Recently, on the open spaces of the Russian-speaking YouTube, a channel has emerged where you can learn many important and interesting things about HMB. Not just a theoretician, but a practicing and well-known HMB fighter Maxim Yun from the Old Friends team of the Bern club tells his viewers about the intricacies of sports, armor, tactics and other significant HMB aspects.
The HMB channel has existed for a year and a half. According to Maxim, he wants to show the beauty of our sport in each video:
“The idea of the channel is to help people to love HMB as I love it. While creating the channel, I did not even consider other topics. It is clear that in my life there are other interests besides HMB, but, probably, in this topic my knowledge is the highest in comparison with other blogs”.
Here the viewer will find a lot of useful information. For example, there are videos about the difference between steel and titanium armor, the distinction in the types of helmets, tactics and much more that can be useful to both a practicing fighter and followers who want to understand the HMB sports.
Maxim does not limit his audience only to the Russian-speaking segment of YouTube users. English-speaking viewers will also be able to watch the blogger’s video thanks to English subtitles. According to him, 20% of the channel’s audience are English-speaking or those who can read English, 50-60% of Russians, 20% of Ukrainians and others.
So how did the channel start?
“In April 2020, during the total quarantine in Russia and around the world. Everybody was forced to stay at home, so there was absolutely nothing to do. There were no tournaments, training, nothing at all. Then the idea to create a blog came to me. This became like my own contribution to the development of HMB sports, even without being in the lists.
The first video was about how a lightweight fighter should act in order to be effective in fights where there are no weight categories. It’s about myself and others like me. From this topic, the idea to record a video appeared. This is what I could tell at the moment, here and now”.
On that day, an aspiring blogger and his friend, who is also a cameraman and editor, recorded 3 videos on different topics:
You can learn more about this on Maxim’s channel. The videos were recorded literally in one shot on the wall as a background. But that was more than a year ago, now much more attention is paid to the preparation of the video. The script and storyboards are written, light and sound checks. By the way, Maxim noted that there is one aspect in this work that can scare off a novice blogger – the preparation and production of one video takes a lot of time, and there may not be many views.
“There are videos that we shoot quickly and easily, and they become popular very fast. Like a video about a burpee in armor. And serious, thoughtful videos, for example, about teams, gain significantly fewer views. But we hope that they will nevertheless find their spectator and the way to eternity”.
However, there are many pluses in this work that far exceed the minuses.
“Guys from Russia and other countries write to me and ask for advice, invite me to visit them. Through the channel, people ask me to hold seminars. You become quite famous and recognizable. The opportunity to travel opens up. And, most importantly, I realized that thanks to the blog, using my experience, I can give people a lot, make their lives in HMB easier, and share my knowledge.”
And Maxim has more than enough knowledge and experience. He has been involved in HMB for 10 years already, and before that, from the age of 14, he had a passion for reenactment, fights on wooden sticks, etc. That is, at the moment there are already 19 years of experience behind him.
It is also worth noting that not only Maxim’s experience can be found on his channel. He is ready to share airtime with those brothers-in-arms who want to express their opinion on a certain issue or reveal a hot topic in a conversation with the author of the blog. The site is available, you just have to want it!
Initially, the main team of video creators on the Max Yun channel included Maxim himself and his friend Pavel, who took over the filming and editing functions, later Ekaterina, who became an interpreter, joined the team. Thanks to her work, an English-speaking audience has been added to the channel’s subscribers. There are also guys who help on a volunteer basis.
“By the way, we have a logo on the channel. A guy from the HMB Academy of HMB St. Petersburg helped. He found a great designer – the girl who designed the channel’s logo also trains at our Academy. I am very grateful to everyone for their help”.
During the conversation, our reporter asked Max to share the secrets of promoting his channel on YouTube. He readily shared with us and with all of you:
“I believe in organic growth in everything. I am quite patient and assiduous. Do your content as well as you can and your subscribers will come to you. This is just one of the difficulties of blogging: it turned out that in an amicable way, you need to publish content regularly enough. I was offered to wind up views and likes, but I do not see the point in this. I do this not for the number of likes, but for people. And of course, collaborations with other bloggers who are bigger than you help. For example, we have partnered with a channel about video games. It was one of the peak viewing moments.
At some point, I relaxed and stopped stressing about the number of views. If you constantly chase hype and likes, you will be in constant stress. I just keep a diary about HMB. This is my contribution to the development of our sport. Show people all the beauty of HMB and change their attitude to this sport. I want people to treat it exactly as a sport”.
Last but not least, Max would like to change the attitude of both the participants themselves and outside viewers. Often, relatives, friends, acquaintances of HMB athletes and, unfortunately, media representatives demonstrate a very superficial understanding of the peculiarities of sports, perceive it as entertainment or, even worse, they look like clowns. With his work, Maxim strives to show how many aspects, nuances, details there are in HMB, how serious this sport is and how much time and effort is spent on training an athlete of a decent level.
Max also admitted that he is currently planning content for the channel from the big tournaments and, of course, Battle of the Nations. However, let’s not get ahead and watch everything on his channel.
If, after reading this material, you are thinking about creating your own YouTube channel about HMB, take advice from Maxim Yun:
“Do it, I will follow it! If some guys make videos about how everything is arranged in their countries, I will be watching it with interest. But, be ready for the fact that it is not as easy as it seems at first glance”.
We are sure that Maxim Yun will definitely succeed in achieving all the goals set for himself and the channels, and many more interesting and useful videos from Max and his brothers in arms await us, the viewers. We thank Maxim for the interview and wish you inspiration for creating videos for many, many years to come.
2021
