7 Reasons Why I Write a Health & Fitness Blog

A little over three years ago, I started blogging through my website and vlogging on youtube my experiences dealing with lower back pain, my love for the field of strength & conditioning, and my journey through my master’s degree.

All of this to date is represented in 220 blogs posts and over 280 youtube videos.

With all of these posts/videos, I’ve been able to grow quite a respectable community.

My youtube channel has recently hit over 4000 subscribers, and I’m averaging over 30,000 monthly views with 200 new subscribers each month. To put things into perspective, I had a total of 336 views in my first month and 3 subscribers!

Not bad growth eh?

On the flip side, my blog has been a little more difficult to grow than my youtube channel, but mind you; I haven’t focused the same amount of time and energy on it until recently. While I don’t have access to specific statistics when I started my blog, I can tell you that it probably had 25-30 views in the first month. All of which were likely from family members and friends. The blog now averages about close to 1500 views per month, and that’s much better than the initial 25-30 I was getting.

Still not where I’d like it to be, and it’s why I’ve been heavily focusing on ramping up the content on my blog lately.

Now, well I’ve developed some decent numbers I’d say over the years, I want to share with you 7 reasons why I started a Health and Fitness Blog, to begin with. 

 

7 Reasons Why I Write a Health & Fitness Blog 

 

1. I love Health & Fitness – Being a former hockey player, spending day after day in the gym training as a kid, going through a Bachelor’s, as well as a Master’s in Human Kinetics, and interning/working for free with some established organizations (Windsor Spitfires & Toronto Raptors), I think represents my love for the field of health & fitness.

Most of my days are spent training/consulting with clients and learning about health & fitness, whether that’s studying a biomechanics textbook, listening to a podcast with Dr. Stuart McGill on it, or reading through a blog like ericcressey.com. I have a love for this field, almost an obsession you could say, and my mindset hasn’t changed since I got introduced into this field. 

2. Educating People – I love teaching and having a health and fitness blog gives me the opportunity to help educate others without actually physically being at a school teaching or lecturing per se. That’s not to say I wouldn’t mind being a school teacher or professor, but having a health and fitness blog gives me the opportunity to talk about the things that I think matter most to people without having any overhead control. 

3. Educating Myself – In addition to educating others, I find that with having a blog, I can research a topic of choice, become educated about it and then explain it to others through a blog post. It helps me with my learning process since I’m voluntarily learning myself about a topic I’m genuinely interested in and then being placed in a position where I can teach it to others. Note: For those of you that have been following me for a while, you’d know that I love learning about everything related to the low back, and high-performance training (specifically hockey and basketball). 

How you’ll typically find me when I have some free time. My face buried in a book with a nice cup of coffee 😉

4. Helping People – I love helping people, and it makes my day anytime I can help someone, whether it’s with overcoming a lower back injury, improving their physical performance or even just providing a training recommendation. It truly makes me feel good when I can provide value to others.

To give an example, I had received an email the other day from a fellow who had been following my youtube channel and blog for quite a while. In the email, he had mentioned he had been following me for 2 and a half years, and he wanted to thank me for all of the educational content that I had put out. Here was the email:

“Hello my name is _____, I used to watch your videos over the course of 2 and a half years due to lower back pain that was ruining my life. I’ve recently over the past 6 months recuperated slowly and rarely experience numbness or shooting pains anymore. Now that I am rarely in pain, while it still comes back for a few days maybe, it goes away just as fast; I wanted to send this email in regards to thanking you for all of your educational videos. I honestly gave up on my life and getting better or becoming the best version of myself, but thanks to your educational videos, I am now back to myself, again thank you so much. I feel like my life is back now.”

When I receive emails like this, it motivates me to continue to put out the content that I do. It reminds me of “why” I got into the health and fitness industry, and it makes me feel like I am making a difference in the world, even it’s just one person at a time.

5. Return on Investment – I think that having a health and fitness blog that is growing more and more each day is positive for the return on investment. I feel as I continue to grow, more and more things around me will start to happen. Here is one of the few comments and questions that I had received from a medical school student. Note: Pay attention to the underlined portion. 

