160: The Peloton Facebook Group Hits 300K plus our interview with Kari Gormley

Last Updated: July 15, 2020By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: biking, endorphin high, Peloton, positive psychology, running, shifting gears

The Peloton Facebook Group hits 300,000 members.

National political conventions are looking to emulate Peloton.

Motley Fool calculates the ROI on Peloton stock.

A quick chat with Axios’ Dan Primack to discuss his super-successful fundraisers.

Ally Love has nutrition tips for fueling your workout.

The Crossfit CEO is out.

Mindbodygreen.com has a list of African-American fitness instructors you should be paying attention to.

NEW FEATURE – Getting The Psychological Edge with Dr. Jenn – Quarantine Resolutions

Peloton snuck into an Oreo commercial.

America has a kettlebell shortage!

There’s a new artist series featuring D. Smith.

The Quest Badge adds a new badge for completing all four.

A Summer line will be out soon at the boutique.

Ricky Martin gets featured in a new artist series.

Erik Jager has his first English class.

John Raneri sets a new half-marathon record on a Peloton tread.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Peloton Facebook Group Hits 300K plus our interview with Kari Gormley

We haven’t really seen each other today.

Not much this week actually.

I was off today, but then I was this errand boy, I went and got your oil changed, gassed up your car, washed it because I’m really great like that.

I didn’t even ask.

I took Brian to the orthodontist that needed to happen, watched a movie, but for the other show or the other podcast, that’s allowed. It’s a busy day. All you did was work. What do you got in store for people?

The OPP hits a large milestone. We’re going to talk about Peloton in the news for all kinds of things. We’ve got some fun, special, little tidbits coming up that are new for the podcast, some new features. We’ll tell you more about that when we get there. Some stuff that the instructors are up to and some sightings of Peloton.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, you should be able to find us. If we missed one, please let us know. We’ll go fix it. While you’re there, you can subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode. You can also leave us a review if you’d be so kind, just so other people know that maybe we’re worth their time. We have a new review. This is from calcrna32, “Fun, informative and addictive. I found this podcast a few months ago. I’m a Peloton owner and wanted to find more connections with the community. I listened to the episode about Christine D’Ercole and was instantly hooked. Crystal is truly Pelo-addicted just like many of us, and Tom hilariously supports this addiction even though he doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid. This podcast has something new and informative each week. If you subscribe, you will have another reason to wish for Friday to come sooner. If you love everything PeloVerse and beyond, this podcast is a must.” Thank you.

What a kind review. Thank you.

They did not leave their leaderboard name, so I cannot share their leaderboard name.

Thank you, whoever you are. We appreciate it.

You can find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Let’s dig in, shall we?

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The OPP hits 300,000 members in their group

Yes and 198,000 are jerks. I’m just kidding. The funny thing is that the joke is it’s probably not that many people are jerks. The ones that are jerks are so loud.

People get mad and yell at them, which just keeps the thread alive.

I thought it was interesting that Peloton didn’t make a big deal about it. They made a huge deal about it when they hit 100,000 and 200,000. I heard nothing when it was 300,000. There’s a lot in the world to not celebrate right now though. It might just be not the appropriate time to celebrate.

My guess is I think a lot of the companies right now are pumping the brakes on, patting themselves on the back for what in comparison feels like trivial achievements.

That’s understandable. If that’s why, then I get it. That’s a fair reason.

They won’t talk about it, but we will. When you got your bike, there were 8,000 people.

8,000 to 300,000, that’s a lot. That’s some growth right there.

There’s an article from Bloomberg talking about how the certain outlets are going to use Peloton as a blueprint, but not for more exercise equipment for a change.

That’s what caught my eye about this because it’s for the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions. Both sides are going to be using the same kind of platform as a template because so much of this is going to be virtual this year this particular election. They’re trying to figure out ways to pump up the crowd while they’re watching this. I don’t know that it’s going to work.

I don’t know either because the whole point of a political convention is you have all these people packed in and you see the excitement of the people. Their standard bearer is selected as the official presidential nominee. Everybody’s cheering and wearing goofy hats and they have signs. It’s supposed to create this enthusiasm. I don’t know that you can replicate that on a Zoom call.

I don’t know that you can. As I wrote in the post that I posted everywhere, I don’t know that people realize how much energy and personality and presence our Peloton instructors have. That’s not something that just anybody can do. You’re in the concert industry. How many shows have you watched and then somebody walks out and they just don’t have it? You instantly see they don’t have it.

They might even have some hit songs or something. If you’ve gone to a concert with multi-acts, I’m sure if you’ve seen very many, you’ve run into the situation where even if it’s two or three large artists, there’s one artist that they bring an intensity or energy level that the other big name artist just can’t match. We went to a show, the artist that was bringing the heat was Charlie Daniels. I don’t think we should say the other one because I’d hate to embarrass Travis Tritt. Travis Tritt is not a bad artist. He’s got tons of hits and he’s a great performer as well. Then you compare the energy level of Charlie Daniels.

It’s shocking because the dude is old. We saw him a few years ago. When he was doing his signings, he was sitting the whole time. Even when he was on stage, he didn’t move. They would just bring him a new guitar and all he did was clip it on. He moved not one inch from the place he stood, but somehow that man’s presence brought the energy. My whole point to that is I don’t know that these politicians can do that. That’s not what they’re used to doing. That is nothing about either side, it’s a very different thing. They’re not entertainers in the same way. I think that’s going to drive some of it too. It’s just not being able to pull that presence.

I concur. Have They said what exactly they’re trying to replicate?

They’re trying to replicate just the virtual excitement. It had some specifics in it, but it’s like having all the people joining together and having a live feed. If you were taking a live ride, all the high-fives for example, you would have people reacting to things that are happening. You would be able to see it on the screen.

It’s like in Facebook, when somebody is liking a video, you see the hearts flying.

I do think that will help some but it’s just not the same.

The instructors are inspirational, so maybe if we could get some politicians that are like that, that would be a nice change of pace. Moving right along, we’ve found an article from Fool.com talking about your return on investment for Peloton, if you had bought Peloton stock the day it hit the market, how filthy rich would you be right now?

Specifically, if you had invested $5,000.

Not to get elitist, but that’s not an insane amount of money if you’re investing in the stock.

