Joe Wicks wins Guinness World Record for coronavirus PE lesson
14 April 2020, 22:28
P.E with Joe | Tuesday 24th March 2020
Joe Wicks has bagged a Guinness World Record after one of his lockdown PE lessons was watched by nearly one million people.
The 33-year-old, otherwise known as The Body Coach, reached 955,158 people worldwide while live-streaming his 24 March 'PE With Joe' class.
Guinness then got in touch with the fitness coach to hand him the record for the most viewers for a live workout stream on YouTube.
He said: "I had no idea that when I went live on my YouTube workout on March 24, that we were actually setting a world record.
"So thank you to everyone that tuned in - I'm so proud that this is our record, and we can remember that day as the moment we got the most viewers for a live work out."
Wicks began his daily PE classes on 23 March in order to help children across the country exercise after schools were shut due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Body Coach had previously said he would be donating "every single penny" raised by the videos to the NHS "to support the real heroes right now."
He wrote: "I’m loving being your P.E. Teacher and now you can watch again, knowing you’re not only staying fit, you’re also helping raise money for the NHS."
Yoga and online classes led by the likes of Wicks, whose first instalment had more than 800,000 households tuning in, have seen the number of people taking part in home workouts go up by 26 per cent since the UK lockdown was introduced.
The TV presenter and author also saw his YouTube subscriber count triple in the space of three weeks.
His follower tally currently stands at 2.2 million, a "mindblowing" increase on the 800,000 he had before lockdown measures came into effect.
He shared an image on social media of him posing with a golden YouTube trophy, which is in recognition for him passing the one million mark.
"Look what just arrived. My gold play button," Wicks wrote.
"Three weeks ago I had only 800k subscribers and today I have 2.2 million which is just mindblowing. I've worked so hard on this since I shared my first workout video in 2011."
He also thanked his brother Nikki Wicks and "best mate" Dominic Seymour, who he said help him film, edit and share his workouts.
The fitness coach said his next goal was to reach 10 million subscribers.
