31 Mar, 2020
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Influencer marketing is big business.
With 17% of companies allocating marketing budget towards influencer marketing, there’s never been a better time to up your game and make the jump from Instagram user to fitness influencer.
However, as more and more brands compete for eyes on Instagram, the competition among influencers is increasing as well.
Related: How to Start a Fitness Instagram
With this in mind, we thought we’d put together a list of the top fitness influencers on Instagram and explore how they make money, the sort of content they post, and share some key learnings that are essential to growing your account.
Let’s break out the sweatbands and take a look!
Michelle Lewin is the most popular fitness influencer with over 13 million followers!
She has multiple income streams that she promotes on Instagram, including a range of supplements, workout equipment, and fitness apps.
Staying true to yourself is a fantastic way of building trust with your followers and her down-to-Earth approach shines through in her content and she even posts in her native language.
The main way Michelle promotes her products is by showing them off. Her workout clothing line, for example, is often prominent in her photos.
Perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t bombard her followers with sales pitches and links. She instead lets her products speak for themselves and provides a link in her bio if people are interested in purchasing.
Coming in at a close second is Jen Selter, with just under 13 million followers.
While Jen’s photos and videos are predominantly based on fitness, her captions often touch on mental health issues such as self-esteem and body image. This adds an extra element to Jen’s content and presents a more holistic approach to health.
In terms of products, Jen has her own protein bars and is a trainer on the Fitplan app.
In her bio, Jen funnels people to her Youtube channel, where she posts fitness workouts and tips. This helps her to cross-pollinate her other social media channels for greater reach.
Kayla Itsines has over 10 million followers, making her the third and final fitness influencer to reach that milestone.
Kayla started out as a personal trainer before founding Bikini Body Guides, a membership program that helps over 30 million women get into shape. She’s also authored a book with the same name.
Kayla posts a wide range of content to her Instagram, including workouts, meals, and behind-the-scenes glimpses. Where Kayla sets herself apart, however, is how she shares before and after photos of women on her Bikini Body Guides program.
Sharing her followers’ photos helps establish a community and empowers her fans. It brings her closer to her audience and makes her more trustworthy and likeable as a result. It also shows that her program achieves remarkable results which is a far more effective marketing tactic that simply stating it.
The first male fitness influencer on our list is the incredibly-named Simeon Panda with over 5 million followers.
Like many of the top fitness influencers, Simeon has a couple of clothing lines that he promotes through Instagram and also offers online training plans.
The majority of his Instagram content links out to his Youtube videos and consists of photos and videos of his workouts with the occasional meal thrown in.
It’s clear that Simeon uses Instagram as a first-touch for his followers with the goal of driving them to you more in-depth content on Youtube.
Lauren Kagan has nearly 4 million followers which definitely puts her in the fitness influencer category, but she is also a qualified nurse and uses her unique skill set to her advantage.
Like many influencers, she promotes workout and nutrition plans in her Instagram fitness bio but also spends a lot of time focusing on dietary advice (and leveraging her nursing background).
By showing off her expertise, Lauren positions herself as someone that’s not only knowledgeable but also trustworthy.
Massy Arias is an up-and-coming fitness influencer with over 2.5 million followers.
Particularly impressive is the short amount of time in which Massy has accumulated these followers and she does a great job of promoting both supplements and clothing to them.
While most of her content consists of workout advice, she also shares adorable photos of her daughter. This makes her more human and personable, forging a stronger connection to her followers.
This connection is further improved with Massy’s sister account where she shares progress photos from people on her fitness programs.
Also coming in at around 2.5 Million followers is Emily Skye.
Emily offers training and diet plans through her own app, and is a global brand ambassador for Reebok!
Much like Massy, the bulk of her content focuses on workouts and diets, but she doesn’t hesitate to include personal photos of her young daughter which helps to establish a closer relationship with her followers.
Emily has an incredibly loyal following in women looking to stay fit throughout their pregnancy and much of her content seems to focus on reinforcing that loyalty instead of gaining more followers.
Coming in at 2.6 Million followers, Joe Wicks is the second man on our Instagram fitness influencers list.
Joe rose to prominence with the release of his “Lean In 15” cookbooks, and these are his primary source of income. He also offers a 90-day training plan through his app, and partners with companies like Gousto and MyProtein.
Joe’s content is a mixture of tasty-looking meals, workouts, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of his daily life. He also offers up a lot of free recipes.
By focusing on providing as much value as he can to his followers, Joe has established himself as an expert in his field, receiving press attention from the likes of Grazia and Cosmo.
With just over 2 Million followers, Rachel Brathen is one of the leading yoga fitness influencers on Instagram.
One thing we love about Rachel is that she makes it clear that she isn’t all about fitness and is a mom as well. Her content reflects this, with as many posts exploring motherhood as they do fitness.
When she isn’t doing yoga every damn day, Rachel keeps herself busy writing books, including her recent memoir. Her other sources of income include yoga training and retreats.
With slightly less than 2 Million followers, Alexia Clark is still worth keeping an eye on.
Alexia left a lucrative marketing job to pursue her fitness passions, and now makes a living through personal training.
Her content focuses on workouts, sharing tips and tricks, and she niches down with a particular focus on home workouts.
In focusing on home workouts, Alexia tackles a common pain point head on: The lack of access to a gym and workout equipment.
By providing a solution to this pain point, Alexia can help lots of people and grow her influence as a result.
Alexa Jean Hunt comes in at eleventh in our list of the top fitness influencers with over 1.5 Million followers.