That’s not a shocking amount.

It’s not like if you invested $100,000.

If you had invested $5,000 the day of the IPO, you would have over $8,000 right now. That’s pretty decent considering it was just a few months ago. That’s really good. If you were one of the people that bought it when it was $19 a share, you’re doing even better. It’s $17 a share as well. I’ve had some people reach out and say that they invested $5,000 that day, it was $17 a share. Congrats to you. That’s cool though just to see that in such a short time, that return on investment. It was just a few months ago that people were like, “It’s not going to go anywhere.” At the same time, that could all change next month. That’s the stock market fickle.

We’ve talked about this a few times in the past, but there have been some fundraisers that have been popping up that started with a guy by the name of Dan Primack. His first one was when the Coronavirus started. He’s involved with Axios and the world of venture capitalists.

He works for Axios. The first one was for the New York food bank.

It was as the Coronavirus was ramping up and people were having food stability issues.

Right out of the gate, they raised $100,000 for basically just like, “Join us on this random ride and we’ll donate X amount of dollars for every person who shows up.”

Then they did another one for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and education. We were wanting to talk to him about what all that was about. It’s not a full-fledged main interview of the week but we got him on Skype for a couple of minutes to talk about who he is, how this started, where all the money’s coming from. That’s a lot of money, it’s not like we’re investigating him.

It’s like how does it work?

Here’s our conversation with him.

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Joining us is Dan Primack. He is the Business Editor at Axios and author of the Daily Axios Pro Rata newsletter. It’s a companion podcast. He covers the world of dealmakers across VC, PE and M&A. To show you how important those things are, I only know what one of them means. Hi, Dan.

How are you?

Thanks for having me.

You’re the guy behind all of these fundraisers that have been happening on Peloton. How did this happen? What got you started?

It was a happenstance really at the very beginning of the lockdown. It’s at the beginning of the pandemic back in March 2020. There’s a guy named Mike Duda, who’s a venture capitalist out of New York. I’m pretty sure he was an early investor in Peloton back when it was a startup. He invested in lots of things like that, consumer companies. He and I were bored and we knew we each had bikes and said, “Why don’t we see if we can get a couple of people to ride at the same time, to have some people to feel like we’re doing something, anything with?” We threw out a single tweet. We had, I believe, five people. It was very successful. We ride at the same time.

Then we did it again a few days later and we were up to 30 people. I don’t know if it was Mike or me who suggested. We were like, “Maybe we could actually try to blow this thing out a little bit, maybe raise some money.” We decided we were going to try to raise some money for the greater New York City food bank given the massive amounts of hunger particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. I do have a daily newsletter through Axios called Axios Pro Rata, which is read by investors and entrepreneurs. There are about 130,000 readers on there, I have no idea how many of them have bikes. We decided we’d promote it a little bit. I reached out to some people. Mike reached out to some people we knew. Mike and I each said, “We will donate $5 each per rider when people match us.” Some people matched us. One guy named Chris Sacca, who if anyone ever watches Shark Tank, he’s the guy who often is on there wearing a cowboy shirt. He agreed to put in $50,000 so long as I posted an embarrassing picture of myself with bike shorts, sweating. I thought that was a good return on investment. We decided to do it. We ended up with 600 riders simultaneously. We didn’t want to pick a live ride or one that was an encore, something on the home page. We want this to be something. We were pretty intentional about the one we picked. If it was old, there wouldn’t be many people riding it outside for us.

You could purposely gauge like how much impact you had.

Getting on a bike is like turning on your brain. It's amazing how clearer and more efficient you feel. Share on X

We wanted to know how many people were actually riding for us and how many were random. We picked a ride, I think at the time that was about five months old. We decided 11:00 AM Eastern on a Saturday. There were like five people on it on 10:58 and then 11:00 came, we ended up with about a little over 600 people riding, which we thought was massive and a huge success. We raised over $100,000 and we were very happy with ourselves.

That’s a fascinating metric for how you determine how many of these people are for us and how many are just random. Have you ever thought about parsing data for a living?

No, we decided to do a second one two weeks later, it was for frontline medical workers in New York City specifically. It was a nonprofit tied to Weill Cornell, which was providing childcare and meals for frontline medical workers in New York. That one, we ended up with about 1,300 riders on, which we were really surprised. Mike afterwards said, “We’re done now because we’re not going to top that.” We thought we were finished. That was a lot. We’d gotten more donors and we didn’t expect that we could get more because we were pretty limited in the people we were telling it to. It was mostly through my social channels and through the newsletter. We weren’t promoting it beyond that. I think maybe Peloton had retweeted it or something. I should also by the way mention just for this podcast, the first one among the people who decided to match the donations were John Foley, who was the CEO of Peloton, and then two of Peloton’s board members happened to match on the first ride. We did a second one and then we took about two months off until this past weekend.

I’m pretty sure you guys broke a record. I’ve never seen that many people on an on-demand ride. Tell us what inspired you for that.

There’s a reader of mine, but also a Peloton member on named Jillian Williams, who’s a venture capitalist in New York. Jillian and I didn’t know each other until a couple days ago. On Monday morning, she sent me a direct message via Twitter saying she had ridden the first two rides and we consider doing a ride to in some way benefit the black community, given everything that was going on. I hadn’t, we were done with these as far as I was concerned. We didn’t quite know what to do. Jillian and I brainstormed some possible charities. I work at Axios, which is a journalism organization. A couple of them were a little more political than we can necessarily do, but we settled on the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund. We thought, “Let’s try it. Let’s see what happens.”

We had no idea if we would even get donors, which is the first piece of this. I sent out a note to couple of people, we got some good responses. There’s a venture capitalist named Hunter Walk who had been putting together a list of people who had been offering up matches for various donors. I reached out to some of those people off of his spreadsheet, then we started getting some huge donations. We got a guy who’s a former Facebooker, now an investor. He offered $100,000 flat. Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack and Jen Rubio, who’s his wife, but she’s the cofounder of Away, a luggage company. They offered us $50 per rider, which is an extraordinary amount of people. Again, John Foley of Peloton offered $10 per rider. With all of these people, my hope was we would beat the last one, so maybe we get 2,000 people. That was my hope and that’s what I told everybody, “Maybe we’ll get 2,000.” That was the expectation.

