The Views: Wanhee’s Brutal Honesty Teaches Better Self-Confidence
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Handle: He goes by Wanhee on YouTube, and @wankeekimm on Instagram and X.
Series: His longest series is his Minimalist Training videos playlist on Youtube, with over 150 videos. Additional tiers, including personal coaching, are available on his website.
Creators: Led primarily by Wanhee Kim, the channel rarely features other influencers but mostly relies on personal footage to illustrate his points.
Platform: His content comes from YouTube, with some content reserved for patrons on his personal website, Minimalist Training Academy.
Genre: The genre of his videos, as he describes himself, is Wellness (fitness and mental health) and Lifestyle.
Subscribers/Followers: Wanhee has 474,000 subscribers on YouTube and 16,800 followers on Instagram.
South-Korean influencer Wanhee Kim, known online simply as Wanhee, specializes in personalized workout routines for men aiming to get back into shape. His content also covers relationships and lifestyle adjustments, emphasizing mental health management. On his website, over 55,000 people have subscribed to his Minimalist Training Academy, which promises a “sculpted body” without obsessive gym regimens. Wanhee began his fitness journey in 2012, spending, in his words, “10 years” trying to get to the body shape he wanted, with no success. After restructuring regimen and seeing the positive effects it had on him, from his physique to his mental health, Wanhee decided to share his progress with an online audience. His platform hinges on being against “gym bro” techniques to “get fit.” In the words of a reviewer, “this man knows his stuff and no BS.”
Per the review, and by his own admission, Wanhee’s style of commentary is described as very “brutally honest.” With the knowledge that the topics of his videos are things he has struggled with before, his advice is rooted in the ups and downs of his past personal experience. This is the case with most fitness influencers, as their main goal is to teach their viewers how to have a routine or body like theirs. In Wanhee’s case, what he tries to do differently isn’t just his routine, but his tone too. It doesn’t make the viewer feel scolded or berated, and it shares facts “in a simple enough way” that the audience understands. His “10 Brutally Honest Tips to Get in Shape” video summarizes his approach to wellness quite accurately. Wanhee does a good job of parallelizing body aesthetics (going to the gym to look better) and disease prevention (going to the gym to build immunity). Instead of using roundabout ways to convey that to his viewers, he outright tells them to do that. It is more “honest” than “brutal.” Even in his justification for why he initially wanted to “get fit,” he says that back in college, he wanted to be attractive to other girls. Maybe perhaps too honest, but it’s relatable to those men who have had the same starting point. Nowadays, Wanhee teaches on building a body for oneself rather than for other people, which is valuable advice in the age of social media.
Just like what he advises his viewers to do when it comes to going to the gym, Wanhee too is consistent when it comes to posting on social media. He posts a new YouTube video every week, and has an even bigger catalogue of YouTube Shorts for easier parsing. His Instagram is for the most part centered on him and his personal life, but there is no shortage of advertisement there too. This would align with the brand of fitness influencer accounts online. Unlike others in his sphere, Wanhee’s “Minimalist Training” routine is one that goes against “extreme exercising,” and highlights consistency as its main quality. The “Minimalist Training Academy”’s motto is “train less, eat more, get in the best shape of your life.” Wanhee promises that with a consistent training and eating regimen, men don’t have to overwork themselves to achieve the body they want. This is especially the case considering his target audience.
“What you lack in youth, you make up for in experience,” is a quote that Wanhee mentions or at least alludes to several times across his catalogue. He is very open about his age and his personal fitness path. As a man in his early 30s, his content primarily caters to men at that same age. With the ongoing wave of what is known online as “looksmaxxing,” or “maximizing physical attractiveness,” young men have felt their need to “look better” as a race against time. “Looksmaxxing” has been arguably detrimental to young men’s mental and physical health, as many have pored over online and in Wanhee’s comments. In a video aptly titled, “I’m 33. If you’re in your 30s watch this:,” Wanhee states that it is never too late. Apart from the catchy title, the video highlights why exactly Wanhee is unique to the fitness sphere. He primarily appeals to men of similar age, reassuring them that even if they didn’t “do the work” in their 20s, that there’s still time to build the body they want. If anything, he recontextualizes the age of 30 as a new beginning. This is unique in the fitness influencer sphere. “Looksmaxxing” has not just brought, according to Wanhee, “vanity,” but also lack of consistency and the chasing of “extreme routines” just to get ripped. As such, his advice also applies to young men currently in their 20s themselves, judging by the reviews on his personal website and comment section.
