Find Virtual Workout Buddies via Twitter

Web Workout Community

Right—Cartoon of #Bikeschool Founders: @bikerly, @lovingthebike, and @egggman.

Today, a growing number of fitness enthusiasts are finding comrades-in-arms via Twitter. Thanks to the social media giant, it’s easy to connect with folks who also want to swoon about the latest bike component or debate the best training schedules or just get encouragement to get off the couch for the next work out. Tweet chats are scheduled Twitter discussions on a topic, moderated by a leader who guides the discussions with questions. To find the chats, a hashtag (the # symbol) for all tweets are used by the participants to indicate they are taking part.

David Hylton

One of the pioneers of Tweet Chats was #fitblog, founded by Katy Widrick, after the first FitBloggin’ health and fitness conference in 2010.

“I started the chat because I thought there was an opportunity to use the Web as a forum for some of the topics that so many of us struggle with,” Widrick explains. “I keep the chat going because each week someone tells me how much it has changed his or her life.”

There are rotating moderators who ask questions such as, “What are your favorite ways to cross-train?” or “How do you incorporate running and yoga into your weekly routine?” Participants do not lack for answers.

David Hylton is a cofounder of the #runchat Tweet chat, which convenes every other Sunday night. He and Scott Miles were both runners who found each other during a #fitblog chat in 2010, but talked about forming a more runner-focused group. They started using the hashtag #runchat, and a new community was born. #Runchat averages 500-800 participants per chat and will run up a tally of almost 3,000 tweets in an hour. They have weekly sponsors who give away swag at the end of the chat to a participant.

Scott Miles

Both Hylton and Miles will be speakers at the FitBloggin’ conference in Baltimore this year, where they will meet in person for the first time, despite working closely since June 2010; Hylton lives in Bedford, Virginia, and Scott Miles in New York City.

Cyclists are probably the most tech-savvy athletic group, so it was no wonder they embraced Tweet Chats early on. #bikeschool is a chat that happens every Thursday night at 9 p.m. EST.

Darryl Kotyk (@lovingthebike) and his co-founders Jim Pringnitz (@bikerly), Mike Osbourne (@egggman), were all bike enthusiasts who met on Twitter and started the hashtag, #bikeschool. It developed into a weekly chat in October, 2010, where the moderators now discuss everything from technical questions to training to bike humor.

“It’s been a bit of a cult, we can’t believe how addicted people are to it,” says Kotyk, who tweets under @lovingthebike. “We gather people who want to talk about bikes, and goof around. The biggest challenge is the timing of the chat. Followers in Europe ask us to move it since, it’s like 2 or 3 in the morning there, but we still get quite a few who chime in.”

Sharla Wipplinger (who tweets under @262milejourney) lives in Seattle and is a regular at both #runchat and #fitblog chats.

Sharla Wipplinger

“#Runchat was one of those things I just stumbled upon one week. I don’t have any runner friends in real life so the promise of connecting with people who ‘get’ my running makes it worth the effort,” she says. “I love that I can bond with strangers just over our shared need to put miles in. I always enjoy the chats enough that I wish they were weekly instead of bi-monthly. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that no matter how long we’ve been running or how fast, we’ve all got something to learn.”

Wipplinger was inspired enough by her tweet chats to fly to the 2011 FitBloggin’ conference, where she met the folks she’d been tweeting with. “It was amazing. It was like jumping into a friendship without any of awkward getting to know you part, because we already knew each other.”

Tweet chats may be new, but the concept has been around forever: people with a passion for their activity are always looking to connect with others.