How to become a popular fitness blogger? Interview with Tanya TGYM

Tatiana Fedorishcheva, better known to fitness fans as Tanya TGYM, is the founder of one of the most popular Russian-language YouTube channels about sports. Since 2011, Tatiana has worked as a photographer, videographer, and freelancer on the Internet – in the field of web design, but, according to the girl, it was shooting videos that brought her more pleasure than any other activity. For eight years, she was able to earn the trust of more than one and a half million subscribers in YouTube and almost half a million in Instagram. On “Championship” we have already told Tanya’s story of weight loss and fitness, and now we decided to call and personally ask her how she managed to monetize her hobby. Of course, there was no shortage of talk about bodypositivity, the bikini fitness era, and proper nutrition.

– Tanya, now you are a popular blogger. Every day subscribers are waiting for new workouts and tips from you. Let’s remind the readers how it all started.

– It all started in 2012, a long, long time ago, in the beginnings of Russian-language YouTube. Then I, after going to dance classes for a while, decided to complicate my workouts and started doing fitness at home. That is, without trainers, without any mentors. I just took stacks of books and did squats with them. I had no inspirational examples and no way to find the entire program online. In 2012, there was no such thing as blogging. I started my workouts on my own and started watching my nutrition, gathering information bit by bit. Of course, I wanted to share my flood of knowledge and emotions with someone. At some point I found YouTube and realized that there are not only videos about kitties – there are people who make videos and talk about something useful. It came to me that I could create my own blog and show my workouts.

I immediately told my boyfriend, now my husband, about the idea. And if we do something, we do it thoroughly. Right away we started filming workouts together. He was behind the camera, I was on the background of the beige sofa. Nobody understood what to do or how to speak to the audience. That’s how it got to the point where I have a “golden button” on my wall(YouTube-bloggers are given a threshold of 1 million subscribers.–Editor’s note).

In 2012, thanks to the couple’s joint efforts, the TGYM channel appeared, and in the same year Tatiana uploaded her first free home workout complex. Soon the channel was followed by more than 100 thousand subscribers.

– How did you get the idea to start working out?

– I was never very fat, and there was no goal to lose a large number of kilograms. I just wanted to become more open, confident. I went to dance to loosen up a little bit. And as soon as I started to notice some changes in my body, I realized that this is it. I love it, I like the feeling that I can somehow influence my shape, my nutrition.

– Tell us more about how the channel developed.

– In general, fitness channels and training channels (when you have to turn on a video and do something) take a long time to develop and rarely gain a million subscribers, a million views on a video. But they have their own peculiarity: for example, the workout video I made eight years ago can still be watched. It will always be relevant.

But the growth has been really slow. People mostly subscribe on Monday, before New Year’s Eve, before March 8. A lot of people aren’t motivated enough to train on a regular basis. However, during the period of self-imposed isolation, when we were shut down door to door, the growth of the channel really accelerated. Gyms closed, training at home – what do you mean? What can you even do at home? And in fact it turned out that you could do anything. A lot of people found me during that period.

– You said that your husband encouraged you to start working on your body. And before you met him, was he into sports?

– Yes, initially my husband served as such a push, a trigger to lose weight. A lot of girls take phrases like “you need to lose weight” very badly. It all depends on the person. Some may really find it offensive, but for me it served as motivation. And to date, we tease each other to be in tone. This is a normal situation for our couple.

My husband has always been athletic, trained in the gym, and he helped me to learn the technique of exercises. It turned out that initially he was my motivation and now we motivate each other.

– Now he’s completely online too?

– Yes, we have been doing just this project for a long time. For a while we worked in IT-design: we made websites. But, of course, when we started our YouTube channel and reached roughly the same level of income from monetization, at some point it became pointless to do anything else. And we put all our energies exactly on TGYM, on YouTube and our fitness sphere.

– Are you now doing your channel just the two of you or is there a team?

– Just recently we started to emphasize that it’s no longer possible to do it alone. You need to grow in YouTube, in Instagram, and today, no matter what you shoot, no matter how well you do it, it’s very difficult. We don’t know how to promote ourselves properly, we had to shoot videos according to requests, and we wanted to understand the audience for this. So now we have a few people in our team who help in this area.

But shooting the videos, the topics for them, the content – that’s just me. No one interferes in that at all. I can only trust myself to decide what exactly is going to be in the training.

– Is it true that before that you were interested in yacht design?

– After school I wanted to enter the Institute of Shipbuilding, and there was such a course “Yacht Design”. I had been studying at an art school for a long time, so I was more connected with creativity. I didn’t manage to enter the institute, I’m not a student and a total truant, I even skipped physical education. But it turned out that physical education will be my job.

– And how do you define yourself now? Who are you?

– There is such a trendy word – Influencer. An Internet mentor for people who inspire them to train, to eat healthy, to change their lives. After all, among my subscribers there are a lot of girls who wrote us not only “Thank you, I lost 10 kilograms”, but also “Thank you that I was inspired by you and moved to another country”, “Thank you that you helped me realize that I need to change something in my life, and I left my unloved job, left my unloved husband”. In general, an inspiration – that’s how subscribers describe me.

– In addition to your main YouTube platform, you have your own marathons and training sessions on Instagram, and you and your husband are the authors of two books. What brings in the most income and the most interest?