“Hey, Remi I have a question for you. So the actual sciatic pain was very minimal now since my injury almost 2 years ago. It’s still not 100%, which is a little disappointing, but considering I can now do almost anything without it causing debilitating pain, that’s still an improvement. Your videos were a tremendous help in getting me on the right path to recovery (minimizing sitting when possible, low back friendly exercise selection, traction + stomach lying, etc.) I do have a question though. Since maybe about October of 2017 I began experiencing a weird sensation like right around the spinous processes of my lumbar spine. It’s almost like a stiffness that feels more uncomfortable when I’m lying on my back (it’s not as prominent when on my stomach). I have to get up and squeeze my glutes together (to stabilize L5-S1) and bend into flexion to make the sensation go away. It’s not necessarily PAINFUL, more uncomfortable. It’s gotten a little bit better since then but I’ve been trying to stretch it out for almost a year now, and that stiff sensation is still there. I’m wondering if you experienced anything like this and it went away in time, or if this is some sort of early onset arthritis that resulted from spending almost a whole year in neutral or extension positions, hardly every going into flexion. Anyway, your content is fantastic and helping a lot of people. If I encounter patients dealing with back pain when I start my Family Medicine rotation in August, I’ll be sure to refer them to your videos.” 

While this is from a student who is about to go through their rotation in family medicine, it’s nice to know that after answering a few of his questions and watching many of my youtube videos that he may now refer patients with low back troubles to my youtube channel. 

When I get comments like this, I can only think that one day, whether that’s in a five or ten-year macro, this will all pay off. Also, that’s not too mention, all the other people whom currently follow my video’s and blog posts. The more people I can help, the more referrals I believe I will get down the road, whether that’s as a customer or even just as a supporter. 

Image licensed from “adrian_ilie826/stock.adobe.com

6. Uniqueness – Well, anyone can simply put up a Health & Fitness Blog and start to write articles, very few people will stick with it. I’ve been putting content out consistently for over 3 years now, and I can say I’ve developed a decent sized community.

While it’s nice to have developed an online community, the “uniqueness” of having created a health and fitness blog was what I thought would be intriguing to potential future employers. Before interning with the Toronto Raptors, I had probably about 20-30 blog posts up and close to about 40 youtube videos.

In my opinion, I believe that when I had applied for the strength and conditioning coach internship with the Toronto Raptors, having a website where I was creating content to educate others stood out from others competing for the same position as me. Looking back at it, I feel it offered as a sense of “uniqueness.”

Overall, I feel that many people in the strength & conditioning world today are looking for uniqueness or something that separates them from the competition. Whether that’s maybe speaking a second language, an internship at a world-recognized organization, having a large social media following or even being a published researcher. Whatever it is, the standard of just having some basic experience, a degree and certificate, does not seem to be good enough anymore. Here was a great tweet recently from a highly regarded strength & conditioning coach addressing this exact topic: 

7. Grow my Personal Brand – I know I have some entrepreneurial spirit behind me because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have started this blog and developed an online training business. Almost anyone in the service industry, whether that’s a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, physical therapist, or chiropractor, the same common theme applies.

They all rely on their clients or patients to generate business unless they are working for an organization such as in a hospital setting or a sports team. Everyone in the service industry that plans on having their own business and being successful with it is probably going to need to grow their personal brand at some point. I’ve just been doing it for over the past 3 years now, and I’ve been trying to build as much career capital along the way. 

 

Conclusion

All in all, those are 7 reasons “why” I write a Health & Fitness Blog.

I love to create content around health and fitness, as well as help people! It makes my day anytime someone takes the time to comment on a blog post of mine or youtube video about how I was able to help them. Blogging can be fun, but at the same time, it’s very rewarding when someone may reach out and say how you’ve saved their life or were able to help them return to training again after a serious low back problem. It’s truly a great feeling. 

Remi

 

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