WORDS BY HARRY LICENCE

So you want to become a fitness professional on Youtube, make that sweet ad money and spend your days at the gym maintaining your perfectly shaved physique? Here’s a beginner’s guide.

Step 1: Get Jacked

Step one is the simplest yet most integral to becoming a successful fitness YouTuber. If you look like shit, chances are nobody wants to listen to your advice on how to do tricep pulldowns. To get yoked all you need is decent genetics and about two years of hard work. Hit the gym five days a week. Eat a tonne of chicken, brown rice and broccoli, ingest an ungodly amount of creatine and begin injecting anabolic steroids. It’s that simple. Remember not to tell anyone that you are taking steroids, otherwise it will make it harder to shill supplements later on.

Step 2: Shave everything

If you have a single hair below your neck then you are not allowed to be a social media fitness sensation. It’s the rules. Body hair is banned. Striations and muscle definition are not visible unless you have the pale, hairless skin of a plucked chicken. If even a single hair is visible then it is likely a rival Youtuber may call you out with a video titled:

‘EXPOSED! YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHICH FITNESS SCHMUCK ACTUALLY HAS BODY HAIR’.

Remember, if you wax your chest you can harvest this for content. A “Forty-Year-Old Virginesque” clip of you screaming in pain as your perfect body is waxed will bring maximum views to your YouTube channel.

Step 3: Get an undercut/ beard

Being a male fitness influencer without an undercut or beard is like being a male fitness influencer without crippling self-doubt and body dysmorphia. Not possible. Crafting your look after a Viking warrior also seems apt due to your likely propensity for violence and sexual deviancy. Make sure you get your undercut done at a barber with a 1930’s style fit out that offers you a beer or scotch upon arrival. To help the barber, point at your temples and say, “Everything above this keep. Everything below this, cut. But make sure you fade it too bro.” This will give them a perfect example of both how you want your hair cut and your personality.

Source: every second 'stock' photo on Buzzfeed

Pro tip: Have someone take a close-up photo of you getting your beard trimmed with your jaw jutting out super hard and your eyes squinted. Shout-out the barber on Instagram for being a ‘total G’ and tag their shop. This gives the impression that you are doing them a favour and that you haven’t just paid $70 for a haircut.

Step 4: Make a YouTube channel

Once you have the body and the haircut, it’s time to start your ‘company’. Create an Instagram and YouTube channel both called something generic yet masculine. A few examples I came up with are Spartan Gains, Maximum Beef or @NicksAesthetics69 (feel free to use any of these). Begin regularly posting content of you shirtless at the gym and the beach. Make sure to feature hot women as often as possible, your endgame is to play on the insecurities of young men in order to sell them stuff. Suggesting you get with women definitely helps.

Pro tip: Feature a woman’s ass cheeks in your YouTube thumbnails and watch those clicks soar.

Step 5: Start beef

Once your followers start to stagnate and subscribers decline you’ll need a way to keep people invested. Solution: Start some beef with another influencer! Accuse them of being a ‘fake natty’ (someone who claims not to be on steroids but is) (basically you) or say that they’re using fake weights in their lifts. Make sure your audience knows that you’re sorry to be doing this but you just need to defend the integrity of the industry. Call whoever you’re beefing with a lying disgusting phony and let the drama play out.

Step 6: Peddle some stupid bullshit

Ok, this is the big leagues. Before this you were getting by on free protein samples, YouTube ad revenue (apart from the vid where they demonetized you for saying the N word) and teeth whitening lasers. Now is your shot to make real money. First, design a clothing line for your followers to buy. This will first only consist of some poorly screen-printed tee-shirts and singlets with your logo. Soon you will progress to water bottles and baseball caps. When designing your merch, keep things basic. Remember that the fitness industry is roughly ten years behind the fashion industry. This is a weird microcosm of the world in which sleeveless hoodies are acceptable attire, so don’t design anything drastic and keep colours to a simple black, white or red.

Ultimately you will release your own supplements. These barely FDA approved products will contain an unnecessary protein supplement and a pre-workout that is essentially crack with a single molecule changed. Pray nobody dies and that you ship enough product before the inevitable recall. No refunds.

Step 7: Attend a fitness con and take photos with people doing this pose:

This is it, you’ve made it. You’re in a hotel convention centre aggressively gripping the hand of another man. This inferior beta male has waited hours in line to do this with you. Bask in the glory that is your fitness empire and feel safe in the confident knowledge that you are essentially a God. Well done.

Seven Easy Steps to Becoming a Fitness Influencer