We’ve officially entered closed beta. So far our testers are up by 5-10 pounds of lean mass in the first 2 weeks — pretty good! And we think we’ll be seeing even better results soon as they fully gear into the program.

My 15 week transformation:

If you’re interested in joining now and helping us shape the final product as it nears completion send an email to shane@foxhoundstudio.com explaining your situation and why you’re interested in rapidly transforming your body. We’re only looking for skinny ectomorph hardgainers that want to dramatically transform their body over the next 3-4 months. If you fit the bill we’ll send along our content, give you access to all the training videos, and hook you up with a membership to our Bony to Beastly forum.

Hope to hear from you!

The holidays are over and our skinny man’s muscle manual is coming along well. We’ve got a lot of the content written up, a ton of great recipes, and this weekend we’re filming instructional videos that will explain the workouts. Stay tuned!

Our 4 month ectomorph transformation experiment results:

And Marco’s officially joined the Bony to Beastly / Lean to Mean team. If you don’t think he looks all that much like an ectomorph that’s okay — we don’t blame you. I met Marco back in high school and he was just as skinny as I was. Boy was I ever surprised to see him a few months ago at 210 pounds!

Here’s the skinny Marco that I knew in high school:

Ever see someone you like, but just couldn’t talk yourself into making the first move? Wish you’d done something about it? Electric Courage is all about that confidence. No, not the liquid kind of courage, but rather the electric kind. It’s a social app that lets you spark attraction and start real-time conversations with people in the same bar as you.

It’s dependent on your honey having the app, but if they do have it, it’ll send them a push notification with your photo and message. Pretty cool, right? We thought so, and we had a blast working on this project.

Check ‘em out: Electric Courage

What does it do? Posterboard is a social reporting app. It lets you snag a photo, post it to the app, rate other photos up and down. The cool thing about it though is that it’s location based. All of the photos are located on a map. You can prowl around the city using the map and see what’s going on around you in real time — check out the screenshots.

We love working with young entrepreneurs and cool tech start-ups, and these guys are one of the reasons why. They’re truly a wicked team to work with.

Check ‘em out: Posterboard

This time around we headed down to Manhattan for a week. We rented an apartment using AirBnB, which we highly recommend to anyone looking for more of a local experience and an affordable place to stay. We drove down in Jared’s old cadillac with our then-girlfriends and made a mini-vacation out of it. It was a pretty grand time. We love New York.

As per usual our time in NYC was incredible and our trip home was a nightmare! Right after we finished our (Jared got a tattoo!!) tattoos we went out and grabbed a bite to eat. By then it was starting to get late (10 or 11) so we decided we’d better start our trek back to Canada. The cadillac broke down right smack in the centre of the Brooklyn Bridge. Luckily it broke down right at the “top” of the bridge, so gravity got us down the hill and gave us enough momentum to turn into a sketchy side-street (Delancey) on the Manhattan side. The car rolled to a stop right in front of a really haggard looking discount tobacco shop. Gah… Two buff and cheerful drug-dealer types ran over and helped us push the car to the side of the street. A guy playing music out of his car speakers offered to give us his parking spot, and he moved up the street. It’s amazing how friendly people are. The two friendly guys that helped us push our car into the spot tried to help us fix our car and referred us to a couple of local mechanics — all of which were closed. By now it was around midnight and Jared and I were feeling a bit stressed. It’s one thing being on a sketchy street alone at night. We’re used to that. It’s an entirely different beast when you’ve got two beautiful girls that you adore with you. It ended up taking a couple of hours to find a tow-truck, but luckily for us the two friendly drug-dealers were working their street corner all night and they were the fiercest cats on the strip. We had to deal with a few troublesome people during the wait, but we ended up making it out of there just fine

We stayed an extra day while the car was being fixed… and we ALMOST made it back home before the car broke down again

Shane: 3.5
Jared: 1 (blog post to come soon!)

Other tattoo posts:
Skull
Whale
Shark

I was only in New York for two days, so I decided to make the most of them. The day after my whale tattoo I went in for round two: the great white shark. The day before Thomas Hooper had said he was game to do a big ol’ shark if I was. I naively said yes, not knowing what I was getting myself into. I’m really glad I had no idea what I was getting myself into… because then I may not have it! Turns out a body doesn’t recover all too quickly from the trauma of a tattoo. It probably didn’t help that I’d had a few drinks and stayed out late and gotten up early. I arrived in good spirits and feeling pumped, but boy was that ever short lived!