How many people ended up on there?

What was the total final?

The final total was around 11,500, give or take. I can’t remember the exact number, but that’s the number we’re going with. It’s an interesting thing when you do these because theoretically people can sign up alerts for themselves obviously to remind themselves to do the class and set it up. From my vantage point, I can’t see how many people are planning to do it really until almost the minute it begins because we asked people to all clip in at the exact same time. I logged in at 10:57 or 10:58 AM, I saw a couple of hundred people on there. I thought, “These are probably our people.” Then at 11:00, my first thought honestly was there was a software glitch that they clicked the wrong thing. There’s the here now, and everyone’s taken the ride. I thought I was on the wrong screen. It jumped, suddenly it was 7,000, 8,000 and by 11:05, we’re at 11,000 people.

My concern is for those people that match per rider, do they need help now or are they homeless? How is that working?

I will admit I’ve done a lot of rides. This one I did not ride terribly hard. Honestly, I didn’t pay any attention to metrics. I was mostly just panicking. It’s the only ride I’ve ever actually been texting on my phone during, pretty consistently. My lights were moving. There are some numbers. I completed the ride, but I didn’t do too well. That was my concern. You tell people to expect ,2000 and they’d do the math in their own heads. I was concerned for two reasons. One for them, and then two, if they couldn’t make it, then for the people who were riding for that reason. To be clear, some of the donors had capped. Some of the donors will donate $1 or $5 or $10 a rider to a certain number.

That’s pretty standard on those match donation programs. That’s nothing fishy. That’s pretty normal.

Then some people hadn’t including Stewart Butterfield and Jen Rubio, who offered $50 a head. Now you’re talking a lot of money. I sent her a message shortly after we got off and explained the situation. I said, “We ended up with 11,500 people. You shouldn’t feel obligated, you’re offering, I’m sure whatever you’re going to donate is going to be substantial. Don’t feel obligated to this because I told you something very different than what we got.” She said, “Let me get back to you.” Ten minutes later she said, “We’re in for the full amount,” which is I believe I’m talking off the top of my head, I think it’s something like $560,000. John Foley by the way, same thing, he was in for the full amount. He went in for about $120,000.

I got a high-five from him on the ride.

He’s usually near the top of the leaderboard. He’s pretty good. There was some guy who’s an avatar. No one’s figured out who that person is yet. I think he’s a robot.

People can change their Bike, so I don’t put much stock in who’s at the top of the leaderboard.

They’re probably scared to not let Foley be at the top of the leaderboard.

The guy was like number4 or 5. I was down in North Carolina. He’s an investor. He won our first ride and came in second on the second one. He’s a real person, I know for sure with a real bike. He was a college athlete. I sent a note saying, “How the hell do you get these numbers?” He posted a video of his two little kids, 3 and 4, cheering for him in a basement. That’s fantastic.

Are there more of these planned, or are you afraid to ever ask again?

Are you like Batman where Commissioner Gordon turns on the Bat signal, then you come out of retirement to take these on?

The hope is we don’t need to, and I’m sure we will. We’ve had two back-to-back national crises and neither of which are resolved, which are both obviously still ongoing. I have no idea. This was surprising. We’re still trying to reverse-engineer a little bit how it happened. Part of it seems to be that Tunde put something up on her Instagram apparently on Friday, which I was unaware of. Alex apparently said he had a live ride the day before. He apparently said something during the live ride, which again I was unaware of it. I think those things definitely drove people to it on. There were some social stuff that was going on. There’s a group I was unaware of but you guys probably know, The Bums of Anarchy group, which is tied somehow to Barstool Sports that got a lot of riders and a big donation. We might do another one. There are no plans, but there weren’t plans to do this one either until somebody sent me a message and we put it together.

If you do be sure and let us know because we know we can send it out. We have a Peloton rider or two that listens. We would be more than happy to distribute that information for you.

Regardless, thank you for doing this. This has been amazing. It’s cool to watch many people come together and ride for that. Many people have been feeling like, “What can I do?” This was something that we could all show up and do. We did show up.

The first ride, my kid was standing next to the Bike on a stool and she was trying to high-five literally everybody. Yesterday she gave up.

How long have you had your Bike? How did you come across the whole world of Peloton?

I’ve had my Bike for a while now, probably three to four years. I don’t remember how I first heard about it. I cover startups as part of my job for a living, so I’ve known about Peloton for a while. I had known John in his past life at Barnes & Noble pre-Peloton. I think I probably covered them when they first raised money at the very beginning of their life and it followed them. I’m somebody who likes to bike, but I’m also somebody who lives in Massachusetts. Our outdoor biking season is very short. The idea of actually being able to hop on a bike outside of that and not have to pay gym fee, it sounded like a no-brainer. It was a thing that made total sense for me to want to do.

If you can share your leaderboard name?

It’s changed because of these rides, so it’s just Dan Primack right now. There was a better one if I remember right. Everyone asked me to change it so they could find me.

Thank you so much for all you’ve been doing and for taking time out of your day to join us, we really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Before we go, where can people find you on the internet and stuff like that?

It’s Axios.com, which is our website. We’re a news site that covers politics and business and sports even at this point. I’m also on Twitter, @DanPrimack.

Thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

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As he does more of these, or if he does more of these, we will have to be sure and keep people posted. He does some of these on pretty short notice, they might not always make it into an episode, which is all the more reason to go to Facebook.com/TheClipOut. Like the page and join the group. Ally Love was featured in Well and Good.

She shared all of the foods that she eats to fuel up for her workouts. There’s some healthy stuff in there. What seems to crack people up, especially that don’t ride with Ally a lot, are donuts. She’s a huge fan of donuts. She’s like, “It doesn’t need to be a special donut. It could just be a glazed doughnut.” She’s good with that any time, but she doesn’t indulge often. When she does, she says she enjoys every bite.

I was going to say, who would have thought that Ally Love and I would have something in common, until you said she doesn’t indulge often. This is not Peloton related, but it’s Peloton adjacent just in the world of fitness. How much does it suck to be the CEO or should I say former CEO of CrossFit?

You control your destiny.

I guess I shouldn’t say it like that. I’m not trying to gin up sympathy for the dude.

