Since its founding by three former employees of PayPal in 2005, YouTube has reigned supreme for the purposes of sharing user-generated videos and corporate media. This innovative platform not only reshapes popular culture but also allowed for the inception of a new profession — the Youtuber.

Individuals have found fame through informing, entertaining, and demonstrating their areas of expertise through creating funny original content or through tutorials on YouTube.

However, YouTube can also be instructive; one can access talks by venerated professors. Indeed, many turn to YouTube to supplement their learning through the use of channels like Khan Academy.

Fitness, too, has been changed by YouTube and YouTubers. In 2014, YouTube reported that over 5,500 years’ worth of yoga videos were consumed by viewers. Advantages to this alternative exercise venue are that you never have to leave your home and often do not have to purchase equipment.

Many avoid the gym due to fear of judgement from others, distance, or financial strain, but YouTube videos bring the exercise studio to you. Together, YouTube and technology work concurrently to enhance ease of access.

The incentive for these individuals to produce and continue interacting with their communities aside from, presumably, a sense of self-satisfaction, is the Partnership Program. Since it was introduced, YouTubers are now able to earn a living from what previously might have been just a hobby. YouTube’s top 500 partners earn more than $100,000 annually.

Popular Fitness YouTubers include the effervescent Blogilates, who has over two million subscribers. A certified pilates instructor, Cassey Ho sets her workouts to Top 40 songs and refers to them as her POP Pilates workouts. She also holds a degree in biology.

The Fitness Blender channel also has around two million subscribers and is run by certified instructors Daniel and Kelli Segar, a married couple that offers full-length workouts for everyone.

Even companies like Lionsgate look to capitalize on these opportunities. The channel BeFiT offers new workouts everyday by instructors such as Jillian Michaels and Jane Fonda.

It is important to keep in mind that exercise is a way of shaping your body, but it is also potentially an easy way to harm yourself if done improperly. Reliable YouTube fitness channels are run by people with formal training and certification but fitness channels across the board have thousands of subscribers.