Bony To Brawny is a muscle-building program designed specifically for skinny guys, ectomorphs, or hard gainers. It is based on a Dynamic Volume Training protocol that works well for beginners, guys stuck on a plateau and generally young gym warriors who may feel like hitting a brick wall in their muscle-building pursuit.
The program is not revolutionary, in that it runs through tried and tested methods of progressive overload, different repetition ranges, and periodization, but it is packaged in an easy to follow blueprint for those guys who are stuck in a rut and do not know how to get past the sticking point, wasting time experimenting and changing plan every other day with nothing to show for.
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What’s Bony To Brawny All About?
Bony To Brawny is the plan Alain Gonzalez used for himself in order to build 27 lbs of lean muscle on a skinny 100 lbs frame. It all started as a discovery journey on the most effective method to build muscle for a skinny ectomorph like him, after having tried the traditional 6-day per week, high volume split routines as suggested by his more muscular friends.
This is a typical mistake young newbies do in their haste to pack up as much muscle as possible in the shortest possible time. Typically, such an over-the-top approach may work a little at the start, only to grind to a halt 2 or 3 months down the line, at most.
This is because a beginner’s body initial response is higher than that of a more advanced trainee since an untrained body responds quickly to any new stimulus that is higher than no stimulus at all.
Even if the plan is unsuitable and excessively geared toward high volume, it will still yield some results in the short run.
At that stage, any form of exercise will be conducive to improvements for whatever goal you may be after, in this case, muscle gaining.
And here is the problem, since a beginner’s responsiveness to a new stimulus only masks the quality and effectiveness of the program, which inevitably will cause him to hit a dead-end a short while later.
With no periodization, repetition range variation, and training frequency carefully balanced, most beginners react to the stalled progression by increasing volume and workload even more, thinking that they are not working out hard enough, while in fact digging themselves even more into overtraining and stagnation.
Having been in this exact situation, Alain Gonzalez developed Bony To Brawny, a simple and systematic method that saw him turn the tables around and quickly recover from his sticking point, making sustained and fast muscle gains.
Program Suitability
While nothing revolutionary, Bony To Brawny has at least the merit of offering a clear-cut blueprint for novices, hard gainers, or ectomorphs to build their muscle in the most efficient way, without wasting time sifting through tons of information that you can find online and organizing it into a viable format.
With the advent of YouTube and the internet in general, you can find answers to anything crossing your mind in regards to workouts, muscle building, getting jacked, or losing fat.
The problem is that this information can be overwhelming and even contradictory, leading to information overload, erratic strategy changes, or paralysis by analysis.
You may find information that you believe is fitting to and suitable for your needs, but not for your own body type or genotype.
In other words, what training protocol may work for some, maybe not the best for others, like genetically skinny guys with a naturally high metabolic rate and apparent aversion to building muscle.
Bony To Brawny, while not groundbreaking or revolutionary, makes a good job of providing a simple method for effective muscle gain progression for all the skinny guys out there who do not know where to turn to after plateauing, or even before they do.
How Does Bony To Brawny Work?
Bony To Brawny promotes a multi-faceted approach that takes into consideration varied repetition ranges with an emphasis on low reps, full range of motion with increased TUT, or time under tension, and a combination of compound movements with isolation exercises strategically implemented.
Low Repetitions For Strength And strong Bones
Alain Gonzalez stresses the importance of low repetition ranges for strength and bone density. His reasoning is that you can get bigger only if you get stronger, with the added benefits of heavier loads promoting bone strength.
Aside from muscle mass, bone strength is often a limiting factor for ectomorph guys, constrained as they are by small wrists, narrow collar bones, and relatively long limbs attached to small shoulders, and a narrow chest.
While the low repetition ranges for strength resonate for most people seeking to increase muscle size, bone, and tendon density is often an overlooked benefit that high loads place on your body.
Stronger bones and tendons entail a greater capacity to accommodate stronger muscles, hence high loads act as a trigger for the reciprocal improvement of muscle strength and bones, a win-win situation.
In fact, since tendons and bones adapt at a slower rate than muscles, it is even a reason more to make sure they are strong enough to withstand the high loads placed upon them for extended periods.
That is why the repetitions ranges in the program revolve around, but are not limited to, low reps, but also include lighter, higher reps to breakthrough adaptation and provide a variation in stimulus for your muscles.
Time Under Tension And Full Range Of Motion
A second important aspect of Bony To brawny is the importance of time under tension through a complete implementation of the full range of motion exercises with good form.
It is often the case with beginners, but also with more advanced trainees, to let their ego compromise good form and resistance training for the sake of impressing themselves and their gym friends with the highest possible loads they can handle in any given exercise.
This inevitably results in shortcuts like the reduced range of motion, reduced time under tension, and increased risk of injury.
We have all seen it, guys throwing dumbbells for lateral rises twice the weight they could handle with proper form, or bench pressing the barbell and pulling up on the bar only halfway through the full range to crank out more reps than they could with proper form.
It is no surprise that this approach is short-lived and leads to nowhere. The Bony To Brawny program stresses the importance of proper execution with no bouncing, yanking, kipping, and throwing, and a recommended time under tension of 35/45 seconds, way more than the typical 15/20 second weight throwing competitions you see in the gyms.
This approach entails, of course, a complete shift of mind towards quality and mind-muscle connection, basically using the weights to feel the muscle working rather than using the muscles to throw as much weight as possible up and down for a handful of seconds.