I feel more sorry for the people who work for CrossFit that they were caught off guard.

It’s like a franchise.

Honestly, I don’t know how the business aspect works.

There are lots of other gyms that are out there.

There’s some affiliation.

They’re affiliated in some capacity and all of a sudden, they have to contend with that and they have zero control over what that guy says. Should we probably touch on what he said?

I don’t know. I’m not going to go into a full thing about every detail what he said but in general, there were some comments made that people were mourning the loss of George Floyd. He indicated that CrossFit in general, his company, was not mourning George Floyd. He just downplayed it and gave the impression that it was no big deal. People were very insulted by that and very upset. A lot of people changed their affiliations. There’s a Facebook page that’s called Pelotoners Who CrossFit. They’re not called that anymore. Now, they’re Pelotoners Who Lift Heavy. I don’t know how I ended up in that group because I don’t cry, but I ended up in a lot of Peloton groups that I don’t necessarily do whatever they do, but just to stay informed. That’s a little nugget of something that changed this week. It’s happening everywhere. Gyms across the country have changed from CrossFit to another name. It is very fast.

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MindBodyGreen.com has an article about where to find African-American trainers and yoga instructors.

The interesting thing is that several of the Peloton instructors were on this list. It’s a great list, but even if it’s not just Peloton that you’re after, you’re looking for fitness accounts that are inspiring and motivating. Specifically, you might be looking for African-American accounts to follow, this is a great resource. I will say that they missed a couple of the newer trainers like Adrian Williams is not on there, and there was somebody else they missed. Also they spelled some names wrong. I’m not responsible for that. I thought it was an interesting little piece how they quickly put all this together. It’s a list of 75. For many Peloton instructors to be on there, clearly the senior health editor of the MBG Movement rides Peloton, or is very aware.

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We’re very excited to introduce a new segment, and this might be our first official segment that we intend to be ongoing other than interviews of course. Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist, and Sports Psychology Consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn, VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, her long-running radio show. She’s written four bestselling books including, The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s Six-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy. Dr. Jenn, you began life as an interview, and in the television world, they would call that a backdoor pilot. Jenn Mann is joining us. Hello.

I am honored to be here. I am Peloton-obsessed and I love your show. Here we are together and will be for every week, which I’m excited.

You guys got to talk in. You have a sports psychologist, you know a lot about that. That fits a lot with the psychology that goes into getting yourself to exercise and the hurdles that entails. It just seemed like a natural fit. We’re very excited.

I’m very excited to be here and to get to do this with you, guys, and to get to connect with the Peloton community because I’m all about Peloton.

Each week we will have a different segment with a different topic. We should maybe throw out there, if someone has a topic idea, they should shoot it to us. For week one, since everyone is still dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic that’s going on, we thought we would talk about quarantine resolutions and what to do with yourself during this time.

I am a big proponent of quarantine-lutions. It is a positive spin on a negative, scary thing that we’re all going through. A lot of us made resolutions. We went into 2020 so optimistic. We had no idea that Stephen King was going to write 2020 for us. We were so fresh and wide-eyed naïve. We were hit with the pandemic and a lot of the New Year’s resolutions we made in January, like I know for me, one of my resolutions was to run a 5K that I’ve been training all my Peloton and getting my head in the right space. I ran one and then we had a pandemic. After I ran the first one, I was like, “I’m going to run one a month,” but now that’s not possible. There are a lot of people, especially Peloton people, that had active fitness, outdoorsy goals that they were going to do among other things that now everything has to change.

We’re now in June 2020, mid-year, this is a good time to make some new resolutions. Call them quarantine-lutions if you like. If not, that’s cool too. It’s time to reassess, given the current circumstances, what are your goals? Your goals may be to learn something different, maybe to learn a new skill. For example, I’ve been learning to cook since we’ve been in quarantine. That is totally new for me. I actually learned how to use a drill. I homed something, drilled it into the wall. For me, that was a huge accomplishment.

I did that too.

Don’t you feel like powerful?

I did and I’m very excited that there are blackout curtains in my room now.

A lot of the things that we were focused on before have shifted, and I think also our priorities have shifted. Your priorities may now be to spend more time with your family. It may be to get a new job because you’ve been furloughed or you’ve been laid off. I think that we have to reassess now that we are mid-year in the midst of a pandemic, where do we want to be six months from now? Where do we want to be in December? How do we want to be at the end of this pandemic, at the end of this quarantine? When we look in the mirror, what is going to make us feel satisfied and proud of ourselves?

How do you start that? You brought up some good points, maybe somebody was furloughed and they were trying to stay in shape, but now they’re feeling depressed. It’s really hard to eat well when you’re depressed. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and you have all these things you want to do, where do you start?

First of all, do a temperature check on yourself. You bring up a great point. There are a lot of people right now who are depressed, who are struggling with anxiety, for whom some huge ambitious goals are only going to make you feel terrible. Anytime we’re making goals, and I’ve done a lot of studying of goal setting and the psychology behind it, what we really want to do, and Tom, I also want to put it a little reminder there to you because one of my goals is to get you more active, is to make small manageable goals. What tends to happen is that people make goals of, let’s say you’re new to Peloton, “I’m going to work out an hour a day, seven days a week.” No, you’re not. First of all, even if you do that, you’re going to injure yourself. It’s going to be torturous and you’re not going to want to continue. It’s not a good place to start at. If you say, “I’m going to do two 20-minute walk classes a week,” you’re going to meet that goal. That’s almost hard notch, or maybe even 10 minutes or 5 minutes if that’s too ambitious. It’s better you make goals that you know are doable, and then build on them. Then you start to go, “I’m someone who meets her goals. I did that twenty minutes. Now I’m going to do 30 minutes instead of 20. I’m going to add one other 20-minute day.” It’s making small manageable goals, but knowing where you are.

