Posted on 18 Apr 2019
11 min read
Approximately 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
As anyone who’s clicked “filter by recent results” will testify, the vast majority of this content is proof, if it were needed, that humankind is hurtling towards its inexorable demise, and that 200 years from now the last of our knuckle-dragging descendants will crawl back into the sea, never to be seen again.
While this soul-crushing avalanche of dreck does not discriminate (all languages, ages and topics are catered for), one of the biggest contributors is, without doubt, the fitness industry.
If this content had an aroma, it would be that of an overflowing nightclub toilet which in addition to miscellaneous human effluvia has been seasoned with dead turtles, vulture vomit and cat piss.
After sitting through hours of footage to research this article, I have no hesitation in saying, quite conclusively, that fitness Youtubers are such terrible humans that, in the distant post-human future, their legacy will live on in whispered interdimensional warnings, alongside genocide, slavery and Noel Edmonds.
Here are the very worst offcuts from this fetid trough of societal offal…
In brief: militant vegan super troll
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr2eKhGzPhN5RPVk5dd5o3g
Subscribers: 346.5K
Watch if: you think all meat eaters should be showered in napalm
Vegan Gains (real name Richard Burgess) is so unlikeable he would make a Nazi sodomising a unicorn with a barbed wire dildo seem like an affable chap.
Ostensibly a promotion of vegan values in relation to bodybuilding, his channel also delights in misogyny (women are rebuffed as “fucking bitches”), taunting cancer patients, and chiding his own grandfather for a fatal heart attack (“he ate meat so he deserved it”).
Each video consists of Vegan Gains, looking like what would happen if you stretched the skin of a boy over the body of a ring-tailed lemur, parroting some dubious pro-vegan studies, performing crackpot sketches, and calling anyone who eats meat a plague on humanity.
This unhinged torrent of vitriol is, however, betrayed by eyes that have known deep sorrow.
This is quite clearly someone who is trying to repress some deeply disturbing childhood memories.
Look closely and you’ll see, every now and again, a look of horror play across his face as he recalls, perhaps, Daddy executing his only friend, a hamster, with a bolt gun, or Mummy making him darn and disinfect some second-hand condoms.
His waspish demeanour (the result of gene splicing with a crow during insemination?), whiney voice and self-righteous, obnoxious attitude come together to create something so odious I feel the need to invent a new word – megatwunt.
This is as much as I can do without resorting to hand gesticulations so violent I would dislocate both of my shoulders.
Despite preaching the health benefits of veganism, Richard hardly glows with vitality.
Instead, his appearance more closely resembles that of a 14-year-old who has recently discovered internet porn and hasn’t left his self-styled masturbation grotto in 2 months.
In brief: fake natty conning teenagers out of their pocket money
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Sim86
Subscribers: 701.5K
Watch if: your favourite natural lifters are Rich Piana and Kai Greene.
Simeon Panda has a physique so unnatural that if he started growing scales, speaking parsletongue and rotating his head 360 degrees it wouldn’t seem terribly irregular.
Yet he relentlessly lays claim to being 100% “lifetime natural”, just so he can flog cookie-cutter workout routines to gullible teenagers and earn sponsorship deals from equally culpable supplement companies.
It’s “just a combination of consistency, great diet and intense training”, he says, with all the conviction of a Catholic minister whose excuse for polishing a 6-year-old’s ballbag with talcum powder was that he “believed it to be a porcelain statue of St Francis of Assisi”.
According to Panda, the reason he looks so cartoonishly massive is that “when I get a good pump I literally grow about 1/3 bigger lol”, and the reason he looks bigger than Arnie naturally is because he trains harder, despite not even being genetically disposed to bodybuilding.
Hmmmm…
In one video he ‘proves’ his drug-free credentials by passing a polygraph test.
Just to put this into context, this is the same method Jeremy Kyle uses to prove whether or not some toothless arse thistle who claims she once gave birth to a barn owl is telling porkies.
I don’t care how many lie detector tests you pass Simeon, you look like the lovechild of a roast turkey and a minotaur, which is pretty bloody conclusive to me.
Perhaps he’s been lying for so long he can no longer discern fact from fiction.
It would be great if his next ebook is just one big cheese-dream which slips out unchecked.
