Should We Be Worried About the Rise of Sam Sulek?
In an age with a rising number of fitness influencers, nobody in recent years has made a bigger impact than Sam Sulek. The American 22-year-old has amassed a colossal following across social media, with 4.8M followers on Instagram, and 3.03M followers on YouTube. The latter is especially remarkable considering he only started documenting his bodybuilding journey in January 2023. On Sam’s Social Blade, we can see he had a respectable 8,510 subscribers in March of that year. Not even six months later, he was boasting 500,000. That’s an absolutely staggering amount of growth.
What sets Sam apart from the rest?
There are arguably two main factors that have given Sam such incredible growth, and both are communicated clearly during these social media platforms. The first is undoubtedly his appearance: his incredibly lean, muscular and clearly unnatural physique has contributed greatly to his widespread fame, with tweets like this as an example:
The second is his calm and level-headed personality, which permeates his content. Despite the extremely high level of intensity displayed in his YouTube training vlogs, many find his humbleness and authenticity endearing. He is the antithesis to an industry so often focused on exploiting lighting, angles and photo manipulation to enhance one’s physique and further engagement. In contrast, Sam goes to cheap commercial gyms, leaves his videos largely unedited, and eschews expensive branded clothing.
Sam’s Instagram is not as active as one might think. As of now, it hasn’t been updated in over three months, and it seems that it was updated fairly infrequently in the past. It’s here where his perceived lack of ego shines through to others — where many fitness influencers will write countless inspirational paragraphs documenting the blood, sweat and tears that got them to where they are today, one of Sam’s recent posts simply reads:
Every post has a brief one-sentence caption, where his physique does the real talking. He is more verbose in his use of hashtags: each post has over twenty hashtags related to his bodybuilding lifestyle.
Redefining fitness, or crossing lines?
Sam’s YouTube content documents the days of his bodybuilding journey, with each video ranging from about 25–50 minutes. They are uploaded daily, all following the same format, and amassing hundreds of thousands of views in under 24 hours. Sam is never seen replying to comments, indirectly communicating what comes off as an unassuming, perhaps somewhat withdrawn personality.
However, this same YouTube footage has made Sam a figure of controversy. His training technique is what would be considered unideal by many, forgoing controlled movement and full range of motion for pure explosiveness and intensity. Coupled with his freakish physique, this has led to heated debates regarding validity of his status as a role model for young gymgoers.
Sam’s success has spawned a wave of imitators, emulating his video titles and raw vlogging style. It is noteworthy that those so evidently influenced by him have not achieved a similar level of success overall. Overly-produced fitness content remains supreme, with Sam as the one true outlier.
