The Energy Body

An interview with Nikita Nagornyy all about his YT channel Nikushkin Day. -He started the vlog because he got tired of seeing empty stands at competitions (especially in Moscow). In most cases, the audience was usually other gymnasts and coaches (instead of actual fans/spectators), which was quite depressing to him and most of his fellow competitors. He feels his videos have already begun to help in that aspect.

-He sees himself as more of a gymnastics informant than a true vlogger because he wants people to know there are other sports besides football, basketball and hockey. 

-He realized his channel started having a positive effect when he received messages from strangers about how his videos encouraged them to get into gymnastics or enroll their children in gymnastics classes. People also ask for advice about gymnastics and general fitness. 

-His vlog format was inspired by Dnevnik Khacha (Amiran Sardarov), who is one of Russia’s most popular YouTube personalities. Nagornyy admits it took him a while to overcome being camera shy. 

-Nagornyy invited Amiran Sardarov for a video he filmed at Club Dynamo-Moscow (and a couple of other videos) that contributed to much of his channel’s recent growth. He received a lot of helpful advice from Sardarov to keep his channel going.

-His channel recently reached 60k subscribers, so he hopes to arrange an event for fans who want to get started in gymnastics. -At 100k he’d like to start another channel to talk about gymnastics as a professional sport because people frequently ask him for more information but have nowhere to turn to learn about it. It would be easier for him to dedicate a separate channel for it.

-He hopes to collaborate with athletes across different sports because there aren’t very many serious vlogs dedicated to Olympic sports in Russia (never mind artistic gymnastics). He mentions the program “Dublyor” on Match TV where athletes switch places by trying different sports from their own.

-He faced some challenges in the beginning with the coaching staff when he started filming things in training. Some of the coaches yelled at him and even threatened him for filming things they didn’t approve of. Nagornyy wondered if they had something to hide since they didn’t want their behavior shown in his videos. Eventually he realized the coaches just weren’t familiar with what he was doing and resistant to changes of the training atmosphere. 

-He sometimes receives criticism for talking about his personal life and material things such as cars in his videos, but his reason for that is to be able to connect with viewers through common interests because he knows artistic gymnastics isn’t popular. He knows his channel wouldn’t grow at all if he only talked about gymnastics in his videos, so he tries to include everyday things people might like to know about him. He gained a lot of subscribers that way who didn’t know anything about gymnastics before. 

-Overall he’s received tremendous support for the channel including support from Andrei Rodionenko. Many coaches and gymnasts across Russia are subscribers of his channel who wanted photos and autographs with him at the recent Russian Championships in Kazan. 

-He was pleasantly surprised to see a few hundred spectators who traveled to Kazak specifically to see him even though he didn’t properly advertise the championships in his recent vlogs. A lot of people wrote to him hoping he could arrange a meet-and-greet with fans, but he wasn’t able to do that this time since he was caught off guard by their arrival.  -His vlogs aren’t without critics who believe his videos are a distraction from training and annoy some of the coaches. However, the overall opinion of his project has improved over time from fans and people at Round Lake alike. 

-Sports marketing sounds interesting to him, but he feels he can’t really do that until he becomes an Olympic Champion for the sake of visibility and to be taken seriously.