to Bombshell Program includes a video course teaching all of the exercises, a 5-month workout program, a complete weight-gain diet guide, a recipe book, and a year-long membership in our online coaching community. You’ll be building muscle alongside other women with similar goals, and posting weekly progress updates. We’ll be here to give feedback and answer all of your questions.

Our Recent Articles

Single Leg Hip Thrust With Weight Female Woman

Single-Leg Hip Thrust: Overview, How-to, & Tips

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

The single-leg hip thrust is a great isolation exercise for building up the glutes. You can do it with your own body weight, or you can load it with a weight plate, a dumbbell, a kettlebell, etc. Inside we’ll show how to do the proper form (one version with your…

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Glute Bridge Vs Hip Thrust

Glute Bridge vs Hip Thrust

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

Almost every woman we’ve worked with has wanted to improve their butt, and they can do that by doing some compound exercises that hit the glutes (squats, Romanian deadlifts, etc.). But for optimal muscle growth, they’ll also want to do some isolation exercises for the glutes.  So how does the…

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Signs Of Muscle Gain For Females

Signs Of Gaining Muscle For Females

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

When you’re trying to gain muscle, it’s normal for a woman to wonder if what you’re doing in your workouts is actually working. It takes time, patience, and consistency to see muscle gain. So you won’t see results overnight. But on the other hand, continuing to do something that isn’t…

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Female Weight Lifting Bony To Bombshell Transformations

Female Weight Lifting Transformations—4 Case Studies

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

See how these women combined lifting weights, nutrition, and lifestyle changes to see amazing before-and-after transformations. Inside we’ll take a closer look at four women as they set goals, begin lifting weights and eating differently, and see their monthly progress updates.

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Weighted Glute Bridge Female Dumbbell Barbell

Glute Bridges For Women: Overview, How-To, & Workout

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

The glute bridge is one of the best isolation exercises for building a strong and muscular butt. Building up the butt muscles, such as the gluteus maximus, can help a woman improve her waist-to-hip ratio, help relieve back pain, and improve her athleticism. Let’s take a closer look.

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Bulking Smoothies For Women Females To Help With Muscle And Weight Gain

How to Make a Bulking Smoothie (for Gaining Weight)

By Shane Duquette and Cassandra González Duquette

Looking to make a smoothie to help with gaining muscle? A homemade bulking smoothie is one of the best tools at your disposal. When you blend food into a liquid, you remove chewing. Without chewing, it’s a lot easier on your appetite, allowing you to reach your daily protein and…

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Dumbbell Leg Workout Routine For Females Illustration

Dumbbell Leg Workouts For Women

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

If you’re looking for a good leg workout designed for females using only dumbbells, you’re in the right place. Contrary to what most people might think, you can get in an amazing workout for your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves using only dumbbells. Let’s take a closer look.

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Deadlifts For Women

Deadlifts For Women: Overview, How-to, & Workout

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

The deadlift exercise is a core movement we’ll use all throughout our lives. Sink back into the hips to bend over and pick up a “dead” weight from the floor. It’s an amazing exercise for women looking for postural improvements, gaining muscle mass, and developing athleticism. Let’s take a closer…

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Farmer Carry Exercise For Females Bony to Bombshell

Farmer Carry Exercise For Women: How-to, Tips, & Workout

By Jared Polowick and Marco Walker-Ng

The farmer carry is one of the oldest movements in history—pick up something heavy, and walk. We love programming it for our female clients because it can help with postural issues, hip stabilizers, and grip strength. Let’s take a closer look.

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