Serious About Fitness? Follow These 5 YouTube Channels
They’ll help you to build muscle, burn fat, and live a healthier life.
YouTube can be great for fitness content. It can also be terrible for fitness content.
I have been training in the gym for around 15 years now. Even ten years ago, I had to scour the internet or use forums for most of my training and nutrition advice, which was often terrible anyway. Over the years, I learned to sift through the bad advice as I learned more good advice and applied it in the gym and kitchen.
These days, there is a gluttony of YouTube channels using science-based information to give best practices for achieving various fitness goals.
There are also many fitness channels where “enhanced” bodybuilders give advice that isn’t always practical or even good advice for most of us.
I believe that the YouTubers in this article are natural. They’ve built their physiques over many years of consistent training and good practices.
Therefore, their physiques might not be as impressive as these 19-year-old Gymshark “athletes” on steroids and/or other PEDs. Still, their advice is far better and their physiques prove what is attainable for a natural bodybuilder/athlete to achieve.
Here are five of the best fitness-based YouTube channels.
Jeff Nippard
3.13M subscribers
I think Jeff Nippard sets the bar in terms of YouTube content for strength training and natural bodybuilding. His content is science-based and Jeff cites scientific studies to provide evidence for his opinions and training methodology.
He has won natural bodybuilding competitions and he’s broken Canadian Powerlifting records. So he knows what he is doing.
According to his profile:
Hello everyone! I’m a Canadian natural pro bodybuilder and internationally-qualified powerlifter with a BSc in biochemistry/chemistry and a passion for science. This channel is dedicated to providing science-based training and nutrition information and journaling my own fitness journey. I’ve been training for 15 years. I hope you enjoy my videos!
Jeff’s partner is also a fitness content creator on YouTube, called Stephanie Buttermore, who also has over 1 million followers. Her content is tailored to women and is also pretty good. Jeff often appears in her content.
Jeff provides exercise and training tips, nutrition and meal preparation advice, and lifestyle Vlogging style content.
In particular, the content that explains how to best perform exercises to build muscle and get stronger is top-notch.
Omar Isuf
849K subscribers
One of my favourite YouTubers is Omar Isuf. According to his LinkedIn profile (his YouTube profile is blank), Omar is a:
Social media fitness personality. Content creator (video), products, merchandise, training etc. I am my own brand.
The hair and stringer singlet might be a bit off-putting, but Omar does a lot of videos explaining training methodology in a short and easy to digest format.
Is also very strong and has naturally built a pretty impressive physique.
I always used Omar as a bar for what I should aim for in terms of physique and strength. We have similar physiques in terms of height and weight, but I have to say — his strength has improved a lot more than mine over recent years as I have struggled with injuries.
Now Omar appears in videos on the History YouTube Channel called Ancient Workouts With Omar, where he discusses how different ancient warriors lived and trained.
The one thing I love about his content is there are no endorsements of random products like in many other YouTuber’s videos. No random ads for underwear, just some plugging of his own merch at the end of videos.
Will Tennyson
1.1M subscribers
One of my favourite channels for more lifestyle-focused fitness content rather than “hardcore” science-based training methodologies is Will Tennyson.
Fitness | Food | Lifestyle
Will is a very likeable guy, and his videos have more of a focus on entertaining his audience rather than strictly educating them. He uses a lot of humour in his content, such as wearing a fat suit for a workout at Muscle Beach. His family often appears in his videos, such as his girlfriend, mother, and sister.
Though entertaining, Will’s videos do have enough educational fitness content to be worth watching. Hence, he makes the list.
Some of his content includes:
- Guest appearances by other fitness personalities/influencers for workouts
- Detailing current fitness trends and their effectiveness
- Trying and rating the diet/workout plans of Various fitness influencers
- Training and nutrition tips
- Cooking and meal preparation
Vitruvian Physique
564K subscribers
Another channel that focuses on lifestyle content, as well as educational content about training and nutrition, is Vitruvian Physique.
The official channel for Igor Opeshansky AKA Vitruvian Physique. This channel is based around informative, comedic, and overall produced videos tackling various topics in the fitness and nutrition world. This channel takes a scientific approach to cutting fat and building lean muscle while introducing the topics in simple and most importantly; FUN ways which you the viewer can apply to your life immediately.
The focus of Igor’s content is mostly on natural bodybuilding, with some content focused on strength training and nutrition.
He has competed in numerous bodybuilding shows over the years and discusses his fitness journey in his content such as the ups and downs of training and life in general.
Shredded Sports Science
403K subscribers
If you want to see videos of buff fitness influencers explaining their workouts and showing you how to prep meals, this isn’t the channel for you. But if you want to laugh and learn about fitness, you should check out Shredded Sports Science.
Fitness. Comedy. Social Media Satire. This is Shredded Sports Science by James Linker I do not sell any courses or services and I do not take any paid sponsorships.
With a focus on humour and satire, many of the videos on the Shredded Sports Science channel follow a similar format: here are some videos from around the internet of people doing stupid things in the gym and idiotic fitness trends.
If you want to see deformed bodies from people injecting Synthol to make their muscles look bigger, this is the channel for you.
It’s not all fun and games, however, as the channel does offer some great scientific advice: Haha look at these stupid people, this is why it’s stupid, this is what you should do instead.
The channel calls out fitness influencers, celebrities, supplement companies and the like for their terrible fitness and health advice, and the “fake naturals” that sell people empty dreams of a body that is only attainable with steroids *cough* Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson…
Final Words
In conclusion, this article has explored five great YouTube channels to follow and consume if you are serious about upping your fitness game.
Those channels are: Jeff Nippard, Omar Isuf, Will Tennyson, Vitruvian Physique, and Shredded Sports Science.
These channels share content that will inform you of best practices to build muscle, increase your strength, burn fat and improve your general health and wellbeing. You’ll also be informed of what mistakes you should avoid, helping keep you on the track to reaching your fitness goals.
They’ll also entertain you, whilst educating you — key to engaging our attention spans for long enough to learn something.
Thank you for reading.
If you enjoyed the content, you might be interested in this article about how I have gained over 40 pounds of muscle over the years.
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