Imagine some poor sod forking out £55 to learn that lean muscle gain can be facilitated by bathing in spaghetti, dressing as a 16th century Russian Cossack and riding around on a giant badger.
On the subject of dreams, I have a recurring one in which Simeon Panda is mauled in slow motion by a stampeding heard of buffalo while Mozart’s Requiem plays pianissimo in the background.
It’s so beautiful I wake up in tears.
In brief: narcissistic twatcast from shirtless spunk valve
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPPl_oX8oUtKVMLxL13jg
Subscribers: 2.28M
Watch if: you want to cringe so hard your face becomes a fist
Where to start with Connor Murphy… a man whose personality is the aural equivalent of a lumpy fart.
Connor’s videos consist of him wondering around like a lobotomised penguin looking for women to show his naked torso to.
In most videos, there’s a ruse to going topless, whether that’s to prove that abs are more important than fashion sense or that all women are basically cock-crazy sex lunatics.
In fact, I’m being pretty generous by describing any of these situations as a ruse, because, fact of the matter is, this bumwipe would cite being asked his name by a Starbucks barista as reason enough to go shirtless.
It’s like he underwent Pavlovian conditioning as a boy to remove his clothes every time he senses a vulva within a 10 metre radius.
Here’s hoping he was also conditioned to toss himself into a woodchipper before he ever gets to procreate.
Suffering through these videos is like a workout for your cringe reflex.
If you can manage to get all the way through a single video without hitting pause every two seconds, your face will feel like it’s witnessed, first-hand, the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf.
In one ‘prank’ video that has to be seen to be believed, he accosts a young lady in a supermarket, takes off his shirt, scampers up a pole, and then performs pull-ups from a hanging beam.
All while this poor girl looks on with the faintly embarrassed look of someone whose nan has just referred to “brown people” at a family meal.
In brief: fitness advice from someone you wouldn’t trust to boil an egg
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4urAor1TKMTzlR2N9wFioA
Subscribers: 227.6K
Watch if: you want every happy memory you’ve ever had slowly and painfully sucked out of you
Imagine sitting on a pine cone covered with ants, repeatedly punching yourself in the head and shouting “DUH DUH DUH” as loudly as you can.
This goes some way to simulating the experience of sitting through a Brittany Dawn video.
Looking like the result of a union between Beaker from the Muppets and a blow-dried hamster, Brittany Dawn is a self-styled “fitness guru”.
A label that, nowadays, carries about as much weight as a degree from Hull university or a childrearing reference from Rolf Harris.
Her fitness tips (“Tips to avoid bloating”, “Best mochachinos for weight loss”, “5 key steps to a sexier perineum”) seem like they were gleaned from a glossy woman’s magazine supplement that has been fed through a shredder and then reassembled by a gibbon with a glue gun.
But of the many crimes this spunkbarrel has committed in the name of views, it’s Brittany Dawn’s ethical bankruptcy that riles most.
This is someone who exploits young girls with eating disorders to flog “personalised” nutrition plans (all identical) which are essentially directions to starve yourself.
Then when her clients complain that her services are, to paraphrase Nelson Mandela in his review of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, “a load of fucking shite”, Dawn refuses refunds and blocks the client.
So prevalent, in fact, are her scammy business practises, that a Facebook group has been established to catalogue and draw attention to her various swindles.
A woman with the integrity of a shotgunned cowpat, Brittany Dawn is someone who would do literally anything to raise her profile.
Punch a squirrel in the face?
In a heartbeat.
Film a recruitment commercial for a cabal of satanic shape-shifting paedophiles?
100%.
Fashion the skin of a murdered baby into a bongo drum and beat out the rhythm of a Nazi death hymn?
Tick (in fact I think she’s already filmed a video for that).
In brief: monotonous lifestyle videos from a charmless personality vacuum
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Christianguzmanfitne
Subscribers: 923.5K
Watch if: looking at a chest of drawers sounds like a fun way to spend an evening
If your idea of 30 minutes well spent is watching HD footage of the world’s dullest automaton working out, driving a car, grocery shopping, and giving motivational speeches about eating grilled chicken, then meet Christian Guzman.
A man with all the personality of a box of freshly wrapped tupperware, Guzman is living proof that people will watch anything.
His staggeringly boring “lifestyle” videos, which frequently clock in at over 30 minutes (!), have amassed thousands of views, presumably by a demographic of easily impressed six-year-olds, gurning morons and masturbating chimpanzees.
