Fitness bloggers tell "hot and spicy" stories

The popularity of the Spring Festival movie "Hot and Spicy" has given a shot in the arm to the fitness industry, which has been in decline in recent years. The amount of fitness content on major social media has soared, and the business of gyms has also improved. Although the impact of a movie is limited, no one wants to miss this "hot and spicy" opportunity.

The Spring Festival movie season has come to an end. The box office of "Hot as Hell" has exceeded the 3 billion mark, firmly occupying the top spot of the Spring Festival season. Jia Ling has frequently appeared on hot searches during this period.

However, Jia Ling is not the only winner of this movie.

Online, videos and graphic notes with the keyword "hot and hot" are appearing one after another on major social media. On e-commerce platforms, sales of fitness equipment such as boxing gloves and kettlebells have soared. Offline, major gyms and boxing halls have launched "hot and hot" related packages. It seems that no one in the fitness industry wants to miss this wave of traffic.

Whether you have seen the movie or not, just like the title of the movie, the weight loss and fitness industry is now "hot as hell".

1. Fitness content boom

Jia Ling's weight loss of 100 pounds has undoubtedly provided the best topic for fitness bloggers at the beginning of the year.

Whether it is the topics in the movie "Le Ying lost 100 pounds in a year", "Le Ying pull-ups", "Le Ying deadlifted 120kg", or outside the movie "Jia Ling talks about not needing so many muscles now", "Jia Ling's latest material", etc., they have become the content that fitness bloggers and weight loss bloggers talk about with relish.

On Bilibili, Canadian @CoachGreg created three pieces of content around "Hot and Spicy" before and after the filming of "Hot and Spicy". They were "Coach Greg's In-depth Analysis: Is It Possible for Jia Ling to Lose 100 catties in a Year?", "Jia Ling Slaps Coach Greg in the Face" and "120kg Deadlift, What Level?". After watching the movie, he not only analyzed Jia Ling's fitness method, but also analyzed how difficult the process was from the perspective of a fitness blogger. While bringing more traffic to himself, he also created more popularity for the movie.

Image source: Station B

Coincidentally, fitness blogger @闫帅奇 also systematically analyzed how to lose weight healthily like Jia Ling in the video "The Secret of Jia Ling's 100-pound Weight Loss". The number of views of this video reached 1.731 million, which is higher than the average video data of @闫帅奇.

On Douyin, apart from the creators in the film and television area, fitness bloggers are the most common under the topic #热辣卷熱#. @中田健身工作室's videos are tagged with #热辣卷熱 to attract traffic, fitness experts show off the same 120kg deadlift as Jia Ling, and netizens who have lost weight show off the same comparison photos.

Image source: TikTok

On Xiaohongshu, which is dominated by female users, the relevant notes are more detailed. After watching the movie, users share their experiences and insights on weight loss recipes, exercise and fitness, and weight loss experiences. Search for the keyword "hot and spicy", and the "weight loss" tag will pop up below.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

According to the data from Relang, as of February 28, the #瘦 topic on Xiaohongshu had 15.879 million interactions, becoming the 21st most popular keyword on the site. In the field of sports and fitness content, topics such as #见人比健身, #瘦腿, and #又时间减肥了 also directly occupied the top list and continued to be popular. Users and bloggers set new year weight loss goals under these topics.

From the number of likes and comments, we can see that many netizens agree with this kind of content. "I want to be hot this year!" "It's so inspiring" "If Jia Ling is not a heroine, what else can she be?"... While UGC contributes to the popularity of "Hot", Jia Ling's weight loss story outside the movie is also bringing users a constant source of fitness motivation.

2. Weight loss story - the best mental nitrogen pump for people who want to lose weight

Weight loss stories have always been the "traffic code" of the Internet.

From the domestic variety show "Super Fat Loss King" to the ubiquitous before-and-after weight loss comparison pictures on short video platforms, we can see how much people love to watch this kind of "comeback plot" and are shocked by the comparison before and after weight loss.

Image source: Station B

Users’ preferences influence creators. For some bloggers, losing weight and exercising is a shortcut to rapid transformation. For example, Liu Bo, the former “Abstract Godfather”, turned over a new leaf and successfully transformed himself because of fitness.

Once upon a time, Brother Yaoshui became an instant hit because he talked to someone on the live broadcast room for seven hours on the microphone, "Do you deserve it?" and became the godfather of emoticons. However, he was later banned for talking about sensitive issues in the live broadcast room.