If you are someone who right now is struggling with depression, with anxiety, the first thing you want to do is get yourself help. You want to get yourself support. Most therapists are doing online therapy. There are a lot of counseling centers and hotlines who are offering tele-therapy for low fee or no costs. If you’re someone who’s been furloughed or had lost their job, there are mental health options out there that are free. That’s to start with. If you are someone who is in a bad state, but maybe it’s not such a bad state that you need in-depth therapy, making goals that will help you get out of that. Maybe right now is not the time to make these self-transformations. Maybe your goal is to get out of bed every day and take a shower. Maybe your goal is to call one girlfriend, who’s really supportive each day when you’re not feeling like picking up the phone and connecting with someone, but the isolation is harming you. Taking your temperature, seeing where you’re at. If you’re in a better safe than that where you already make goals, think of it categorically, “What are my work goals? What are my health and fitness goals? What are my self-improvement goals in terms of emotion and psychology and that kind of stuff?” If you’re a parent, “What are my parenting goals?” If you’re in a relationship, “What are my relationship goals?” I’m a big believer in couples setting relationship goals and making couples resolutions. It helps bond a couple and it helps us think of our relationship a little bit differently.

I think our relationship is so good, we don’t need a resolution. That’s where I’m at with our relationship. Do you not feel our relationship?

Are you saying that we can’t ever get better, Tom?

I have a quick question. You were talking about online resources that were low cost or possibly free. Is there a central clearing house where someone could find something like that or a keyword they could google?

Normally, what I recommend people google is mental health clinics and their area that they live in because that’s where you can usually find a mental health clinic. Then you want to check in with their mental health clinic that’s local and say, “Are you offering teletherapy?” Most are at this point. It’s usually based on your ability to pay or else it can oftentimes be free. I keep seeing things pop up on my feed and I’m always googling about mental health issues, especially for my InStyle Magazine column, Hump Day with Dr. Jenn. I get a lot of alerts of that stuff. I know that they are out there and that they are available. I know there are some that are disaster-relief related. You may want to google ‘mental health services, disaster relief or COVID,’ or those kinds of specifics, but I know that they are out there.

Thank you so much for joining us and telling us all about that. We look forward to having many more of these conversations. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

People can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, @DrJennMann. You can also find me on my website, DoctorJenn.com.

—

Peloton is in an Oreo commercial.

Somebody dropped this on our Facebook group. It looks like a Peloton. It’s a YouTube video. It’s clearly taken from the COVID era. It’s people doing stuff at home with their Oreos and all these different little snippets from each different household. The second or third one, front and center is a Peloton.

As the fitness craze continues, Kettlebells are getting difficult to find.

Susie Beris sent this to me, a former guest on our show. This article is funny. People need to take the time to read this just because it’s humorous. There are people that are desperate to get kettlebells in New York City. They’re back alley deals happening to get these kettlebells. It is legit hard to find. It’s just a funny article because it details how desperate people are to get their hands on kettlebells. I saw that John Mills also posted this over Run, Lift and Live. He’s so funny when he posts stuff, he always has something to say. It was very amusing because he said, “I had no idea kettlebells were this popular.” I didn’t mean it, John. It’s not that different than an actual weight. They have a handle on it, which makes it easier to swing, but that’s just more for ergonomics. You could do it without it. I don’t know, I’ve never really been into kettlebell. Apparently, lots of people are, and they are desperate to get their hands on them.

It’s probably not the piece of fitness equipment that they make tons of.

There was a whole craze a few years ago and they went nuts. Kettlebells were everywhere.

There are probably lots of people sitting around with an unused kettlebell.

Now is your chance to get rid of them.

There was a craze a few years ago. There’s probably a good number of people that have moved on from that craze. If you get a dusty kettlebell, this is your time to shine.

You get yourself over to Craigslist. Be careful if you do. In all sincerity, there’s some buying and selling to be had if you have them. Take advantage.

There is a brand-new artist series.

Transgender artist and producer, D. Smith, is going to be highlighted in a ride with Tunde. It looks like that actually took place yesterday evening. There was a run with Jess Sims on Monday. That was also all featuring D. Smith.

That’s for part of Pride Month.

With so much going on, I guess it’s easy to forget. I forgot to mention that part of it but yes, it is Pride Month, all month long.

This quest badge keeps trickling out information.

I had to come full circle because I had said there wasn’t a badge for getting all four. Then the next day, I was on the Bike and I was like, “Look at that. There is a badge.” Apparently, while I was on the ride, an email came out. Many of our lovely audience reached out to me and they were like, “Crystal, here’s the badge.” Thank you all for telling me that. It’s so sweet. You get a silver one for doing all four of the week. Each one is like a green leaf and it had the number of circles, the weeks that you took. If you did all four, you’ve got a special email with a special badge.

The summer line is almost upon us.

A little birdie told me to expect it on Saturday.

That will be the day after this comes out.

For anybody wanting to know what time, I don’t know. I can’t be greedy. I’m getting the information that it’s going to be on Saturday. I can’t expect more than that, and it’s just a rumor. You’ll never know. Who knows?

Ricky Martin is getting spotlighted.

He’s going to be featured. Another artist series coming up fast. We’re hitting it hard for Pride Month. I think they’re trying to squeeze it in because there were many classes that they couldn’t get in the first week of June, understandably with everything going on. This week, there’s going to be on Friday the 12th. It’s going to be 6:00 PM Eastern. Then Ross Rayburn is doing a yoga flow to Ricky Martin on Saturday at 8:30 AM Eastern. Uh, and Cody Rigsby is the one teaching the ride on Friday. People are super excited about that. Cody and Ricky Martin, that’s a good combo, so does Ross Rayburn.

Someone reached out to you to make sure that you were aware of a ride in stretch.

They were trying to tell me that it was Erik Jäger’s first English ride. He’s one of our German instructors. A while back, you might remember that Irène Scholz had her first English ride. This was Erik’s. There was a ride and there was a stretch on-demand that you could take afterwards, but both were in English. If you haven’t had a chance to take any of Erik’s classes because you don’t speak German and maybe you’re a little uncomfortable with that because it’s hard to follow. If you’re not following the language, this is your opportunity to try out a class with Erik. It was just making sure people knew.

Finally, there was a half-marathon treadmill record set by John Raneri.

Somebody sent this to me and I just wanted to make sure I mentioned it because we had talked about the ultra-marathon that the new record had been set on a treadmill. It was a NordicTrack treadmill and somebody sent this to me. This was a new half-marathon record on a treadmill. John Raneri achieved a pace of 4 minutes and 49 seconds per mile. Here’s the kicker, it’s at 7,000 feet.

