If you think about it, the whole point of mastering a physical skill is to sort of make it look effortless, right?
But when it comes to workout videos, I think the more perfect a movement looks, the less anyone actually cares to watch it.
Let me explain.
I was just talking to Princy about this today. She is my wife. And she runs a popular fitness studio in Panjim. We were looking at one of her latest workout videos. And I wondered why some videos grab me, while others just get totally boring.
It has nothing to do with how physically difficult the movement actually is.
The video that I saw of Princy (above), whatever she was doing, was clearly not easy. But it was not engaging (to me).
I think here’s what’s happening - if I haven’t tried a particular workout move myself, I basically have little idea how tough it is in reality (unless the video clearly shows that). And when I can’t feel the difficulty, the struggle, I get disengaged.
The same logic may not apply when the “difficulty reference frame” of what I am watching already exists. Like say for running. When most of us see someone running ten or a hundred kilometers, we immediately know it’s insanely hard... mainly because almost all of us have run at some point. The baseline is already set.
Same goes with performance arts like dancing. Most of us have tried to dance. So the moment a Michael Jackson does an insane move, we just know... wow, how did he move like that? We appreciate it right away because the backstory is directly connected to our own experience.
Anyway, so I guess this is my main feedback to those making workout videos that they want the regular folks - like me - to watch (if they do). Make it clear in your videos that what you are doing is difficult (do that early on - in the first one or two seconds). Show me a bunch of failed attempts. Or show the veins popping... the face straining. Struggle is basically the keyword here.
Because normal people (like me) just don’t get it unless we see you sweat.
You spend all this time trying to master something, but maybe looking effortless isn’t actually what people like me want to see.
PS: Below is a 17 year old video of me doing a 10Km in the Andamans (I was in my 5th year of college back then). By the way Youtube recently informed me that my 20+ year old channel now has 25k subscribers. Funny, because a brand new channel that I started only in Jan this year, is already about to hit 15k! :D