He showed me a pretty fearsome shark sketch and we toyed with the idea of putting it on my thigh. I didn’t really like the idea of it being so hidden away — I really liked the sketch — so we decided to pop it up a couple feet onto my torso. Thomas Hooper found a great spot for it and off we went! Turns out there’s some sort of nerve bundle on the torso. I’d always heard that getting your ribs tattooed hurt. It hurts a bit. But it’s nothing close to the pain of getting your obliques tattooed! I felt like I was dying. But two and a half hours later the tattoo was finished and I managed to get my rattled ass off the tattoo bench and over to the mirror. This time around Hooper exclusively used “dot shading” instead of typical shading. Created a pretty badass result

With the tattooing done we decided to go out. To be more accurate, Rebecca decided to go out and I followed along in a Zombie-like way. It was a Tuesday and we had no idea what was going on, so we spent a couple hours prowling around Manhattan trying to figure out what was what. We ended up in a little bar with not too much going on, had a drink, and chatted with the bartender about where a more lively place could be found. Old McSorley’s was the answer we got. By then it was getting a bit late, so our timing was pretty perfect. We arrived and the place was packed to capacity. We managed to sneak our way to the bar and wound up jammed between a bunch of cool manhattanites at an overflowing table. We had a choice between two types of beer: light or dark. And they came in sets of two. Right on. We befriended a couple from Argentina and their hulking friend Manuel — a 6’8 friendly giant. After a few more rounds of beer we decided we should see what else was going on. They led us down a dark street to a little door guarded by a strange but intimidating man. He checked our IDs and granted us access to a rickety staircase behind him. At the top of the stairs was an old door. We opened it and were very very surprised.

The first thing we saw was the lead guitarist of the British band Bring Me the Horizon — one of our favourite bands. We’d seen them in concert a couple weeks before and Jared immediately recognized him. We chatted with him for a bit. Bit of a strange guy. Cool, though. I eventually wandered through the surprisingly crowded little venue over to a bar stool and took a seat. I was feeling pretty wiped. I took off my coat, ordered a drink and started chatting with the girl sitting next to me. She reluctantly admitted, after we’d been talking for about an hour, that she was an international supermodel. I love New York. Really rad girl, too. We’ve managed to stay the tiniest bit in touch, but I’ll definitely be giving her a shout next time we head back.

In the wee hours of the morning Jared, Rebecca and I made it back to our hotel and passed out. We spent the next day exploring with our new Argentinian behemoth friend from the night before and Jared and I headed to the bus stop to catch an overnight bus back to Toronto. Rebecca decided to stay a bit longer.

It was pouring buckets, the bus was two hours late and there was no shelter. We got on the bus soaked to the bone and shivering. Our coats were soaked through, our bags were soaked through, and WE were soaked through. To make matters worse the bus was overbooked and the staff were telling people that there was no room for their luggage. Some of the angrier folks started yelling and in an attempt to quell a riot a few people were kicked off. Jared and I spent the next 10 hours shivering and unable to dry off. We had an hour and a half long stop at border, but the office was full so most of the time was spent waiting outside in the freezing cold, still soaking wet. We eventually arrived back home, relieved that we seemed to have dodged hypothermia. We removed our coats and found out that we were both blue — but not blue from the cold. Blue because the lining of our leather jackets was over-dyed and had never been washed. It had slowly been seeping through layer after layer of clothing until 10 hours later, when we took our coats off, we were smurf coloured. So we bleached our shirts and went to bed

Some Rebecca Leach photography of Thomas Hooper and I at Saved Tattoo:

And the tattoo race?
Shane: 3
Jared: 0

Other tattoo posts:
Skull
Whale

We were asked to write up a guest post over at one of our favourite WordPress review websites, WPDressing. We decided to tackle a topic that’s close to our heart: how to succeed as a musician. We chose to focus on our area of expertise, which is online and entrepreneurial. If you’re a musician that’s curious about how to develop a loyal fan following online and then monetize it so you can afford to keep being a musician, this should be right up your alley! Enjoy

You can find the article here.

My best,
Shane

This tattoo went much smoother than the last one. Jared, our good friend Rebecca, and I all hopped on an overnight bus to Manhattan, arrived bright and early in the morning and headed straight to Union Street. Unluckily for us Saved Tattoo is located on Union Avenue. We ended up confusing a few very kind and innocent people who were very shocked to hear “Excuse me, is there a tattoo shop in your house? I think we have the right address…” Oops! 4 hours later and just in time we arrived at Saved.

