Finding a useful YouTube workout means knowing your needs

For home exercisers, YouTube can serve as a seemingly bottomless resource of free fitness inspiration and workout ideas. But the sheer volume and variety - not to mention the democratic but unpredictable anyone-can-contribute quality - pose a few problems that require a little knowledge and planning to overcome.

The first, in navigating a sea of perky women in designer workout gear and hyper-muscular weightlifters mugging aggressively into the camera, is how to find the right videos and avoid aimlessly surfing from one channel to another. It’s easy to spend more time consumed by possibilities than consuming calories, so it’s essential to devise a plan of attack.

Another problem is determining who, if anyone, has trained the trainers.

Popular workout channels tend to feature hosts with personalities as extreme as the body transformations they tout, and many expand their brands beyond workout routines to encompass recipes, fashion and other lifestyle topics.

On the Blogilates channel, the perky Cassey Ho peddles to nearly 900,000 subscribers a pop-music-inspired brand of Pilates, with videos bearing titles like “Muffintop Massacre,” along with advice on “cheap, clean eats” and even craft projects.

At professional strongman Elliott Hulse’s Strength Camp headquarters, more than 600,000 subscribers tune in for advice on how “six-pack abs can ruin your life” or “how to use steroids.” Most of the largest channels - such as Lions-Gate’s BeFit, which features workout titans Jillian Michaels, Denise Austin and Jane Fonda - promote DVDs; other channels are designed to steer traffic to websites peddling fitness and nutrition plans, supplements, or a combination. Some channels are born of a trainer’s desire to share his knowledge, a labor of love that first involves a period of brainstorming and planning.

“For us, it was about being able to provide workout videos, completely free of charge, to the masses,” said Kelli Segars, who with husband Daniel makes up the two-trainer team behind FitnessBlender. The masses have grown to more than570,000 YouTube subscribers. The Segarses operate the channel and their website, FitnessBlender.com, on a shoestring budget of ad revenue and donations.

“We wanted to reach as many people as possible and we chose YouTube because it was the best for a small business on a limited budget - and most importantly, it allowed us to offer our content for free.”

Zuzana Light, who bills herself as “the hottest online fitness personality” and whose channel feeds traffic to her website, ZuzkaLight.com, says she started logging workouts online because she found her local options lacking.

“I was living in Canada and I had no option to go to the gym, and I had no option to go outside because it was too cold, and back then I was looking for a website that I could relate to,” she said. “I thought maybe I should start a home-workout website or blog.”

That became the highly successful YouTube channel BodyRock.tv, which she built with her now ex-husband. Light attributes her success in part to her no-excuses style of training and in part to routines filmed straight through with no time-outs. The results are videos in which she visibly tires, breathes heavily and pauses, a contrast to so many glossy workout DVDs in which instructors composedly coach viewers through a workout with the help of editing.

“We don’t stop when we shoot, and I just struggle through it,” she says. “I think people always said that my workouts are inspirational because I show real sweat and real struggle.” Her current channel, launched after hermarriage went sour, has been viewed more than 23 million times since its debut in December 2011.

Some Arkansas trainers have tried out posting videos to drum up business for their local gyms and their own training services, including Eric Hannah, an International Sports Sciences Association-certified personal trainer and nutrition consultant at Pulse Premier Fitness in Bryant. He’s also a bodybuilder who plans a December launch of his own website, called Hannahbolics, geared toward fitness and nutrition education.

Hannah, working in 2010 for Fitness Unlimited in Benton, was among the trainers posting YouTube clips to help gin up business: “That was their way of me advertising for them, and I gave little pointers and tips.”

He said gyms in bigger cities or trainers advertising group classes such as Zumba, CrossFit or boot camps would benefit most from the tactic; for single trainers in smaller markets, it’s easier to get lost in the shuffle. But for some frequent posters, workout videos translate into a following.

“YouTube is a great way to reach a lot of people, more than as a trainer at the gym. You’re letting people know about you, and if you’re really good, you can really build a brand,” Light said.

TOUCHING THAT DIAL

To find the right video for your needs, an exerciser first should assess those needs.

“The best thing to do to find what you’re really looking for is to ask yourself questions. You have to ask what kind of person you are, how much time you have,” Light said. Am I in a hurry, or do I have anhour? What kind of exercises do I like best? What kind of equipment do I have on hand?

In navigating YouTube for fitness finds, she says, keywords are key. For example, if an exerciser has dumbbells and wants to use them, “dumbbells” should be worked into his search terms.

“A lot of people type the wrong word in,” Hannah said.

Videos that isolate specific moves or techniques and teach steps toward mastering proper form can be “a lot more informative” than those that lead a full workout, Hannah said.

PROS AND CONS

“The first benefit [of You-Tube] is that it’s free, which is always great, and the second is that you can pick through and find something very specific to your needs as an exerciser,” said Kyle Stull, a National Academy of Sports Medicine certified personal trainer who posts videos demonstrating Trigger Point Performance Therapy products, including massage balls and foam rollers.

But the availability of so many videos also means discarding lots of duds, he said. The ratio of good-to-useless videos populating YouTube is “half and half, maybe,” Stull guesses.

Trainers thank and blame the democratic nature of the website.

“The beauty of YouTube is that it’s open for everyone to upload a video. It allows individuals and small teams like ours to reach an almost unfathomable number of people, something that might otherwise only be available to large corporations,” Segars said.

IM-PERSONALIZATION

“Some people really do need more help and need more guidance,” Light said. “The very beginners, they may really need a special guidance, and they may need help on an individual basis. And there are people who get it. You just need to know what kind of person you are: Do I need the guidance? Am I capable of imitating the trainer and doing the exercises with the proper form, or do I need more guidance?”

The difficult part about training online, she said, is the trainer can’t see and correct the exercisers’ form.

“There are a lot of details specific to an individual that they won’t find in a YouTube workout video that has been created for the general, healthy population,” Segars said. “An instructor who you’ve never met, who doesn’t have your health background or your physical limitations, is not going to be able to tailor a workout to meet your specific needs.”

Further, exercisers might be hard-pressed to create the kind of body transformations they crave by following along with an online fitness idol.

“A lot of times, people do not get the results they’re looking for out of that. [A YouTube video] does help draw them into a fitness lifestyle. Let’s say they seek the services of Zuzana or other people;

they’rewanting to get those type of results of what they see. People are drawn to that, they’re attracted to that,” Hannah said. “There’ll be some fancy movements that trainers do, and it’ll draw consumers in who don’t really understand the dynamics of exercises. If it looks neat,it’ll draw people in.”

Stull agreed that exercisers shouldn’t be fooled by movements that look intense and effective but could be dangerous or unproductive. “They think if they run around and jump around and throw stuff, they’ll lose weight quicker,” he noted.

Hannah says that while exercises such as intense calisthenics and CrossFit can help increase fitness, they aren’t for everyone: “If the person’s fitness level doesn’t match those workouts, they’ll deal with weak tendons and weak joints” and injuries.

“There’s a lot of misinformation online, and a lot of people who are going to try to sell you things that you don’t need,” Segars said. “We see a lot of online trainers promoting poor form on exercises, dangerous diet fads, and even ideas and concepts associated with disordered thinking inrelation to body image.”

That’s why, as with any workout routine, it’s important to apply advice cautiously and undertake new programs only with a doctor’s guidance, these trainers said.

“As a user, I think because there’s so much content, you really have to leaf through it and find something that works for you,” Light said. “There is some content that is great and some that is bad. I just think nowadays there’s something for anyone. You just have to find something that works for you.”

ActiveStyle, Pages 27 on 11/18/2013

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