Of course, this also means a reality check and an ego re-assessment.
Compound And Isolation Exercises
Finally, a third key point of Bony To Brawny is the strategic implementation of both compound and isolation exercises. Without a question, compound exercises are the foundation of any solid muscle-building plan, be it for beginners or advanced.
Squats, pull-ups, bench presses, military presses, rowers, and deadlifts are the bread and butter of any bodybuilding or powerlifting program simply because these exercises give you the most bang for the time invested working out.
These multi-joint exercises activate the most muscle groups at the same time, offering unparalleled effectiveness for muscle building due to their profound impact on anabolic rate, testosterone production, and growth in general.
However, there is more to it than meets the eye. Notwithstanding that compound movement is the necessary foundation of a muscle-building plan, Bony To Brawny puts also isolation exercises to good use as a complementary tool to squeeze out complete muscle fiber recruitment for optimal growth.
The Dynamic Volume Training Strategy
This is a fancy way to describe good old-fashioned periodization necessary to prevent stagnation and guarantee continued progression. No workout reps and sets scheme can be effective forever but must be adjusted periodically in order to bypass the body’s natural ability to adapt to and become efficient for any given task.
This means varying volume, alternating periods of lighter loads and higher volume with periods of high loads and low volume, or accumulation and intensification as they say.
The program also covers training frequency, which is kept in check so as to work in synchrony with muscle protein synthesis, the ideal window of opportunity for muscle repair and growth that revolves on a 24/36 hours cycle after a workout.
Bony To Brawny covers that, optimizing the total number of workouts with the total weekly volume so as to give the most effective muscle building frequency, not too frequent to lead to overtraining but not too sporadic to lead to undertraining.
This is to address another common mistake of overzealous skinny guys eager to pack up muscle as quickly as possible. They mimic high-volume split routines of bodybuilding pro that typically entail one muscle group worked out once per week with a monster amount of sets and repetitions per session.
The key to progression for naturally skinny guys, or natural guys at large, is distributing the workload more frequently across the week, with far fewer sets and reps in a single workout. Bony To Brawny does encourage that, as it is a natural bodybuilding plan for regular guys, not pro monsters.
Any Bony To Brawny Testimonial Yet?
We keep it short and simple here. The program has been around long enough to warrant a good number of testimonials. These are genuine testimonials, real customer pictures, not spoof ones packed together using some stock photos.
The program and its author are genuine and so are the testimonials, and we may expect more to come in the future.
Author Alain Gonzalez’ Credentials
Alain Gonzalez is a Florida-based Virtual Coach To Skinny Guys and Fitness Author. Through the years he has helped countless clients transform their bodies from skinny to jacked just as he did on himself.
Over the years he has accrued a vast following with accounts on Instagram and Facebook. He also happens to be the brother of Alby Gonzalez, another accomplished natural bodybuilder who also runs his own fitness brand and is the author of other programs such as Isometric Mass, reviewed here.
Alain Gonzales stresses that he is NOT a bodybuilder, but a regular guy who, through discipline and dedication, has overcome his own limitations to become a strong, confident man.
Today, Alain has made it a priority to help other people who are in the same shoes as he was before overcome their limitations and progress toward achieving their full potential.
All in all, Alain Gonzalez is a genuine author and fitness expert who knows what it takes for skinny guys to build muscle, as he and his clients are the living embodiment of the validity of his training methods.
Alain Gonzalez Before And After
Bony To Brawny Components
Bony To Brawny is a digital program. You can get access through download links and the components come both in PDF manual and video formats. Here is a quick breakdown of what’s inside:
The Main Manual – The foundation of the program with all the theories.
The Calorie Software – An application designed to work out all the macronutrients and the daily calorie requirements.
The Workout Phases – The 3 different phases of the program: Preparatory Phase, Aggressive Phase, and Evolution Phase.
Tutorial Videos to learn what exercises to do and how to properly implement them.
Anabolic Diet manual with nutritional guidelines specifically designed for skinny guys.
1 Bonus Meal Plans Cookbook to have practical guidance in the kitchen.
1 Bonus Advanced Lifts video library after you have completed the main program.
1 Bonus Unlimited Inner Circle Access, where Alain replies personally to all questions.
If you are a skinny guy or a hard gainer on the lookout for a solution to stagnation and lack of progress, Bony To Brawny makes it a good candidate.
Not only was the program written by someone who experienced firsthand the same limitations and hurdles faced by many skinny guys, one who managed to overcame them to become a super-jacked natural guy with a great physique, it is also a comprehensive plan-based on rock-solid foundations.
Bony To Brawny is a blend of different techniques proven to work for the typical skinny, hard gainer, or ectomorphic guy and unlike any muscle mag routines, you may look at when searching for the holy grail of muscle building, which of course can only work for chemically enhanced pros.
It offers manuals and video tutorials for optimal implementation, a good periodization structure, software, and a good deal of bonuses such as support and meal plans. It is a rather large program with many components but offers easy-to-follow training and nutritional blueprints designed to work for skinny guys.
My name is Jay Fielding. I gained an interest in fitness since I was a child, and eventually developed my passion into a career path. I am now a Certified Personal Trainer with a natural ability to program customized body recomposition and motivate people in achieving their goals, be it gaining muscle or losing fat.