Why a blue whale? I find the ocean fascinating and mysterious. Ominous and exciting. Nothing gets my blood running better than staring into miles deep water and wondering what kind of enormous creatures are swimming below. I had proposed  a few ideas to Thomas Hooper: a fearsome great white shark, a beautiful blue whale 0r maybe even a giant octopus. They seemed to best capture the mood. , Thomas Hooper amazed me once again with a beautiful sketch, and this time, unlike last time, I got to say “Make it bigger!” which lit up his face and got us off to a great start. And the icing on the cake? The tattoo was a bloody breeze! Upper arm and back tattoos, it seems, are a piece of cake in terms of pain. I thought his placement of it was a little strange, but I decided to go for it regardless, and it quickly grew on me.

After the tattoo we checked into a pre-booked hotel in Manhattan. We tried to go out dancing… but we failed. And Jared was sick. I’m sure Jared will be very thankful for you taking his photo during his trying time, Rebecca Leach — I know I am

But the next night was far more exciting. Far far more exciting. And more painful, too. Far far more painful. The important thing is that I’d snared my second Thomas Hooper piece of art.

Shane: 2
Jared: 0

Other tattoo posts:
Skull
Shark

Not surprisingly, the male and female perspectives differ — a lot! Turns out a typical athlete or amateur gym-goer wants a body that women don’t even find attractive, let alone ideal. If we want to be hotties, and honestly on some level most of us do, we’re totally clueless. Should that matter? I don’t know. Is it interesting? Definitely.

There are some surprises for women, too. Ryan Reynolds was one of the top picks when they were asked to write in the most ideal celebrity body… but even the girls that wrote in his name more often than not didn’t select his body (no heads were present) in the line-up. The body they selected in the line-up wasn’t even all that similar. So all of you guys thinking that you’ve got to have Ryan Reynolds’ body to be the handsomest hunk at the bar, or studliest stud on the beach… we’ve got some good news. What girls want is actually much easier to achieve. Brad Pitt ‘s headless body (as Tyler Durden in Fight Club), on the other hand, kicked some serious aesthetic ass in the line-ups.

And this isn’t all about aesthetics — don’t worry. We’ve tried to find out what girls want when it comes to looks, fitness, health and attitude in general. Don’t care what girls think? We’ve also found out what guys find the most impressive, and what guys aspire to achieve.

Lesson #1: Fit beats Freaky

We’ve got Brad Pitt in first place with 72.5% of women finding his body the MOST attractive and 86.7% of women being attracted to his body. In second place we’ve got the musician Henry Rollins (at his smallest) with 11.8% of women finding him the most attractive, and 41.8% of women attracted to his torso. The MMA heavyweight comes next with 9.8% liking him the best and 37% finding him attractive. In last place with 1% we have three time Mr. Olympia winner Frank Zane — famous for shifting the bodybuilding world away from mass and towards aesthetics. Evidently there’s still some shifting to do before he lines up with what women find aesthetically pleasing!

No big surprise that the Fight Club sex icon took #1. What DID surprise me is that the healthy looking musician took #2 — outperforming the athletes and bodybuilders. And even the starving sex icon Ville Valo beat out Frank Zane, the king of bodybuilding aesthetics. Looks like a life devoted to achieving the “perfect” physique gives you the worst body according to women. Yikes.

To make matters worse, 50% of the men that completed the survey (keep in mind these men are interested in physiques, or they wouldn’t have taken the survey) want to look like Frank Zane (last place), vs the 40% that want to look like Brad Pitt. Woah.

Lesson #2: Flabs aren’t Fab…. But Neither is Skin ‘n Bone

Anthony Ketis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers takes home the prize here with 58.3% of women preferring his bodyfat levels and 81% of women finding his body attractive. Gerard Butler Came in third, albeit on an off-day, with only 15% of women preferring his bodyfat levels.  Poor Christian Bale, emaciated for his role in the Machinist, came in dead last with 0 votes.

Lesson #3: Healthy Trumps Hulking

We asked women to check off, based on words this time, what what was important to them about their man when it comes to fitness/health/physique (multiple checks allowed). Here are the significant results:

89.2% of women say that a man taking care of his health is important to them
74.5% of women want a man that’s stronger than they are
61.8% of women want a man that can protect them
60.8% want their man to look his best
58.8% think it’s important for their man to have bigger arms than them
38% want him to be strong and muscular.
38% are cool with average
2.9% want him ripped ‘n muscular like 50 cent

Lesson #4: Get the Results but not Obsessively — And Enjoy it.

