After a month of watching YouTube flexibility videos every day for my 31 day stretching challenge I learned not only that I need to bend and twist and stretch more but that there are certain things you need to do if you’re going to film a video yourself. Here are my top 6 tips for filming a YouTube Yoga video.

1. Get a lazy dog

Yoga with Adrienne is the leading example of having a dog in your video that is neither downward or upward but actual and real. Crucially the dog must be sleeping and rarely move. You wouldn’t want my dog – Barney The Schnauzer – as he would see the camera, consider it an invasion of his privacy and start barking with all the manner and force of a football hooligan.

2. Get a pot plant

If you can’t get a dog then get a pot plant. It’s like a dog but without the threat of peeing on your foot during a sun salutation. Even better, why not get five plants and just scatter them randomly around your floor? Bonus points for having a plinth.

3. Find an empty room

The emptier the better, just remember it should look calm and serene in it’s emptiness and not like it’s been stripped by a serial killer and doubles as your Yoga Studio/kill room.

4. Take your top off

While many videos feature instructor in appropriate clothing there is a sub-genre where the instructor strips to the waist to, I can only assume, help you see the muscles they are stretching. This is not a genre of video that you ever see from a fat bloke – and you tend to find these videos are also accompanied by other videos called “Get MASSIVE guns in three easy move” and “You are using barbells wrong, you WIMP”.

5. Take almost everything off

The less said about near naked Yoga the better. I once went to a Hot Yoga class where the man in front of me was wearing just a pair of white Y-fronts. It wasn’t sexy then, it’s not sexy now. No one wants to see your barely concealed bits doing a squat.

And, no, I’m linking to any videos!

6. Forget the voiceover

You can get some videos with no voice over or instructions. Instead all instructions are in text on screen, which is handy, unless you’re in the middle of a headstand, in which case you need to turn your iPad upside down too.