Now, he has not only made a comeback as a Tik Tok musician, but also started live fitness broadcasts, successfully transforming himself. Netizens commented, "Yaoshui is dead, and Liu Bo is alive," "My own failure is terrible, but Yaoshui, your success makes me more worried," "Brother, you are serious," "Liu Bo, you have become a stranger to me now"...

Image source: TikTok

@药水哥 is not the only blogger who has become famous through fitness. @刘畊宏, a fitness blogger who became popular during the epidemic, became famous for his energetic live fitness broadcasts. Since then, countless Liu Genghong boys and girls have opened @刘畊宏's live broadcast room every night, listening to the Compendium of Materia Medica bgm and doing fat-burning exercises.

There are many fitness bloggers active in Douyin live broadcast rooms, Xiaohongshu and Bilibili all year round, teaching netizens how to exercise, exercise with companions, and prepare fat-reducing meals.

It has been observed that fitness bloggers’ online live broadcasts and sparring videos not only provide positive feedback and professional guidance, but the indoor environment also reduces the impact of external factors. In this case, once users believe that a fitness blogger is trustworthy and that the intensity and effect of the fitness content are appropriate, they will continue to follow the blogger and have a high degree of stickiness.

In this context, a number of fitness bloggers, including @Pamela, who focuses on high-intensity HIT, @Saturday Wild, who is friendly to beginners, and @Liu Genghong, who focuses on aerobics, have emerged one after another. While attracting more users, they are also intensifying competition in the fitness blogger industry.

3. Revitalized gyms

Although online fitness has set off a wave of national fitness in 2022, the traffic has ups and downs, and fitness itself is ultimately difficult and not easy to stick to.

In fact, the popularity of online fitness is gradually fading in 2023. After the epidemic, the fitness blogger @刘畊宏, who was once very popular in 2022, is facing the problem of declining traffic, and fewer and fewer users are following his live broadcast room.

As a representative brand of online fitness, KEEP is also unable to avoid the decline of popularity. Against the backdrop of the emergence of competitors and revenue losses, KEEP's stock price plummeted after the beginning of 2024 and fell into trouble.

The hit "Hot as Hell" at this time is undoubtedly a shot in the arm for the fitness industry.

It is observed that on Meituan, many fitness industry businesses have marked the keyword "hot and spicy" on the detail page to attract customers. According to Meituan data, since the broadcast of "Hot and Spicy" on February 10, the search volume of keywords such as "boxing" has increased by 388.4% compared with the same period of last Spring Festival, and the search volume of keywords such as "female boxing" has increased by more than 10 times. The search volume of Dianping has increased by 257.2%, and the number of comments has increased by 337.53% year-on-year.

Image source: Meituan

Coincidentally, the data of "2024 Spring Festival Fitness Craze" released by Leke Sports showed that the number of single-store members who came to the store to exercise during the Spring Festival increased by 21% compared with the same period in previous years (2021 and 2022 data); and the two days after the festival (2.18-2.19) compared with the Spring Festival (2.1-2.17), the daily average value of registered users of Leke Sports soared by 60%.

In addition to offline courses, various "Jia Ling's same" equipment has also attracted the attention of netizens. The number of likes on Xiaohongshu's posts on the same clothing and equipment has exceeded 10,000, and has also made many sportswear from the sports brand lululemon popular.

According to the Shanghai Securities News, Li Dong'an, a senior researcher at the KEEP Sports Research Institute, said: "During the Spring Festival, driven by Jia Ling's successful weight loss, the public's enthusiasm for fitness has increased significantly. The sales of bicycles in the KEEP Tmall flagship store increased by 219% month-on-month, skipping ropes increased by 487.82% month-on-month, yoga mats increased by 182.45% month-on-month, and kettlebells increased by 325.74% month-on-month."

Fitness stories have always been the best spiritual nitrogen pump on the Internet. "Hot and Sizzling" not only brings topics to bloggers, but also brings sales growth to businesses.

Xiao Huang, a practitioner at a Beijing boxing club, said: "After the broadcast of 'Hot and Spicy', our boxing gym has received a lot of inquiries and membership applications, especially from female members. We also followed this trend and made a 'Hot and Spicy' themed package, which sold very well."

However, practitioners in the fitness industry also understand that the impact of a movie is limited, and problems such as intensified competition in the fitness industry and people's declining enthusiasm are not far away.

Just like what netizens commented: "Although I know that this wave of craze may subside soon, it is better to have it than nothing."

Author: Guang Ye

Source: WeChat public account "TopKlout (ID: TopKlout)"