There’s no doubt that women want a healthy man that’s strong and able to protect them. Aesthetics aside, girls want a guy that can effortlessly carry them around and make them feel safe on the streets at night. Who wants the fat guy with no energy that’s a slave to his cravings or the sickly scrawny guy that’d break like a twig? So let’s say you’ve somehow ended up either chubby or scrawny… well you’ve got to change your lifestyle and attitude, not just your body. Women want a guy who’s lifestyle and choices result in a great body — not the guy who stares at himself in the mirror all day while doing bicep curls and sipping protein shakes:

56.9% of women want him to enjoy doing physical things and naturally look that way
37.3% think that men should look good naturally without any effort

When it comes to health:
49% of women want absolute health, but not obsession
42.2% want him to be naturally healthy
5.9% just don’t want him to be sickly
and only 2.9% think being a health nut is okay

Hmmm. Looks like hitting the gym is out unless you enjoy it? But they do want the health/strength/protection/body… so you’d better enjoy it or you’re in trouble. Luckily, Jared and I have discovered, once you start heading down the healthy path it really does become enjoyable. And once you stop obsessing over the muscles that sprout up it really does transition well into effortless maintenance. It’s only the changing that’s hard.

Lesson #4: Don’t love your body — have a great body, but save the loving for her’s

When asked to pick how much confidence, shame, indifference or narcissism a man should feel about his body, here’s what girls answered:

61.8% believe in modest confidence
27.5% want him to like his body
7% want him to love his body
3% expect indifference
1 girl voted for insecurity (but I wouldn’t want to date that girl)

Lesson #5: If you’re chubby and they love you… they’d still like your body better if it were fitter

We said “Let’s say you have a boyfriend that is naturally chubby, like the photo of Gerard Butler on the left. All else the same, would you prefer if he were fit, like on the right?”

78.4% of women answered yes. They would want him to look fit.
20.6% of women said they didn’t care.
1% liked the chubby version.

Here‘s an article on how to lean up the healthy way.

Lesson #6: If you’re skinny and they love you — even if they tell you they like skinny dudes — they’d still like your body better if you at least upgraded from skinny to slim/fit/svelte.

We said “imagine you had a boyfriend that was naturally skinny, like Christian Bale on the left. All else the same, would you prefer if he became fit, like on the right?”

82.4% of women said yeah, they’d prefer him fit.
8.8% of women were indifferent
8.8% of women said if he’s naturally skinny they’d prefer he stay that way

Another no-brainer. If you’re scrawny 82.4% of women, as a girlfriend/wife, would want you to bulk up. I’m guessing that percentage would be even higher if you’re looking to date and haven’t already ensnared a vixen. Here‘s an article we wrote while un-emaciating ourselves.

Lesson #7: A healthy appearance and a great physique won’t ever hurt your chances. A bad one will hurt your chances (although perhaps only incrementally) 96% of the time

When looking at a suitor or date here’s what the girls said:

34.3% of women answered that they prefer active healthy guys, but personality is key as well.
18.6% would love to date a really fit guy, but only if he isn’t narcissistic
12.7% are okay with an okay body… but it can’t be obese or emaciated
8.8% think it shouldn’t matter… but they want him to look naturally strong
6% think aesthetics trump all
2% think it shouldn’t matter but want a naturally slim guy
1% say it shouldn’t matter but want a naturally chubby guy
1.1% think it shouldn’t matter and don’t mind a fat or emaciated guy

So, 96% of women want a good body. Only 1.1% of women claim that they really don’t care. If you’re fat or emaciated you can certainly win a girl over based on a myriad of other attributes and have a wonderful relationship despite of it… but only 1.1-3% of women won’t have cared at all about it when selecting you.

Lesson #8: You don’t need to be THAT big or THAT lean. In fact, if you get too muscular or too ripped girls don’t like it as much

When presented with these four “sex icons” 63.2% of women chose Bob Harper, the personal trainer from The Biggest Loser. Up next, with only 24.2% of votes is the coveted Ryan Reynolds body. Up third is Men’s Health / underwear model Scott Herman. Even with the “best abs on the East Coast” title under his belt he still can’t hold his own against the far smaller and far less defined Bob Harper. Why? Because Scott Herman looks like a model with a contrived body, and Harper looks like a fit man with modest confidence. Adrien Brody didn’t do so well either. I suppose he’s a little too small and defined, giving him that too-much-effort unnatural look.