He did all this on a Peloton Tread. We need this guy to go do a full marathon, so he can take the record away from a NordicTrack treadmill. Get on that.

Hop to it, John. You make it look so easy, but that’s pretty cool. Thank you for sharing that, guys.

—

Joining us is Kari Gormley. Kari, how is it going?

It’s going well. Thank you for having me.

We should say in the interest of full disclosure, this is part two because you had us on your podcast.

It was exciting because before I bought my Peloton Bike, I joined a Facebook group and then saw Crystal’s post that there was a podcast. I was like, “Woah.” I started listening. I was excited. I’m like, “Of course, there’s a Peloton podcast.” This was back in July in 2018 when I got my Bike and I got up to date by listening to a ton of episodes. I felt like you are my Peloton friends already. I thought, “Why not come on my podcast?” Crystal was going to come on and then Tom was helping with something. It’s like, “Why don’t you come on too?” You’re exactly the way I expected you to be.

We don’t know how to be anyway else, any other way. You said you got your bike back in July 2018. How did you originally hear about it? What made you decide this is the time to get Peloton?

I first learned about it in 2016 and I had heard about it. I was at a friend’s apartment in New York City and I said, “Is that the Peloton Bike?” She showed me and she was showing me the classes. She showed me Cody and then I’m like, “He is cute. That’s cool.” I had gotten to spinning classes at where I work out and I enjoyed them but I always felt like I was a group fitness person. Every time I was at a hotel, I would ride the Peloton and ride with Cody and loved it. After the third different hotel and ride with Cody, I thought like, “That’s it. I’m getting it. I can go to classes.” Now the whole family uses that.

Not so much in my house, so I am jealous of that.

When you say the whole family uses it, how big is that family? How many people are we talking? Are you like the Duggars? Get a tandem Peloton?

All three of us, my son, my husband, and me.

Did you have to buy separate shoes for everybody or do they use the cages?

I got the cages, which I do not recommend getting the cages. Peloton does many things well, but I would not say that’s one of them. There are many great things about Peloton. We’ve got shoes and my son loves it. When he clips in, it feels satisfying to him. I’ll say to him, “William, you need to savor this,” and then I’ll hear. “I’ve got to savor this.” He doesn’t do the classes.

How old is your son?

He’s twelve.

I’ve seen lots of kids ages. They recommend that you’re thirteen and up. The important thing is that you can have a good fit on the Bike. That’s what they’re looking for. If he’s enjoying it and using it, you’re all good there.

I was just curious because that sounds like something Brian, my son, would say. He’s always talking about certain things or like the phone video games. He’ll talk about, “It’s satisfying when all the things do this.” Is that a teenager thing? I don’t know where they’re getting that from.

How old is your daughter, Crystal?

She’s thirteen. I feel like she’s nicer than she was at ten. Ten and eleven were rough.

I would agree that she’s nicer now.

She was ahead of her time.

Interesting times.

I’m glad as we’re quarantining that they’re old enough to occupy themselves.

I would not function well if I had to do all this working from home and they’re little kids. My hat’s off to all the parents who double duty.

We’re like, “You’ve got to get a cup to keep that screen time to about twenty hours a day.” I hate to crackdown like this but I’ve got to be a parent than a friend.

It’s been something I’m thankful too, that I got the Peloton in July. It’s been a lifesaver and it’s since the quarantine that my husband’s finally getting on the Bike. It’s wonderful to be able to stream it to the big TV and to do classes together. We’re happy that we have it.

How are you keeping active before the Peloton? I know you said that you would do classes when you were traveling at hotels. Did you have a regular workout program that you did before you found Peloton?

I was a big runner from about 2011 until 2017 or so. I’ve run six marathons and my podcast used to be focused on running. I do something called Balanced Athlete, which is like CrossFit but it’s not. I’ve found when I’ve gone that it’s been a lot about the reps and not necessarily about the form. Balanced Athlete is about the form. I wasn’t doing a ton of cardio. It was just a little bit and then also going for walks. I backed off on the cardio and I missed it. It was great to be able to get that endorphin high quickly on the Bike and then also not get injured because I would get injured frequently. I didn’t realize how much I missed the cardio until I got on the Bike. It’s like turning on your brain. They call it BDNF, the Miracle-Gro for your brain. It’s amazing how much clearer I feel and how much more efficient. Is that something you find too, Crystal?

I am a happier person with cardio. It’s funny just working out in general, I would say, but I find that I have to focus in a different way when I do with the Tonal programs. I have to be completely focused on what I’m doing to not hurt myself. I had hurt my back because I was doing a goblet squat. I don’t think I was 100% in the game. I wasn’t watching my form as I probably should have been. I have to stay focused. I love it because I love the way I feel after I do strength workouts, but I love the way I feel when I’m doing cardio. It’s a joyful thing to be on the Bike. I don’t feel necessarily joyful when I’m doing a strength workout, but I love how I feel after I’m done with the strength workout. It’s interesting that I can feel that way.

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I’m curious about Tom. I love strength training in a group because the instructors know my weaknesses and so forth and they’re on me. I felt like I had someone watching me and you don’t have that if I’m doing a core class on Peloton. With the Tonal, are they able to see your form somehow through it?

No, they don’t. There are a couple of things that helped with that. One, you’re seeing their form. You’re always able to see what they’re doing. Two, when you’re going through it, they’re giving you cues the whole time. Let’s say you’re doing a deadlift and you’re lifting it fast but you’re also throwing it down fast. The AI behind it will lower it at a four-count and pull up quickly. It picks up on that. That’s one way that they correct your form. The other way that I would say is that they have all of these broken-down moments. For example in their Facebook group, one of the things I love about their community is similar to Peloton. If you’re stuck on something, they will help you.

They have started this regular feature with what they do. You submit a video of how you’re doing an exercise and then they call it Form in Five, where they’ll break down the exact move you’re doing and they will correct your form through video. If you are stuck on something, they are open to help and accessible. I love that because I struggle with overhead movements. Those are hard for me. It’s been helpful to have that. Like you were saying about the program you were using for strength, they focus on the number of reps and your form together. You’re going to do ten reps but if you can’t finish it, it automatically lowers the weight for you one pound at a time until you can complete that rep so that you can do it safely. I love that.

