Mike Chang

“Six Pack Shortcuts” is by far the most popular fitness channel on YouTube with 3,766,311 subscribers, 815 videos, and 504,319,339 total views. They claim that they will show you, “how lose your belly fat, gain muscle, and get defined abs.” They also state, “We upload home workouts, weightlifting workouts, nutrition videos, and workout advice videos. We upload new videos twice a week.” Based on this, “Six Pack Shortcuts” sounds like an amazing channel, one that meets everyone’s goals, but I personally do not favor this channel over ones I have talked about and ones I intend to talk about. This channel was created on December 1^st 2009 by none other than Mike Chang. Chang began this channel himself with the same mindset as many of the channels I do enjoy watching. Unfortunately over time, the show became too popular too fast. Chang accepted sponsorships and promotions from many different companies and people. Mike lost the goal of leading his fans to reach their goals and began mostly being focused on the money. He continued uploading videos but in every video he would promote and sell someone else’s product; this ruins the channel when half of every single video is an advertisement.

 

Apart from the “sellout” view to this channel, not all the material is 100% correct or effective. As implied from the channels title, Change focused on the core or “six-pack” very often. He demonstrated many ab exercises, yet he himself never had defined abs. Maybe because he isn’t familiar with the saying “abs are made in the kitchen” which means that you can do as many ab exercises as you want but you will not have abs until you lower your body fat percentage; there are no “Shortcuts” to abs.  I did enjoy the way Mike would layout the workout routine on a board and then go through it himself on camera, showing you how to do it and that he actually does what he says.

 Now Mike Chang is gone and “Six Pack Shortcuts” is led by head trainers Clark Shao, Jonny Catanzano, Nate Bran, and Henry Tran. Mike Chang has not been shown on the channel for five months. I am not sure if he left or was kicked out or if he will come back. I do know that he has his own channel called “Mike Chang” and has about 9,000 subscribers. He started it in September of 2015, right after he quit “Six Pack Shortcuts”. His new channel reminds me a lot of “Six Pack Shortcuts” back when it first started. He may have left because he realized the corporate channel it had become and still is. The channel now is of four different people uploading videos and not connecting with the fans. It is important for the person to be on a personal level with their fans the way Chang used to be. I don’t know what “Six Pack Shortcuts” will become, but I am excited to follow Mike Chang’s new channel.