Episode 5: TwitchCon 2023 Fitness Panel
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. 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.
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.”
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Episode 4: How to Stay in Shape When Life Gets Busy
When our schedules get hectic and disrupt our regular routines, fitness and nutrition often take a back seat. During these times, it's easy to fall into the trap of self-criticism, which only makes it harder to get back on track. For several years, I've been guiding my clients in breaking free from this cycle through a strategy I've named the MVP, which stands for the Minimally Viable Plan.
Struggling in an on-again, off-again relationship with fitness? You’re not alone!
It’s difficult for many people to make consistent gains, thanks to the demands of everyday life.
Whenever life gets busy and disrupts our normal routines, fitness & nutrition are the first things to go out the window. When this happens, it can be tempting to get stuck on the self-shaming cycle—which only makes it more difficult to start up again.
For several years, I have helped my clients break out of this cycle with a concept I call the MVP: the Minimally Viable Plan (MVP).
The MVP is your bare minimum, “nothing but the basics” plan for exercise and nutrition that you fall back on when you’re struggling to keep up with your normal plan. In this episode, I go over the importance of having an MVP for your fitness and how to create your own MVP.
In general, your personal MVP just needs to hit the basic requirements for health & fitness:
Follow the Healthy Plate Model
Hit a Daily Movement Goal
Total Body Resistance & Mobility Training 2x per week
The MVP allows you to scale down your nutrition and exercise plan to something simpler and more manageable. It allows you to keep some momentum going in your fitness journey and avoid a full stop. This, in turn, will make it much easier to scale your efforts back up when you have the availability in the future.
This episode was recorded during a group coaching call with my clients. Group coaching calls happen in my Coaching Corner Discord server on the 4th Sunday every month at 4:00pm EST. You can attend the group coaching calls by subscribing as a Supporter+ in the Discord or as a Tier 3 subscriber on Twitch. Personal Training Clients and DIY training program subscribers are also free to attend!
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Episode 3: How to Do Resistance Training to Tone Your Body and Get Strong
In this episode, I’ll teach you how to start doing resistance training in your weekly exercise routine. The best way to keep your muscles healthy is to do resistance training at least 2-3 times each week. As we age, our muscles naturally get weaker in a process called sarcopenia. This can lead to a decrease in coordination, balance, and bone density—which puts us more at risk of injury and certain illnesses. By challenging your muscles every week, you can reverse the effects of sarcopenia and get stronger.
In this episode, I’ll teach you how to start doing resistance training in your weekly exercise routine.
The best way to keep your muscles healthy is to do resistance training at least 2-3 times each week. As we age, our muscles naturally get weaker in a process called sarcopenia. This can lead to a decrease in coordination, balance, and bone density—which puts us more at risk of injury and certain illnesses.
By challenging your muscles every week, you can reverse the effects of sarcopenia and get stronger. Build your own resistance training routine, try one of my DIY programs, or work 1-on-1 with me for personal training.
Getting Started
To get started in resistance training, your first task will be to get on a schedule and set up a regular training routine. You should aim to do resistance training 2-3 days each week. Plan to spend 45 minutes to 1 hour and a half on each workout.
As a beginner, focus on what is called Total Body training—meaning you train muscles throughout your entire body in each training session. Later on, as you get more advanced, you can focus your training sessions on one muscle group (upper body vs. lower body) or movement pattern (push vs. pull) and also increase the number of training sessions you do each week.
In the first few weeks of doing resistance training, your goal should be to master the technique of the exercises in your program, first using light or no resistance and later using moderate resistance/weight. As a beginner, you should also focus on developing strength in your core (abdomen and back) while learning how to hold your body in alignment with good posture. Also, try to learn the names of the major muscles and their functions.
Workout Format
When training my clients, I divide each resistance training workout into 3 parts:
Warmup & Priming
Challenge Exercises
Mobility Exercises/Stretching
Each of these three parts is important and serves a different purpose to keep your workouts safe and effective. Let’s look at each in more detail below.
1 Warmup & Priming
Each resistance training session should begin with a warmup and some priming exercises to prepare the muscles for the challenge exercises.