Did you guys announce your winner for Tonal?

We have not.

We will announce it on our Zoom call.

I’ll answer a few more questions so I can get a couple more entries.

You still have time.

Are they having problems keeping them in stock? I heard Peloton is having a challenge. I don’t know if that’s still true.

Their sales have been through the roof. That’s across all connected fitness because I know FightCamp is having the same thing. Everybody we talked to is selling like hotcakes.

It’s been busy. We had a report that somebody bought an Echelon.

My husband and son were like, “Why don’t you check out this one?” They were like, “We saw that one.” I’m like, “No.”

You’re like, “You can get an Echelon or you can be married to me. You’re not going to do both.”

Everybody at work laughs at me because I’m like, “There are lots of great competitors or alternatives to Peloton but Echelon is not one of them.” If you’re going to get a different bike, you’re not going to hear a complaint about me unless it’s Echelon and then I’m mad. This is the worst opportunity for you. If you want to have an alternative for Peloton, then there are many options but that is a crappy one and you need to walk away. You were doing all these other workouts. How about your son and your husband, were they working out as well before all this?

In fact, it’s funny. When my husband and I started dating, I was not a runner but I wanted to be a runner. We used to run together and I was trying to impress him. This was back in 2003. He would motivate me. Fast forward, we ran a half marathon together. He’s always been an active guy. The thing is for him, he was in ROTC. He does not want to be yelled at. He’s not into group fitness. He’s one of these highly regimented people. He’s the person where you don’t need to get him to do something. He finished the year while saying, “I did 10,000 steps every day.” You do not need to push the man at all. Our son, he is hopefully getting his black belt. They haven’t made an announcement yet. Here, schools are closed. The big Black Belt Spectacular was supposed to be held at the school. We’ve always been active. The Peloton is a way to connect and my son is on it more than I am. I have to say like, “William, I’m going to be going on a live ride in ten minutes. You’re going to need to get out.”

Speaking of your podcast, tell us about that. Tell us the name of it and where we can find it. What was the inspiration? It went from running and it morphed and shifted.

What a great analogy, it shifted gears. I lived in Sweden for five years. I was in a bad relationship. I didn’t realize that at the time, but it was definitely an emotionally abusive relationship and verbally abusive, not physically. I felt like I was beaten down and I started losing weight. I started running. This was when I was in Sweden. I went and joined Weight Watchers. I felt empowered and so much more confident. It was one of these things where it was brewing for years. Finally, enough was enough. I left him. I took a trip around the world by myself and came back to the US. At the time, I was still in tech sales. I have been in Sweden. I wanted to help people get healthier because I saw what had happened for me. Fast forward, what happened was I left the tech arena and went and became a facilitator for Weight Watchers in the US. What they do is you can go to the public center and they have meetings where you go to a government office. I was living in Northern Virginia then. You go to any type of office. There were a lot of schools. I went to law firms, government agencies, and did meetings there. I absolutely loved it.

They’re all places where people sit for a living.

That’s true.

I find that interesting.

It’s interesting that you said that because they say, “Sitting is the new smoking.” I went and started podcasting. It’s interesting how it morphed because they’re saying that loneliness is the new smoking. You’re worse off being lonely than you are being a smoker.

I heard an episode of Freakonomics and they talked about that. They debunked it a little bit. Not like, “Go and be lonely.” Some of that got picked up and extrapolated a little bit by the media. There’s a loneliness problem but it’s maybe not quite to the degree that it got made out to be. I think that there is some truth to that though.

Being lonely is hard. It can make people depressed. If you feel depressed, you’re not going to be active. If you’re not active, then that makes the feeling of depression even worse.

It builds on itself.

I’m curious. I haven’t heard that episode. I would love to hear that episode and see the research they looked at because I’ve gone on to do a lot of work in positive psychology. I agree that the media can look at some research and do what they want to do. The research that I’ve been taught is strong. I look forward to hearing that.

I don’t think anybody is trying to be pro loneliness.

I’d love to see the view they have. Me being such a questioner, I would say, “What are the people on the positive psychology saying? No, you got it wrong because of this.”

I’ll derail this quick. You became a Weight Watcher facilitator and you’re going to all these office buildings.

We moved to Delaware when I was pregnant. After I had my son, I kept on doing meetings. I then started writing marathons. My beliefs about nutrition and the research were changing compared to what Weight Watchers were saying and they’ve since changed it. I’ve been doing it for several years. It wasn’t consistent with what the research was saying. I’m used to massive corporations. Changing things is hard. At that point, I had been listening to podcasts while I was training for marathons. I thought, “I want to do my own thing and talk about exactly what I want to talk about.” I went off and had my podcast. It started in 2014 right before Serial was released. It was a great time to release a podcast before everyone and their brother had one. It’s called The Running Lifestyle Show. It was a great opportunity. As you know, it’s been a wonderful opportunity to meet people who normally you wouldn’t meet, to meet new friends.

The podcast was great because I was able to run some marathons with a famous runner named Dean Karnazes. We partnered together with the charity he was running for. I ran three marathons in six weeks and had Jeff Galloway as a coach and got to do some neat things. Things changed over time in marathon running. I had done six and my body was saying, “Timeout. This is not lining up.” First of all, I called it The Running Lifestyle show because I had many interests and to talk about running wasn’t enough. On the podcast, there is a woman. Her name is Serena Marie RD. She was on, bringing in nutrition advice every week. We ran the marathons not physically together but we both ran Chicago and New York for this charity auction for healthy kids.

What happened was, the following fall, I was in a depression. Of course, there’s medication and there’s therapy. Exercise is good for you but there had to be something else. That’s when I found the science of positive psychology. What that is, one of the famous researchers in depression, his name is Dr. Martin Seligman. He had done research back in the ‘60s about learned helplessness, which means like, “Why should I keep on trying? I’m going to get knocked down again.” When he was becoming the President of the American Psychological Association in the late ‘90s, he said, “We put all this money into this research to help people who are south neutral get to neutral. Absolutely, you need to do this.” How do you help people live a good life? Can you research certain skills and certain practices to help people go from south neutral to neutral north and do these at the same time? Can you take vitamins and do things, which relationships are huge for this, so you can manage anxiety better and prevent depression and help get through depression? It’s a descriptive science. It’s not prescriptive. It’s been incredible and it’s been helpful during this time of COVID of how to work through it and how to work with them like mental fitness.

