Borse Norseman
Borse Norseman | |
|---|---|
 Norseman's right big toe, which he asks to be pictured in place of his body "while it is in a less than perfect state." | |
| Born | 20th January 1989 Wilmington, DE |
| Known for | Toe-Body Work Out System |
Borse Norseman is an American businessman and bodybuilder from Wilmington, DE. He is the founder of Toe-Body Work Out Gear LLC[1] and is credited with inventing the Toe-Body work out program and pioneering the Toe-Body physique, which has found popularity among certain niche groups of bodybuilders in recent years.
He appeared as a guest on episode 36 of Skeleton Realm Live![1]
Toe-Body work out system
Norseman is best-known for inventing the Toe-Body work out system, an exercise program that attempts to transfer the physique of one's toe to the rest of one's body in a kind of "physique graft" that involves several hours per day of self-reflection, toe-mentation, toe-meditation, and, as Norseman puts it, "hardcore physical exercise."
Inception
Borse Norseman claims to have come up with the idea for the Toe-Body work out system while working as a gym attendant at Punce's Muscle House in his hometown of Wilmington, DE. In early February of 2017, the gym was swept by a catastrophic fungus outbreak linked to faulty foot wipes in the Punce's Muscle House locker rooms.
To prevent the further spread of the fungus, which was beginning to literally devour the seat cushions on several of the most popular pieces of Punce's equipment, Norseman was ordered to wait outside the locker rooms with a spray bottle of bleach and wipe down the feet of gym-goers before they entered the fitness area.
In the course of the outbreak, Norseman observed that the physique of the customer's big toes appealed to his sense of body-building aesthetics. As Norseman tells it in his book, Every Body Wants a Toe-Body:
During the long wiping hours that winter, I noticed something about people's big toes: They're jacked. Ripped. I mean these were guys and gals who had been lifting weights for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred years and not one of them had a better physique than their big toe, which they weren't even exercising. It hit me that what I was searching for in body-building—this idea of the perfect physique—had been staring me right in the face.
Toe-Body Work Out Gear LLC
After publishing his book, Every Body Wants a Toe-Body, Norseman founded Toe-Body Work Out Gear LLC, which offers a lineup of 181 exercise machines designed specifically to help with the exercises described in his book.
Most of the business's clients are members of the toe-body-building community, but a number of the machines have gained popularity in regular body-building gyms. The Neck Annihilator, for example, is effective for both neck and quad-building exercises.
Classification as a purveyor of illegal torture devices
Of the 118 machines sold by TBWOG LLC, 95 are classified as illegal torture devices by the US Federal Government, and are therefore illegal to use. In most contexts, they are also illegal to own, but some private gyms and toe-body enthusiast individuals have used a loophole to get around this restriction.
While most individuals and corporations are prohibited from owning torture devices, "institutions of education, learning, and public knowledge" are not, provided they are used strictly for educational purposes and not for torture. Some gyms and individuals exploit this by operating their gym floors as "museums", selling tickets and opening to the public during certain limited hours. To prevent enforcement, these businesses deny that anyone actually uses the TBWOG equipment, and claim that it is strictly for education.
Although the government has occasionally pursued recourse against Borse Norseman for selling the equipment, they generally have turned a blind eye to the gyms and toe-body-builders who use it.
Every Body Wants a Toe-Body
Norseman's complete definition of toe-body aesthetics and the associated work out system are contained within his 28,166 page book, Every Body Wants a Toe-Body: The Perfect Human Physique and How to Achieve It in 17 Years or Less.
In addition to his definition for what a toe-body physique is, Norseman also lays out a "life plan" designed to help one achieve the Toe-Body physique in 17 years or less.
Standards of physique
The book opens with a 300 page warning to the reader that the advice within could cause one to become "jacked, ripped, and dangerously yoked." Norseman then transitions into a lengthy treatise on what a toe-body actually is. To quote a short passage from the book:
Your feet need to bulge out at the bottoms. Try to develop as many bunions as possible, which are the biceps of the toe[2]. Your calves should be just as thick as your feet, and taper into your knees in the exact same proportion as the taper of your big toe beneath the knuckle. Your midsection should be gnarled and hard as bone, and you have to maintain this thickness up through the chest and—hardest of all—the neck, which needs to connect to your skull above the ears to get that perfect rounded-off look at the top. Physically speaking, this is as good as it gets.
The full text elaborates on the precise details of these features over 71 chapters totaling 16,336 pages. Norseman then restates the full 300 page warning from the start of the book "for the reader's convenience" before launching into a description of his methods for achieving these standards.
Methods
The remaining 11,230 pages of the book are dedicated to the aforementioned "life plan" and work out program, which is a mixture of highly unconventional fitness advice, nutrition plans, and spiritual training.
Exercise
Norseman proposes a number of novel exercises in this section, especially with regards to the neck, which, according to the standards set forth in the previous section of the book, needs to match the width of the shoulders and connect to the head above the ears. These include turtle yanks, weighted nods, weighted shakes (weighted no-nos), esophageal stretches, neck-ups, neck stomps, head claps, chin breakers, skull breakers, and neck breakers, among 31 others.
Much of Norseman's advice on this matter has been deemed "lethal" by conventional exercise scientists.
Mentation
Norseman also devotes thousands of pages in this section to the importance of toe-mentation, a style of thinking and personal philosphy that attempts to align one's soul with that of a big toe. This necessitates 8 hours of daily meditation. According to Norseman, successful practitioners of this mentation should not be able to distinguish themselves from their own toes. Norseman himself has claimed to be "at least three quarters, maybe 80% of the way there on a good day."
Nutrition
While the book doesn't advocate any specific diet, Norseman does emphasize the importance of reaching certain caloric intake levels, as well as the necessity of key vitamins and minerals. He claims calcium, for example, is crucial to the pursuit of a toe-body as "without it, you can't calcify your midsection to turn your stomach hard and bony like that of a toe." Norseman also recommends consuming at least 12,000 calories per day.
Health struggles and physique progress
Norseman suffers from several health conditions, which he acknowledges are related to the toe-body work out life plan that he has been following since 2017. Norseman has a team of physicians and exercise scientists on retainer who monitor his body and assist in tracking his progress towards a complete toe-body physique. As of May 2026 his physique was found to be "48% ideal", which is slightly behind schedule, as he is 9 years in to the estimated 17-year life plan.
Norseman was declared winner of "Healthiest Neck" and "Most Bunions" by Doctor's Quarterly magazine in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.