Your warmup & priming should include 5-10 minutes of moderate-intensity steady-state cardio and a variety of light exercises and dynamic stretches done for 10-25 minutes.
The steady-state cardio portion of your workout serves to increase your core temperature and get blood circulating to your muscles. We don’t want to challenge the muscles while they’re cold!
The priming portion of your warmup can include myofascial release, dynamic stretches, and/or light exercises:
Myofascial release can help to relieve tension in tight muscles by putting pressure on the fascia using equipment like a foam roller, medicine ball, lacrosse ball, or other tool. This has a similar effect to getting a deep tissue massage on the affected muscles. Do this for 30-60 seconds per muscle group, but try not to spend too long on this portion at the beginning of the workout (otherwise, you risk bringing your heart rate and core temperature back down towards resting).
Dynamic stretches are like normal stretches, however, you only hold the stretch for a second or two at a time. The focus of dynamic stretches is to bring the muscles through their full range of motion (both contraction and extension) with light or no resistance. This allows you to identify and gently work out any tension or tightness in the muscles before putting them under load during the challenge portion of the workout.
Light exercises are sets of exercises you might use in the challenge portion of your workout, however in the beginning of the workout they’re done with light or no resistance. This gives you a chance to warm up the muscles involved in the exercise and rehearse the movement before putting the muscles under a challenging load.
Keep in mind that during priming exercises, your goal is not to fatigue your muscles. Instead, focus on connecting with your muscles and getting them ready to work during the challenge portion of your workout.
If you’re working with me or doing one of my DIY programs, you’ll notice that priming exercises are labeled in the workout as “(priming)” to help you know which exercises are part of your warmup.
2 Challenge Exercises
Once you have finished your warmup and priming exercises, then it’s time to challenge your muscles 💪
Key terms to know:
A rep (“repetition”) is when you perform the movement of the exercise 1 time, beginning and ending in the starting position.
A set is the total number of reps you complete before resting.
Your rest period may be as short as 30 seconds or as long as 2-5 minutes between each set or between different exercises.
The challenge exercises are the portion of the workout in which we focus on building muscle and increasing strength.
If you’re working with me or doing one of my programs, watch the exercise tutorial video for each new exercise and pay attention to the target muscle group of the exercise.
Then do 1 or 2 practice sets with light or no resistance—focusing on doing the movement with good technique. Perform each rep at a controlled pace, 2-3 seconds “up” and 2-3 seconds “down.”
Once you have practiced the technique of the movement, then you can begin to add more resistance (i.e., heavier weight or bands) to add more challenge to the exercise.
Keep in mind that your muscles need to be challenged to grow and get stronger. This means that you’ll need to fatigue the target muscles in every set of an exercise. You can do this by doing the exercise with an amount of weight or number of reps that leave the muscles feeling tired or “burning” by the end of the set.
Once you finish a set, rest your muscles for 30-60 seconds before doing another set or moving on to another exercise.
Over time, your muscles will get stronger and you will need to do either more reps, more weight, or more sets of an exercise to keep your muscles challenged. This is called the principle of progressive overload.
In my programs, I usually suggest a range of reps for each set of an exercise (for example 10-15 reps). In the first week of your program, try to find a weight or resistance that allows you to feel challenged with the bottom number of reps (in this case, 10 reps). As the weeks go by, try to increase the number of reps that you do in each set until the top number of recommended reps (15) becomes easy. At that point, increase the weight again until you feel challenged at the bottom number of recommended reps (10).
As you perform your challenge exercises, pay attention to the muscles that you feel working and try to name them. This will help you to develop the mind-muscle connection that is important for safe, effective exercise.
Make sure to record what you did for your workout either in a journal, fitness tracking app, or in the ABC Trainerize app (if you’re working with me or doing one of my DIY programs).
3 Mobility & Stretching
After you have completed each of the challenge exercises in your program, take a few moments to stretch your muscles and bring your body back down to a resting state.
