How to Make a High-quality Workout Video for YouTube at Home in 2022

Healthy and energetic workout videos are evergreen content on YouTube.

Whether you are a professional personal trainer or an avid yogi, making a great workout video and sharing it on YouTube or Instagram can be a great way to promote your fitness course and grow more followers among home workout enthusiasts.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through how to make a workout video yourself at home and offer actionable strategies to film and edit recorded workout videos using a free and online fitness video editor. So, you can make a workout video with styles and branding for target audiences on YouTube or other social media.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

Plan Ahead for Your Workout Video

The last thing you wanna do is randomly record multiple workout video footage and put them together for YouTube. This makes your workout videos look unprofessional and leads to confusion for viewers.

To make a high-quality workout video that appeals to target audiences, you need to consider the following essentials:

Plan ahead for your workout video

1. Your Workout Video Is Made for Whom and About What?

Precisely defining the target audience and purpose of your workout videos can effectively engage target viewers.

Let’s say whether it is a relaxing body and arms stretching workout video for beginners or it is an intense weight workout for mens’ booty and thighs or a lively dance workout for girls, etc. Check how to make more sports videos.

2. How Long Is Your Workout Video?

According to statistics from YouTube, the attention span of YouTubers is around 42 seconds to 10 minutes on average.

In other words, creating a short and sweet workout video stands a better chance for viewing than a longer video. A popular video length for a workout video used by some of the best fitness YouTubers like Pamela Reif is around 8-15 minutes.

3. What Scenes Do You Need to Shoot?

Decide whether you need to record an intro or outro for your workout video. How many close-up, mid-distance, or panoramic scenes do you need? Or do you need to offer instructional words or completely keep silent during the workout process, etc?

These details will set the tone and style for your workout video. A proven strategy is to draw storyboards with a specific scene, action, and words you need to cover in a workout video.

4. Consider the Video Hosting Platform

Different video hosting platforms vary in video format, aspect ratio, and video publishing policies.

So, if you plan to make a workout video for YouTube, then a workout video with 16:9 or horizontal aspect ratio, MP4 format, at least 1080P FHD video resolution is the best choice.

Likewise, if you want to film workout videos for Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat, then filming at 9:16 or vertical aspect ratio with shorter video length is more friendly for mobile users.

Gear Needed for Recording a Workout Video

Essentially, 3 gear are needed for recording a workout video: the camera for filming, the audio recorder, and the lighting. Check how to make a cinematic video.

1. Camera Setup

Any cameras available, capable of recording at least 1080P video with 30FPS, can be used for filming a workout video at home.

Luckily, nowadays, most smartphones like iPhone, Samsung, or Huawei can record cinematic videos with 1080P to 4K resolution, and even up to 60 FPS, you can rely on your mobile phone to record a high-quality workout video.

Select 1080P-4k resolution and 30-60FPS and use a 3axi gimbal to film a workout video

Besides, having a stable image is crucial for making a professional-looking workout video. So, another indispensable tool we highly recommend is having a 3-axis gimbal stabilizer from brands like Hohem or BaseUs. It can help you shoot stable and smooth workout videos with handy features like face tracking, panning, tilting, 360° rotation, and built-in tripod, etc.

2. Audio Recording

It’s a challenging task to capture crisp-clear audio from you as you are constantly moving to demonstrate correct movements. And never depend on your internal mic on the camera or iPhone.

Record the audio of a workout video by a lavalier audio recorder

Instead, a proven strategy is to use a mini lavalier audio recorder laid on your lapel or attached inside your cloth to make it invisible from the viewers while still capturing high-quality audio later for the audio mixing. A recommended brand is Tascam DR-10L.

3. Consistent Lighting

Having consistent lighting is vital for making a high-quality workout video. The actual lighting setup depends on your actual indoor setting.

Lighting for a workout video at home

The classic lighting would be having a key light to light up the face and body of the subject, then a fill light opposite the key light to fill the shadow. Then, the third backlight is to light the background or contour of the subject. If you have only key and fill light, an alternative is to use window light as the background light source as many fitness YouTubers do.

In addition, don’t rely on the fluorescent light at home since it will cause flickering as you film the workout video. You can invest around $100-200 to get dimmable LED lights, softboxes with a diffuser and light stand, etc. for consistent and soft lighting.

If your workout videos turned out to be dark or underexposed, check how to adjust video brightness in viable ways.