– Marathons. It’s a topic that people are always interested in. It’s cool to get better results in a short period of time, to do workouts that aren’t on YouTube, and to follow a diet that’s designed just for you, and to compete for cash prizes. Who wouldn’t want to?
But of course, it’s always a few different sources that add up to your total income.

– Not too long ago, you posted photos on Instagram of yourself in all the different shapes you’ve been in over your life. Would you say any of them are your perfect, favorite?

– Not that there is a favorite, I judge more by my inner feelings. I think the one I have at the moment, for about a year now. As soon as I stopped obsessing over constant regular workouts, strict dietary restrictions, I established internal harmony in my head. And visually for someone it is too tight, as they say, you need to lose 2-3 kilograms or, on the contrary, add more. You evaluate another person by your personal signs of a beautiful body. I now have the two most important things – inner and outer shell – completely coincide, so I feel comfortable.

– Did you have a lot of limitations when you were doing bikini fitness?

– Thankfully, it wasn’t such a long period of time. It was literally five or six months. But I was preparing for the performance, because if I have a goal, I have to approach it thoroughly (in 2017, being in the United States by invitation, Tatiana participated in the Arnold Classic as a member of the Midway lab team.– Editor’s note). It was just a point that I always wanted to put a check mark next to, and nothing more. I wasn’t going to make this my career and get to worlds. I realized I could achieve super dry form, but did I need it?

– Did such an experiment take a toll on your health?

– That’s the thing, long-term dietary restrictions can’t help but have an effect. Again, everything is individual, and each girl tolerates it in her own way. Naturally, it affected my health as a woman. Nothing global, but still I felt the difference. I thought about it – then I don’t need all these performances twice as much. That’s when I decided to stop restricting myself so much.

– We have already started talking about the fact that when you started training, there was no Internet with its current capabilities. Don’t you think that there were not only no examples for motivation, but also imposed stereotypes about how a person should look like? Do you care about the popular topic of bodypositivity today?

– Let’s say let’s call the reference point 2012. It was the time of the rise of fitness, fitness bikini: girls like Ekaterina Usmanova were the standard then. And such a vision of the figure was born, when you seem to be taut, but you seem to have buttocks, and your abs are barely there. And then came the time of hard hypertrophy. More massive pumped up girls became popular. It became the norm.

Soon the viewer got bored of that too, and so we suddenly see the bikini fitness era go away in 2015-16. In fashion, athletic bodies within the norms, although the concept of norms is different for everyone. Later and such forms begin to seem too photoshopped, too perfect. And 2018 comes when girls stop being shy to show their cellulite, stretch marks, folds, unfortunate angles.

I’m only happy about that, because even in the fitness industry, the pressure is felt. It’s like I’m under an obligation to walk around with hard abs all the time and never have cellulite. And naturally, that’s a little bit of a turnoff. Yes, I am in favor of people, and even more so bloggers, not to be shy to show themselves now in some natural positions, so that people realize that we are all alive and with our own peculiarities. It’s very interesting to see how this will grow further. But right now I really like the trend.

– So you yourself are now not shy to publish such photos on Instagram and honestly talk about the flaws?

– A year ago, I posted a post about going to an anti-cellulite massage, taking a course. I didn’t have cellulite there, but the shape was definitely not perfect. At the time, I was very harshly berated. I’m sure that if now, in 2020, I were to post this photo, the comments would be, “Tanya, you’ve finally shown that you’re human too.” People are starting to realize that this is normal and appropriate.

– You moved again not too long ago. This time you chose Montenegro as your place of residence. Does it become more difficult to work with an audience that watches you from another country, other conditions?

– I have a lot of experience in comparing what happens to the audience when you move. Because we changed locations very often. But I don’t emphasize the country because I’m not a travel blogger or a relocation blogger, that’s not the basis. The picture changes, and that’s obvious. More often than not, it just becomes more enjoyable for the viewer to watch.

– Is it harder to stick to a healthy diet when there are a lot of unfamiliar foods in the stores?

– I’ve started to take a simpler approach to nutrition now. I give myself time to try different foods and new dishes. It’s always interesting, and I can’t say: “Oh, no, I won’t eat it, because it’s forbidden”. I am calm about it, because I realize that it is not 100% of my diet. And everyone should understand that. I do not need to set myself some abbreviations: I am on PP or IG and so on. You just need to understand that the basis of the diet is a healthy diet, foods that will give you beautiful skin, hair. But in the percentage ratio, for example, 20% per day may well be your favorite goodies. The same chips, bars or some unusual sweets that are only here. It is normal to want to try, of course. The main thing is that the basis was healthy products, and then you will not need to call your diet something. It will be just a normal diet of a healthy person.

– Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Will you still be doing what you’re doing?

– I’m not going to make a specific 10 year plan, but in the next few years I plan to keep doing what I’m doing. Maybe the formats will change, because if you move in the blogging sphere, you have to somehow transform your channel to make it interesting for the audience. Maybe I’ll go on TikTok(笑), why not. I’m very detached from it for now.

But I will definitely stay in the fitness sphere, because it’s something I like, and it just happened to be lucky that my hobby was monetized. What could be better?