We asked girls why they made their choice. Here’re some of their answers:

• Because it’s at once lean and muscular. Not too muscular.
• Fit but not overdone.
• Greatly fit, but not overly muscular.
• I don’t find particularly defined abnominal muscles nice looking.
• I don’t like overly defined abs, its less natural looking,
• He isn’t disgustingly ripped.
• It looks the most natural/normal.
• It seems most proportional.
• It’s not.. too much…
• Not excessively ripped!
• Not too overboard in fitness
• health, tonned but not too much… the others are a little too intense
• it looks healthy, and not overdone!
• looks healthy, young, and not overly defined
• muscles well-proportioned
• not as defined – i don’t like too much muscle, but i dont like skinny either
• not obsessively or overly muscular
• not over the top muscular
• not too buff not too slim, jussstt right
• The abs don’t pop out as much, it looks more like a body of someone who is fit because of a sport as opposed to someone who does it for looks.

All of the answers say basically the same thing. Girls like fit looking guys. If your super-chiseled abs looks like you eat low sodium plain boiled chicken breasts and unseasoned broccoli all day… well… that just isn’t as sexy.

Ironically, of course, the body that girls selected is famous for being a fitness guru. His body/health is obviously a huge priority to him.

We asked the guys the same question (which body do you think WOMEN find the most attractive). 60% guessed Ryan Reynolds, 22% guessed Scott Herman, and only 14% guessed correctly with Bob Harper. Guys have no idea that women don’t want to be dating a Men’s Health model.

Lesson #9 — If you really want to go overboard and get the Arnold physique you won’t have a problem with the babes

There’s a subset of girls out there that adore bodybuilder bodies. There aren’t many, but since there are so few bodybuilders out there, those guys have plenty of girls to choose from. In order to get that effect though, you really need to be absolutely freakin’ enormous. If only 1% of girls (as our bodybuiler question indicates) want a freaky huge man… you’ve got to be bigger and freaker than 99% of guys. And if you’re bigger than 99.9% of  dudes, well then you’ve got 10 girls competing for you.

Bonus Lesson (because we were curious) — Here’s what women think about grooming and manscaping:

Girls like guys that wear their hair medium and messy (39.2%) or short and carefree (39%). Sadly, it looks like only 7.8% of women dig my “long and wild!” haircut. I like to tell myself that girls like that I don’t care what they think about my haircut though.

Chest hair? 45% of women say keep it natural unless you’re a werewolf, and 36% say tame it. 4% like super hairy men. 15% like guys with shaved chests. I’m not sure how my naturally rather hairless chest fits into the mix here. Do I get points for being natural, tame AND shaven? That’d be pretty rad.

When it comes to facial hair 60% of women say scruffy and manly. Right on.  29% prefer ‘em smooth. 6% dig beards… but less than 1% dig the massive Hell’s Angels style beards… so don’t go too crazy! And mustaches and goatees collectively got 0%. Looks like we didn’t poll enough hipsters.

The hair down under? Manscaping? What do girls want? 85% say tame it — the 70’s are gone. 7% don’t like pubes and want ‘em shaved. Hopefully they don’t also prefer children. Yikes. And 8% think the 70’s are still on. So you’re allowed to have hair… just keep it, you know, clean.

Lesson #10 — Summer’s here. The Ultimate beach bod:

Once again the fit-but-not-freaky looking one takes the lead.

And the ultimate ideal perfect sexiest male body?

When shown all of the photos at once 23% of women chose Brad Pitt’s torso, 19% chose fitness guru Bob Harper, and 15% chose the bangin’ beach bod from up above. There’s a pretty well-defined “range of perfection”. You need to be muscular, but not too muscular. Being slim and well muscled is perfect, and so is being a little muscle-bound, so long as it looks natural and healthy. You can be lean like Brad, or muscular but with no abs like Mr. Speedo and girls love both. You’ve just got to be and look healthy. That’s harder for some than others of course. Some people find themselves “naturally” overweight or underweight (like Jared and I were) and it takes some work to get into that healthy and fit range (our transformation). Once there though, it’s a blast, and pretty easy to maintain without getting all obsessive about it.

What do men think? They preferred Zyzz’s body (right) — the body that didn’t even register on the females’ radar because of its too-swollen muscles and too-chiseled abs.

I like the survey results. Looks like the ideal male body is the one that visually exudes health and energy. Does it suck that emaciators, chubsters and steroid monkeys aren’t on an equal playing field? Not really. Perhaps it’ll encourage the unhealthy to become healthy. Many girls face the pressures of trying to get the underfed model look that runs rampant in the high fashion circles and pop culture magazine covers. Do guys really want a scrawny woman? I don’t. Similarly, it looks like girls don’t want the juicing giants on the covers of Men’s Health and bodybuilding magazines. Luckily, it seems, if guys act based on what the girls pressure them to be, they’ll end up healthy and active — and have a body that reflects that.

Have an opinion? Drop us a line in the comments below!