How to Film a Workout Video at Home

For the actual filming of a workout video, in addition to meticulous planning and rehearsal, 2 things we believe are of utmost importance.

1. Camera Angle and Camera Movement

If you are recording a workout video alone at home, you can mount a mirrorless camera or an iPhone on the gimbal stabilizer or a tripod and then use the stabilizer's face-tracking mode to track your face.

Make a workout video with multiple camera angles and movements

Meanwhile, flowers, vases, a sofa, or any vintage furniture are great props to be used as a foreground to create depth and dimension for your workout video.

If you have a friend to help you record a workout video, try using multiple camera angles and camera movements like pan or zoom in/out to introduce yourself and the setting of the workout room at home. This will create depth and dimension for your workout video.

Make sure, you switch your camera to manual mode. So you can have full control over ISO, shutter speed, aperture. For iPhone, long tap the screen till you see AE/AF lock and then release your finger to lock the exposure. Record, check, and move to film the next scene.

2. Present Yourself Well in a Workout Video

To make your workout video look professional, you couldn’t afford to miss out on the details like your make-up, outfit, the color of outfit and environment and hairstyle, etc.

Dress well in a workout video

For women, sports bras, leggings, sports shoes are comfortable to wear and can’t go wrong, and don’t forget to tie your long hair back. For men, moisture-wicking T-shirts and sports shorts and shoes are recommended. Check the video footage to see if the color of your clothes and lighting can help you separate from the background color.

Besides, always speak in a calm and friendly tone with genuine smiles and clear instructional words to engage the viewers. You can do some research about the most concerned questions and mistakes people have and make when building waist, legs or abs, etc.

How to Edit the Workout Video Footage

If you don’t have an ideal fitness video editor on your PC or you are a novice for video editing, a user-friendly tool you can use is FlexClip, a free and feature-packed online video editor.

Use FlexClip online video maker for workout video editing

With FlexClip’s tons of designer-made workout video templates, you can instantly swipe pre-made videos and photos with yours and use useful video tools like trimmer, video transitions, animated texts, and royalty-free music and video assets to edit workout video footage into one piece in minutes.

Preview

Workout At Home Explainer

Use This Template

Preview

Workout At Home Tips

Use This Template

Step 1: Select a Workout Video Template and Upload Your Video and Photo Assets

Once you select a free workout video template, you will upload your workout video footage and photos to the FlexClip video editor.

Select a free workout video template to work with

Step 2: Drag and Drop Your Video and Photo Assets to Replace Pre-made Ones

You can do trim or split the video as you replace the template’s video with yours.

Replace the template’s videos and photos with your and trim or cut clips

Step 3: Customize the Detailed Elements in the Workout Video

In the Text tab on the left menu, you can select from hundreds of animated texts and customize the fonts, color scheme, style, motion, alignment, for strong CTAs. Or go to the “Element” tab and scroll down to the bottom to customize an animated timer to display the video length of a specific workout like building abs, neck, or side planks.

Add a dynamic timer for your workout video

Step 4: Do the Audio Mixing

No great workout video is without great audio. Go to the “Music” tab and select from thousands of royalty-free background music and sound effects to your workout video. You may also upload and add your audio narration to the video accordingly.

Mix BGM with royalty-free sound effects and audio recording

Step 5: Preview and Share

Finally, you can add your logo or watermark to the workout video for the branding or go to the “Template” tab on the top left and enter the keywords “YouTube outro” to add an end screen for your workout video.

Customize a YouTube outro and share

Don with the editing. Just hit the “Export“button on the top right corner to download a 1080P MP4 video to your local PC, or directly share it to YouTube channel or Dropbox, or Google Drive. FlexClip will automatically generate a clickable link and an embed code for easy sharing.

Learn from the Best Workout Videos on YouTube

If you are recking your brains for inspiration to make a great workout video, no worries! As a bonus, we’ve put together 3 of the best fitness YouTubers and their iconic workout videos. So, hopefully, you can get your creative juices flowing by watching their iconic workout videos with styles.

1. Pamela Reif – 10 Min Strong Waist Workout with 2 Bottles

Pamela Reif’s 10 min workout video

2. Yoga with Adriene—8Min Morning Yoga to Get the Juices Flowing

Adriene’s moring Yoga workout video

3. Grow with Jo---Full Body Morning Mobility Routine

Jo’s full-body morning warm-up workout video

Frank /

Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.