Alexa’s main product offering is her “Bodē By Lex” app, which offers diet and training plans and is her primary bio promotion.
Her content has recently started to include photos of her family, including her new baby. She’s also shared photos of her pregnancy and encouraged her followers to tag along on her journey.
Her account is incredible fun and she does a great job of balancing family and fitness while including the people that are most important to her.
With just under 1.5 Million followers, Crossfit legend Rich Froning has fast established himself as a top fitness Instagram account to follow.
In addition to partnerships with the Reebok and Advocate, Rich makes a living through the variety of training plans and merchandise he offers through his website.
As a 4-time Crossfit champion (aka the fittest man on earth), it should come as no surprise that most of Rich’s posts are about workouts with a heavy emphasis on strength. There are also plenty of pics of his family and followers can easily jump over to one of his business’s accounts to see how his Crossfit team is training.
We’d be willing to be that majority of Rich’s followers are fans of Crossfit and he does a great job of posting content that speaks directly to them with images of pure physicality, competitions, and training sessions.
Lauren Fisher is another Crossfitter and is the final woman on our list of top fitness influencers, having recently reached the 1 Million milestone!
Lauren founded and promotes her own brand, Grown Strong, which empowers women to get fit with a focus on strength training.
Her content is never boring and seems to revolve around travel and the immense number of sports she plays. While this might seem like the opposite of niche, it clearly does a good job engaging and inspiring her followers.
The final fitness influencer on our list to reach 1 Million followers is Sam Asghari.
Sam’s content is very inspirational: while his fitness and workout videos make up some of the content, a lot of it focuses more on lifestyle and maintaining a life worth living.
Interestingly, Sam doesn’t bombard his followers with pitches for his products. In fact, the only product he sells is his clothing line, and he only promotes it through a link in his bio.
This minimal approach makes Sam more authentic and helps improve his relationship with his followers.
With just under 1 Million followers, Shaun T rounds up our list of fitness influencers.
Shaun refers to himself as a “Fitness Motivator” and this is clearly evident in his Instagram content. The majority of posts contain inspirational quotes and phrases and he also uses humor and memes to engage his audience.
He makes most of his money through his online and in-person training programs, but he also has a book, a podcast, and a clothing line.
Tia-Clair Toomey is a professional weightlifter and CrossFit athlete – and is practically real-life Super Woman. She’s won the CrossFit Games the last three years in a row (and coming in runner-up the two years before that) – making her the first three-time consecutive CrossFit women’s champion.
She’s also competed and won gold in the women’s 2018 Commonwealth Games. Clearly no stranger to competition – she even competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics, coming in at an impressive 14th place worldwide!
As you can imagine, her Instagram is full of photos of her performing at competitions and showing off her workout routines, with a good mix of candid shots, too (and of course the occasional sponsorship)!
Her content does a great job of keeping her followers motivated AND educated on workouts and proper form. And then she uses her bio to lead people back to her YouTube channel where they can learn even MORE techniques and training!
Matt Chan is a professional firefighter, but he’s making big waves in the fitness scene as a trainer for individuals, gyms, and competitors. His page is a great mix of workout videos, firefighter activities, fitness challenges, and lifestyle photos.
He uses his page to funnel people to his official training account, @Train_FTW, as well as to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. We love that his content is really casual and candid, so it gives followers a good opportunity to get to know him as a person and do some ambassador work for Fitness giant, Rogue Fitness.
Chanel Collette is a certified fitness coach and rising star in the fitness influencer space. She balances her content between educational workout posts, her impressive physique, and her love of trendy fashion and lifestyle content.
She’s also an ambassador for quite a few wellness and fitness brands, but she doesn’t smother her followers with sponsored posts. Instead, she integrates the branded content seamlessly with her own. When she does share that type of content it’s in fun and authentic ways, like tying in recipes, sharing her own experiences with the brand, and even encouraging her followers to ask her questions!
She takes full advantage of Instagram by using her stories and bio to share more content like tips, brands she works with, and advertising her own coaching business. Her bio links to her company website, YouTube channel, and partnered brands.
Imogen Horrocks is a professional rock climber and model, who now also offers rock climbing coaching. While she’s competed in the rock-climbing World Cup, you may actually recognize her from her appearances on Ultimate Beastmaster and her advancement to the finals of the 2018 UK Ninja Warrior course!
Aesthetically her feed is just super pleasing, and 100% badass. She’s not afraid to show off her amazing free-climbing skills on both manmade and natural structures. Her images are so inspiring each one she posts gets a minimum of 1k likes!
Feeroozeh Saghafi is a pre-med student with a focus exercise science, so you can trust that she knows what she’s talking about as a fitness and CrossFit influencer. Her posts are a mix of candid competitions, behind-the-scenes workouts, and lifestyle shots. But she also frequently advocates for the brands she works with, too.
What you don’t get in her posts, you can find in her stories. There she shares recovery methods, how she plans meals for fuel, trainings, and so much more!
While each of these fitness influencers has their own unique selling point, there are definitely some key tips you can take away and apply to your own account or brand.
Related: The Best 125 Hashtags for Your Fitness Posts
One overarching lesson is to aim for multiple income streams that you can promote to your followers. While we don’t suggest trying to set up an app, clothing line, and supplement deal at on time, nobody on this list was relying on a sole source of income.
In addition, when it comes to promotion, authenticity will get your further than hard sales – being yourself and letting people into your life, even for a little, will go a long way towards forming a bond with your followers.
We hope you’ve found this list useful, and we wish you the best of luck on your fitness journey!
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