These 'FitTok' Influencers Want Way More Than 15 Seconds of Fame
IN LESS THAN A MINUTE, you can accomplish a lot more than you’d think. If you’re fit and (perhaps more importantly) imaginative, you could knock out a number of pushups that matches your age, your movements in lockstep with the beat of a trendy pop song playing in the background. Or you could skateboard down an empty airport runway, zooming past the grounded planes as if they were benches along a sleepy boardwalk.
Toss in a tiny bit of tech savviness and you could also record those feats and post them to TikTok, the super-popular video app that lets its millions of users share short videos augmented with mind-bending effects to create all manner of viral sensations.
When 22-year-old Antonie Lokhorst did that match-your-age pushup challenge earlier this year, the resulting video racked up 3.9 million views. And when 19-year-old Demi Bagby took her board to the runway, she got 2.3 million views. That’s a lot of eyeballs—and an intriguing new opportunity to inspire others to get moving and sweating. It’s fitspo-tainment on TikTok: Let’s just call it FitTok.
For fitness influencers, FitTok represents the chance to harness seemingly endless and often lowbrow amusements and transform them into something that could potentially (or at least arguably) improve the lives of millions. These videos deliver not-so-serious messages around fitness in a way that makes the idea of living an active life seem fun and more accessible, even if you’re not capable of doing wild back handspring and backflip stunts in the middle of the street like Jack Payne, 22, who has 2.4 million followers and counting.
Because video length is so limited on the platform and there’s a premium placed on brevity, the best TikToks hinge on someone taking action. The result is a new kind of participatory playground with emerging stars posting workouts, challenges, and dances that you’re invited to try and share with your own friends. If Instagram was initially developed to resemble an art gallery, TikTok is more like a rave inside a carnival fun house. To clarify, that’s a good thing.
The app was born in 2018 after the Chinese company ByteDance acquired the cult teen lip-synching app Musical.ly. ByteDance merged it with an in-house lip-synching app and added more editing features to mirror the zany energy of Vine, the ill-fated yet beloved short-video app that bit the dust in 2017. Except followers don’t just copy trends and hashtag challenges—they can improve on them.
TikTok is the fastest-growing non-game app worldwide. It was downloaded by approximately 115 million people in March and has more than 800 million active users in 154 countries around the world. Celebrities like Will Smith, Jack Black, and Jason Derulo—not to mention brands like Chipotle, The Washington Post, and the NBA—are all on board and broadcasting. At the same time, roughly 60 percent of all users are between 16 and 24 years old, making the cultural ripple effect of what’s popular inescapable.
Case in point: Before “Old Town Road” spent 19 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and turned Lil Nas X into a household name, the song went viral on TikTok. And you’ve probably seen everyone from A-Rod and J-Lo to Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie—or even your best friend’s parents—take the “Flip the Switch” challenge, which started out as another TikTok creation.
Although a TikTok representative said there weren’t any concerted efforts to poach users from rival platforms like Instagram, TikTok is focused on making fitness personalities happy. The company’s so-called Creator team works closely with a select group of users (they won’t say influencers) to support, as the tech jargon goes, “content-performance insights, elevation, and growth opportunities.”
Maybe you don’t care what platform you’re on anymore, so long as what’s in your scroll entertains you. But Fitfluencers whose livelihood depends on capturing our attention to help us transform our own lives are thinking about the power of FitTok a lot. Can a deluge of lower-fi, self-promotional, commercial-length spots truly change lives? And can the creators of those videos hashtag out a living, or even become rainmakers?
To find out, Men’s Health talked to four rising FitTok icons to see how they’re learning to adapt, entertain, and make the trends their own. These creators are entertaining, loud, and nimble; they’re unbelievably plugged in to an Internet culture that’s constantly cannibalising itself and moving on to the next shiny, hilarious, strange thing. While other social-media platforms focus on helping users share experiences—like vacation pics on Facebook, or fancy meals shots on Instagram—FitTok is all about inspiring others to go do something.
JAMES TOLLEFSON IS IN really good shape. Bored by the banality of his software-engineering career, the 29-year-old began posting ab-training videos and shirtless waterfront selfies to his Instagram several years ago in hopes of building a devoted following. He eventually gained more than 35,000 Instagram followers, and he quit his day job to become a personal trainer in March.
But it wasn’t Tollefson’s success on Instagram that motivated him to make this major life decision. It was his runaway triumph—more than triple the following in less than six months—on FitTok. “At the very beginning, everyone makes fun of you for having a TikTok,” Tollefson says about how all his gym friends reacted. “Some people think I’m doing stupid dances, but it’s like, No, I’m doing straight-up fitness.” Turns out, it’s a pretty good flex.
Recent Hits:
Tollefson doing step-back pushups alongside his girlfriend while bracing between reps against a Jeep Wrangler that would otherwise run them over; a “Bigger Biceps in 30 days” at-home instructional video; a morning shake recipe set to Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.”