Watching his videos, Guzman’s inflated sense of self-worth is such that you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or achieved some history-making feat of athleticism.
In reality, the sum of his endeavours is maintaining a lean physique, selling t-shirts and spouting motivational platitudes cringier than a middle-aged geography teacher dancing to Gangnam Style at the school disco.
Even footage of Guzman walking his dog or eating falafel is edited to make it look like the tightrope scene from Man on Wire.
This is a guy so vain he would botox his ballsack to make it look more aesthically pleasing.
He also looks like the sort of person who can only achieve orgasm while listening to his own pre-recorded words of encouragement (“Come on Christian, aim for the moon, if you miss at least you’ll be among the stars…”).
As Guzman is clearly hellbent on documenting every facet of his life, here’s hoping that his eventual downward spiral into opiods and cinnamon rolls after contracting weapons-grade ghonorreah brings on a mental breakdown so unprecedented he slowly osmoses into the fabric of the cosmos, never to be seen again.
Jesus Christ suffered on the cross so we wouldn’t have to.
In a similar way, I’ve watched these videos so you will never have to.
So, yes, that does make me a Christ-like figure, although one with infinitely more capacity for suffering, as crucifixion doesn’t even come close to approximating the torment of watching Christian Guzman eating porridge in slow motion.
Maybe one day I’ll uncover a fitness channel which is truly brilliant and epoch-shattering, then again it’s more likely that I’ll live to see the royal family admit that the Queen actually died in 2001 and all her subsequent public appearances have actually been performed by Andy Serkis in a motion-capture suit.
I’m out – if you think I’ve missed any other horrendous fitness YouTubers from this list, please comment below…
Update: if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can check out part two of this article here.
Henry is the founder and editor of GymTalk. He spends most of his time sat at a computer shovelling peanuts into his mouth while trying to think up new ways to end sentences with the word “vagina”, but occasionally can be found at the squat rack or playing piano in Luton’s “second best” rock band.
I am dying right now.
Awesome.
Think you could be a bit harsher though.
I’m currently working on a second part to this article – considering making it a series as there’s so much self-important blumf out there just calling out to be torn a new one.
Will take your recommendation on board…
There are a couple of legit channels out there, stuff like Shredded Sports Science, Every Damn Day Fitness, Swolenormous, Elgin, and, of course, Athlean-x.
And before he died, Leroy Colbert was all over Mr Yorkie Lover Fitness, which is still a treasure trove of Colbert’s videos, even releasing posthumous ones he recorded.
Red Delta is great for calisthenics stuff, and Mountain Dog is another great channel.
Other than that, though… for the most part, YouTube “fitness” is as appealing as watching Phil Collins and Rod Stewart snowball each other for an entire weekend.
And as a last note… F for respect to Jeremy Kyle… here’s hoping another network picks him up, his stuff is too good to just get shit canned like that!
While I wouldn’t feel 100% comfortable with the situation, I’d definitely rather endure them swapping spunk than have to listen to their music, especially if they’re doing it against their will…
You got it smack bang on with these YouTubers!
From the psycho vegan, Richard, to the “I am natural Simeon” and that other ego-stroking dope Conor Murphy!
This gave me a genuinely good laugh.
Thanks!
Thanks for the comment – glad you enjoyed it!
Must say I agree with your list
Thanks Rajesh – look out for part 2, whenever the heck I get round to it!
After seeing your list, I went and saw these channels.
So yes, one shouldn’t watch them.
Hahahaha I most appreciate your sense of humour dear Henry.
The way you covered these channels and why one shouldn’t waste their time on these was hilarious.
Couldn’t stop laughing, my stomach hurts eh!
Another terrible aspect of Vegan Gains; he has no understanding of humour or anything.
He took a video by FilthFrank seriously called “I Hate Vegans”, which anyone critical would have detected the hyperbole in Frank’s words.
Mr Gains must have been so embarrassed by it, that he deleted the video off of his channel.
Too bad (for him at least) someone else reuploaded it.
lmaooooooooooooo
‘wouldn’t trust to boil an egg’
ahahahahhahahaahah
You suffer for others, I thank you.
First time I have seen this type of article with the most unique title, I am pretty after publishing this article you got calls from these 5 YouTubers.