Episode 5: TwitchCon 2023 Fitness Panel

Oct 26

WATCH ON YOUTUBE | LISTEN

Over the weekend, I met up with other streamers in the Fitness & Health community of Twitch as well as some of my followers and online clients for this year’s TwitchCon. It was so great seeing so many of you in person 🤗

On Saturday, I spoke on a panel put together by TominationTime called The Streamer's Workout: Gaining XP in Fitness & Streaming along with other streamers Smashley, Smexi, AceofAllTrades01, and theHOLDERHEK.

TheHOLDERHEK was kind enough to stream the panel on his channel and let us watch the VOD on my recap stream this past Monday. I’ve edited the video and added the audio that I recorded for most of the session and posted it to my Youtube channel, which you can watch below:

It’s been so incredible to watch as this community has taken shape over the last 3 years.

I started live streaming on Twitch at the beginning of the pandemic as a gamer playing the game Subnautica. Many of my IRL friends who followed me encouraged me to stream my workouts on Twitch—to which I responded “that’s a thing?”

Sure enough, Twitch had recently added a Fitness & Health category to the platform as more people were joining the platform to stream their workouts and streamers like MartiniMonsters, BenRice_PLG, and TominationTime were growing in popularity. The Fitness & Health category on Twitch brought hundreds of people together, allowing us to find community and “fitspiration” with each other during lockdown.

For me, joining the category and interacting with other streamers and community members has led to so much personal growth and development as a coach and athlete. Events like the Twitch Powerlifting Meet put on by EatItPal_ and AverageJoes_oc as well as the Twitch Rivals Tyler1 tournaments brought the community closer and even encouraged people outside the community to get involved with fitness.

Twitch Con 2023 was another of those cornerstone events that I think we’ll look back on as one of the defining moments of this community. In the last year or so, as the world begins to open up in the wake of Covid lockdowns, the Twitch Fitness & Health community has felt a bit adrift. Many streamers have left the platform or stopped streaming altogether, which has led to a general feeling of 🤷‍♀️ “what are we doing here?”

But getting so many of us together in one place and spending time together helped us to see the potential of this community moving forward. Not only did we actually all get along (despite 15 of us staying in the same house together!) but we also felt inspired to work together moving forward and take this community to the next level.

I think that there’s a huge opportunity for the Twitch Fitness & Health community to become a major hub where people can learn about fitness, stay motivated, and find personal connection in their fitness journey. One thing that Twitch as a platform does very well is providing the foundation for the development of communities. However it’s up to the streamers and community members to craft those communities and make them grow.

Many of the communities on Twitch are centered around a single streamer who cultivates a group of loyal followers and subscribers. The thing that makes the Fitness & Health community special is that we are each involved and invested in each other’s communities and fitness journeys. We share knowledge, encourage each other, and support each other in our growth in fitness and wellness. And everyone involved benefits from the collaboration—including viewers and lurkers.

The thing I’m most excited about is that so many of us who stream to the Fitness & Health category of Twitch are now interested in working together to grow the community at large. There’s so much value that we have to offer to people who are looking for motivation and community in their fitness journeys.

Interested in checking out the Fitness & Health community on Twitch? There’s many different ways to get involved!

If you’re just getting started on your fitness journey or if you want to start a fitness journey, the Twitch Fitness & Health category is a great place to hang out.

Many people watch streams while they’re at work during the day and have them on in the background while they are doing things at home or in the gym—kind of like how people listen to podcasts or watch Youtube videos. However with Twitch livestreams, you can interact with the streamer directly by participating in chat. This is a great way to ask questions, share your progress, or just goof around and make friends in real time. Many of the fitness streamers are certified personal trainers and are a great resource for free advice and live lessons (I do this on my channel, as does CoelRunnings, JoWorkouts, and theHOLDERHEK).

Other streamers on the platform have been on a fitness journey for many years and also give excellent advice in a number of different areas. For example Acroiono is a great resource for learning about bodybuilding, posing, and training towards an aesthetic physique. There are also many streamers who do powerlifting and offer great advice for getting strong (like BenRice_PLG and AverageJoes). Other streamers give great general fitness, wellness, and fat-loss advice and are excellent at teaching general health.

Many of these streamers also have interactive Discord communities and are active on social media. You can find many of us on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), and other platforms. Some of us (like myself) also have websites for promoting fitness education and even take on 1-on-1 coaching clients.

So there are many ways that this community can help you to get started and learn more about fitness!

If you’re already on a fitness journey, plugging into the Twitch Fitness & Health community is a great way to stay motivated. We all experience ups and downs in our fitness journeys, and maintaining the drive to keep showing up is difficult when you’re doing it on your own. This community can help you cultivate deep and meaningful relationships that can help you grow as a person and take your fitness to the next level.

There’s so much information being shared on this platform, and people are truly there to support each other. For this reason, I’m a massive fan of the community and have decided to stick with it—despite the bumps in the road that we’ve had to endure in the last year or so.

I think there’s also a huge opportunity here for other coaches like myself who are interested in growing their brand online. You can use Twitch streams to connect and build relationships with your existing clients and followers by letting them “hang out” with you. Also, each stream is an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and teaching style to new people. Offering fitness advice to your chatters and viewers can help you cultivate authority, credibility, and on-camera presence needed to grow your brand online.

I’m still working out the kinks of how to do this for myself, but I think that the capacity to grow as a coach by streaming on Twitch is still huge. I personally don’t like making pre-recorded content talking to a “cold” camera or microphone, so for me livestreaming on Twitch is a great way to capture my conversational coaching style in a way that works for me and my brain. Most of what I post to my socials and YouTube channel is first recorded live on Twitch streams.

Another beautiful thing about this platform is that you don’t even have to be a coach or super experienced in fitness to have a channel and grow a community. Many people use the platform to document their fitness journey and cultivate friendships with people who hang out with them while they’re streaming. There’s a lot of encouragement and knowledge that gets shared among the viewers and chatters in fitness streams—which can be invaluable to your fitness progress. It can also give you the structure and accountability you need to stay consistent, especially if you get onto a streaming schedule.

If you’re interested in starting to live stream on Twitch, check out the Creator Camp series “Getting Started on Twitch.”