Strategy:
Test, test, and test some more. “You learn your niche,” Tollefson says. But only after experimenting with video lengths, editing cuts, and other micro variables that define a successful FitTok video. “You try to get people to watch as much of the video as possible, because it does better,” he says about the service’s trending algorithms. Also, those trends are your friends, since you can strategically jump on hashtags to actually attract new followers.
At the beginning of some of Tollefson’s videos, he’ll pay homage to something trending and finish with service, like doing the viral “Laxed Siren Beat” dance before moving on to an accessible ab-workout routine. In that video, he openly acknowledges the tactic with an onscreen pop-up that reads “Am I trendy yet?”
Next Steps:
Tollefson’s entrepreneurial plans include online coaching classes and fitness e-books. “Right now, I’m trying to get my website going,” he says. “I’m going to be offering personal training, so the moneymaker is going to be getting all of those eyeballs on my profile to click on my website to buy a plan or one-on-one training or whatever.”
The problem is that TikTok doesn’t let creators post product links, so most can’t share a direct path to whatever they're selling. Tollefson hopes his TikTok followers will jump to Instagram, or seek him out directly. Otherwise, his income on TikTok comes from more creative sources. “People reach out to my friends and reach out to me, and they’ll pay you to use their song in your TikTok, or they’ll actually have you physically use what they’re trying to sell, whether it’s sports drinks, energy bars, whatever,” he says, although he declined to share what products are paying for the endorsement.
THIS DUTCH INFLUENCER GOT into TikTok almost on accident, after his first video of a front lever—a difficult calisthenics manoeuvre—took off. Within four days, the post had gained more than 250,000 likes and 10 million views. Now Antonie Lokhorst adapts his physicality to popular TikTok trends to get the most possible viewers on his profile. He has an apparel deal with Gymshark, which maintains a stable of high-level influencer endorsers. In other words, he’s reached the highest level a fitness star can on the service, because it doesn’t yet have the pay-per-play monetisation of YouTube.
Recent Hits:
A Super Mario–themed pushup challenge that uses the app’s motion-tracking feature to control a flying onscreen avatar; a seemingly normal workout that reveals Lokhorst sneaking bites and swigs of sugary treats at the top of each rep; a six-pack-abs circuit for beginners, costarring his cats as workout buddies and added resistance.
Strategy:
Lokhorst’s front-lever video was a hit, but others that feature him earnestly playing guitar haven’t fared so well. His main focus now is identifying the trends by following other prominent creators, then putting his own fitness-centric spin in a response video—like when he mirrored dance moves to share a full calisthenics session. Being associated with Gymshark helps him work with other brand endorsers to post team-up videos that help boost everyone’s views. One recent variation on the #stairshuffle challenge that vaulted into pullups with air walking gained more than 3 million likes.
Next Steps:
Even though he’s about as successful as an influencer can be, Lokhorst isn’t quite convinced social media can be a viable long-term strategy. “I’m going with it and seeing what happens,” he says, noting that he has a degree in sports management to fall back on. “I don’t have any plans for long-term. If it stops in a year, I’m okay with that. But now it’s fun to see how people react right now and what I can get from it.”
AS A FORMER PROFESSIONAL BODYBUILDER, the 44-year-old British fitness influencer Ulisses Jr. operates as a first-name-only brand. He grew up in New York City and went on to become a two-time MuscleMania Pro World Champion and two-time MuscleMania SuperBody Champion. After winding down his competitive career, he got even more famous on social media, where he has more than 7.3 million followers on Instagram and half a million subscribers on YouTube.
When FitTok arrived, he was more than game to experiment. “The people who succeed in life are the people who adapt to changes,” he says. “So if you can adapt and move with the times and see how social media is evolving, then you can do very well.” He’s racked up 500,000 followers in the few months since he joined the platform by finding new ways to play to our short attention span.
Recent Hits:
Smashing his partner’s face—and getting his own face smashed—into pillows covered in baby powder for the #PowderSlapChallenge; dancing shirtless in jeans and lip-synching to “Nice to Know Ya” by J Boog; turning down pancakes and pizza but mimicking a giggling baby when presented with BioTechUSA protein powder.
Strategy:
While Ulisses’s Instagram feed prominently features workouts and glamour shots with the seriously jacked influencer holding tubs of proteins like they’re little votive candles, his TikTok is heavy on personality and humor. He dances, plays pranks on his family, flips the bird wearing a Thanos Infinity Stone gauntlet. It’s all about bridging the gap between his credibility as a trusted fitness source and as a goofy family man.
“Although I do a lot of lifestyle stuff on my TikTok, I always have some sort of fitness element in there,” he says. That includes brand plugs like sporting his “Dedication Has No Limitation” apparel or playing up sponsor BioTechUSA with the giggling-baby video. “You may not have millions of followers on TikTok if you’re a fitness guy, because it’s all about pranks and funny stuff,” he says. “But you can still build a substantial following.”