This portion of the workout might include more myofascial release (i.e., using a foam roller) and static stretches. Static stretches involve holding a stretch for 10 seconds or more to promote relaxation and flexibility in the muscles. It’s a good idea to do static stretching at the end of a workout while the muscles are warm (both after resistance training and cardio workouts).
Stay Consistent!
Stick with your resistance training routine for a few weeks and you’ll begin to feel the results pretty quickly! Most of my clients to report feeling stronger overall within 2-3 weeks after starting their resistance training.
ABOUT JAYD HARRISON
Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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Episode 2: What is Resistance Training?
The best way to stay strong and keep your metabolism boosted is to do resistance training every week. In today’s episode, we’ll go over what resistance training is and how to add it to your exercise routine.
The best way to stay strong and keep your metabolism boosted is to do resistance training every week. In today’s episode, we’ll go over what resistance training is and how to add it to your exercise routine.
What is Resistance Training?
As a personal trainer, one of my favorite styles of exercise to teach my clients is resistance training. This style of exercise focuses on improving the health & strength of the muscles.
This is important because our muscles naturally deteriorate over time in a process called sarcopenia. As our muscles naturally weaken, we experience an increased risk of injury due to a loss of strength and coordination as well as an increased risk of weight gain due to the slowing of our metabolisms.
The best way to reverse this process is to incorporate resistance training into your weekly exercise routine.
Resistance training is also key for developing a sculpted or “toned” physique. But there are lots of other benefits to building muscle!
Building muscle can improve your everyday life by increasing your overall strength and coordination, making daily tasks easier to perform.
If you’re an athlete, building muscle can also improve your performance in sports and other physical activities.
Strengthening your muscles can also reduce your risk of injury. By improving your coordination and fortifying your tissues, you’ll be less likely to experience falls or other accidents.
Building muscle can also strengthen your bones, which can reduce your risk of developing osteoporosis and fractures, especially as you age.
Many people also use muscle-building as an aid in fat loss. Building muscle is a calorie-expensive function for the body–it takes a lot of energy to build muscle and to maintain it. By increasing your muscle mass, you can boost your metabolism and avoid a fat loss plateau.
Finally, building muscle can also help to improve your overall health. Regular strength training has been associated with improved cardiovascular health, better insulin sensitivity, reduced risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and improved mental health
This episode was recorded during a live stream on the Jaydigains Twitch channel. Join live streams every Tuesday and Friday on Twitch starting around 11:30am EST.
ABOUT JAYD HARRISON
Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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Episode 1: Technique Reviews, Deadlifts Tips for Conventional vs Sumo, GZCLP programming, OHP, & Squats
In this episode, I give my Twitch community and clients feedback on their exercise videos posted in my discord server while live on Twitch.
Hey there 👋 I'm personal trainer Jayd Harrison, and in this recording of my live stream on Twitch, I give some feedback on exercise videos posted by members of my Coaching Corner Discord community.
In this stream, I go over technique tips for deadlifts, overhead press, and squats for my strength training clients and followers.
If you'd like to participate in future Technique Tuesdays, make sure to join the Discord and subscribe to post your exercise videos in the #🏋-technique-review channel.
I go live around 11:30am EST on Tuesdays to review lifts and get my own workout in at twitch.tv/jaydigains.
Programs
Learn to Lift
with Jayd Harrison
Check out my 3-month Weight Training Foundations program to build muscle while learning safe & effective exercise technique! You’ll discover the best methods for using dumbbells, barbells, and machines to “tone” your body and get strong.
28-Day Fat Loss Challenge
with Jayd Harrison
Learn how to burn fat and keep it off for good with this 4-week crash course. Discover how to eat and exercise to keep your body burning fat to reach your weight loss goals.
About Jayd Harrison
Jayd Harrison has been a fitness coach and personal trainer for ten years. She works with exercisers of all experience levels, helping them to build muscle, burn fat, and eat better. Her upbeat and positive coaching style will motivate you to keep showing up for yourself! Jayd believes that there’s always something you can do to improve your health & fitness. No matter your limitations, experience level, or equipment access, you can achieve a toned, strong body and healthier lifestyle.
For more personalized programming, check out Jayd’s personal training program. Also check out Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube and follow her on social media:
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