Next Steps:
Patience! “Instagram started in a similar way, and they found a way to evolve and make it more legitimate. I believe TikTok will follow in those footsteps,” Ulisses says.
That means learning what works on TikTok, inside and out, and serving the preexisting audience—and pivoting at the perfect time. “In the beginning, I’ll play the game of posting short videos, joking around, having a laugh. But I know what I’m doing, [and] when it gets to a certain level, I’ll start pushing more of my programs. I’ll start posting more training stuff.”
EVEN THOUGH SHE’S STILL a teenager, Demi Bagby is already well established in the fitness social-media space. She developed her own brand of smiling, flipping fitness on Instagram, but she’s been using TikTok since it was Musical.ly, before 2018. “I got on it because I definitely saw a future in it, but I wasn’t sure which route to take,” she says. “I was like, Do I post the normal content that I’m posting? Do I have to lip-synch?” (The answer: Yes, but not always.) Either way, each post manages to showcase both her ebullient personality and her athletic prowess, often with wild stunts and manoeuvres. “For fitness, the game has been changed with TikTok, because it’s so much more fun,” she says.
Recent Hits:
A planking, tumbling collaboration challenge with fellow fitness influencer Scott Mathison; a lip-synching, variation-flipping plank challenge to “Hit Yo Rollie” (the new-age “Macarena”); her own freestanding take on the #piedialmurochallenge backed by a Shakira track.
Strategy:
Post everything, everywhere. “I’m not afraid. I’m just like, This is me, this is who I am, like love it or don’t–type gal,” she says. “If I have some cool content for TikTok, I’m not afraid to post it on Instagram.” But Bagby is also aware of the platform’s reliance on trends. She says that she takes cues from what she sees on the app’s Discover and For You pages to stay up to speed. “Definitely using the most trending sounds and hashtags and ideas—the giant mix of everything is what makes [TikTok] the best it can be.”
As a teen herself, Bagby might have the most direct influence on the youth-oriented platform. “People on TikTok are seeing these challenges and seeing these trends and they don’t keep scrolling—they’re like, I want to go try that trend,” she says. “So instead of scrolling all day, they’re going outside, they’re trying new things, they’re trying new workouts. So I think it’s really awesome to inspire everybody and say, Hey, fitness is easy. It can be fun. Just get out there and do your best. And people are really seeing that, appreciating it, and going for it.”
Next Steps:
Bagby is looking to channel her social-media fame and sponsorships into a new offering that she controls completely. She recently released a $30 fitness app that gives her fans access to a workout program complete with instructional videos, which provide more direction than her flashy social-media posts. So far an estimated 10,000 people have reportedly signed up.
The ‘Go for It’ Platform
TO THE UNINITIATED, it’s easy to underestimate FitTok. But one of the most common complaints from health and fitness pros is that the general public isn’t ready to commit to serious training plans—that the everyday person wants the aesthetic results without doing any of the work.
FitTok takes that notion and turns it on its head: Why should health and fitness be so damn serious? The next generation has the power to define what fitness will mean online in the future, after all. So physical activity doesn’t need to be something you have to plan around and hold separate from whatever else you have going on.
On average, it’s possible for an influencer with between 100,000 and half a million followers to get paid $5,000 for participating in a deal that is typically one in-feed Instagram post and one Instagram Story (and allows the sponsoring company to use the athlete’s name and image for up to 12 months in related marketing). On the higher end, influencers with more than 5 million followers might make upward of $18,000 for their participation. But it’ll take a lot more FitToks that Instagram posts to make that money.
That’s because each dispatch disappears quickly, it’s still hard to track user engagement, and it’s hard to predict what might go viral, says Ishveen Anand, the CEO and founder of OpenSponsorship, a service that connects brands with athletes willing to promote their services and products. OpenSponsorship generally prices the rate per TikTok video at roughly half of what a person can command for an Instagram post.
“The way TikTok works, virality is not necessarily equal to the number of followers you have, so it’s kind of hard to predict what’s going to do well and what’s not,” Anand says. “It’s a little more like [putting your] finger in the air. How much do I want to get paid for this?”
That’s bound to change as the service refines the way it can keep creators happy. As Anand points out, the cooler the content they’re incentivised to make, the more popular the service will continue to become.
In the meantime, it means FitTokers may have plenty of misses between hits, which seems like a pretty good sign for the rest of us making stuff just for the fun of it. As Bagby puts it: “I think TikTok is definitely the biggest ‘go for it’ platform. Everybody’s just like, Who cares if you fail, who cares what it looks like, who cares if it’s funny? Just do it for you.”
You may or may not get famous. But if you break a sweat, then something’s working.
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