What is the name of your podcast since you’ve changed subjects a little bit?

It’s called The Flourishing Experiment. You can find it in all the podcast apps under The Flourishing Experiment. The first 250 episodes were when it was called The Running Lifestyle Show. If you look up The Flourishing Experiment, you can get all of those. There’s a lot of positive psychology in there. As I was going through the program in 2017, 2018, 2019, I’m bringing those things in as soon as I learned them. I’m like, “Everyone used to know about that. This is good.”

When we talked before on your podcast and in this conversation, it seems like you are able to apply things in every situation. Whether it’s about exercise or it’s about what’s going on in the world, you’re able to apply what you have learned and that’s cool. That’s neat to be able to apply it to many different things.

When you said one is a descriptive science and one is a prescriptive science, what does that mean?

When we think of prescriptive science, we think of psychiatry or things that you can make a prescription for. Descriptive is like, “Do this exercise.” For instance, if you’re working in communication and someone has done something that you want to say, “Please don’t do this practice,” that would be more descriptive rather than a prescription. When you’re mad at someone, “This is a prescription.”

There are certainly times when people need medicine. We’re not anti-medicine. People do jump to it awfully quickly sometimes.

A healthy mix of both is the way to go. If you can work through things without medicine, that’s my preference personally. I’m not against medicine, but I would certainly like to be able to cope with the external factors that are occurring and find better ways to do that than jump straight to, “Let’s take some medicine. I don’t want to feel anything.”

They are quick to throw that around sometimes.

Both have their places.

It doesn’t always work. It’s about building an even bigger toolbox. A lot of Peloton instructors, I get excited when I hear them say certain things. I’m like, “I know what they’re doing. There’s research behind what they said.” One of the best things is having a gratitude journal because when you are writing something down that you’re grateful for, it’s hard to be ticked off or to be worried. When you have depression, you’re more likely to have another one. I can see a big connection between a gratitude journal practice and not having one, because you’re going back to, “This worked. What about this? What about that? I know you’re a fellow big fan of Brené Brown. Her work is incredible. I love her. I’m glad that she’s also a fellow Peloton rider.

Many wonderful people are joining the Peloton community. It’s neat.

We have to get her on. How hard could it be?

I’m sure she’s going to be like, “Yes, of course.”

We should have a Peloton podcasters group. She would be in it because she has a podcast.

That would be great. I don’t know how to reach her but if we could, that would be amazing.

We would pencil her in. It’s like, “Let me look at my schedule and we’ll get back to you.”

You’re much better with playing coy than I am. I would be like, “Yes, please.”

Tom is used to being around celebrities.

He’s cool around them. You would not know that he’s talking to celebrities. A short story that I will tell, can I say who the celebrity was? Would it bother you?

Is it going to be a bad story?

Not at all.

Don’t say something mean about somebody.

It’s this one time, Tom and I were on a trip. Because of his job, there was something going on with one of the artists who was playing at the show and it happened to be Bret Michaels. I love Bret Michaels, especially when I was younger. He was hot. He’s gotten older since then. Tom is sitting there on the phone having this conversation completely casually with Bret Michaels. In fact, he has to calm him down because Bret Michaels is freaking out.

It’s about some of the marketing plans and the way we were approaching the show. He was like, “I heard you have a unique thing that you’re doing.” He’s hands-on. He wanted me to walk him through what I was doing for the show. This is unusual. You don’t normally talk about this before the show. I was on the phone with him for 30 minutes as I walked him through my marketing plan and what I was thinking. By the end, he was like, “I wish we could get every venue to do this.”

He was happy by the end of it. I was like, “You were talking to Bret Michaels,” the whole time. That’s all I was doing in the background. I had to be quiet and I had to hold it all in.

What was he known for? Was he at a show?

He was the lead singer of the band Poison and then a big hit Every Rose Has Its Thorn and my personal favorite is Talk Dirty to Me. He had a reality show called Rock of Love. He was on Celebrity Apprentice. He’s hands-on and much involved in keeping himself relevant and different and not just being the lead singer of Poison. He’s that, but he’s also done other things. He’s got a country thing that he does. He’s very much branched out.

He sounds like a brilliant businessman.

Some of those guys figure out ways to keep themselves relevant. He’ll be the first one to tell you that they’re nostalgic.

Some people are like, “We’re still relevant. We still are the most important group in the world.” I feel sad for those people.

Those are difficult to deal with.

He’s not one of those. It was funny because Tom was having a conversation on a Thursday afternoon and I’m like, “Oh my God.”

If you count my time in radio, I’ve been doing it for years.

I got to sit and listen to the conversation and I was excited.

I was excited about my marketing plan and he wasn’t going to be a jerk that day.

Did you ever get to go to the studio in New York City? I know you were there when you saw the Bike.

Yes. I was so excited and so nervous. I remember when I got close, I was like, “Oh, my god,” It looked exactly like the video they did with Alex and Cam Newton. I was like, “This is like that. There it is.” I went to a class with Cody. It was a disco ride. I had to have my first ride with Cody and it was my 50th ride which was neat. I met him. What’s great is the classes are free from Monday through Friday, the 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30.

Also, there was talk about when they were moving into the new studio that they were not going to be free anymore. It was going to be a lesser fee, but not free. We’ll see what the world was, but that has changed so people know.

What was neat was I did the class and there were spots for the next class. I got to do a ride with Matt Wilpers, but I usually don’t do many rides with him too much because of music. I enjoy his class. I’ve got to go back and it was almost like a spiritual experience. Seriously, I was going to do 45-minute club bangers ride with Alex. It was in January 2020 and it was before they announced that he was working with Ladder. His tribe was there, the Feel Good Family. Alex’s energetic but this was a whole new level. People went into the studio dancing and you could feel the magic and being the first Saturday of the new year was incredible. Also, the day before, I got to do a ride with Robin.

Were you planning on going to homecoming?

If you can change your way of thinking from 'I want to look a certain way' to 'I want to feel a certain way,' that can be a huge change. Share on X

Yes. In fact, when I heard you say on the podcast about getting tickets, my husband blocked time in his calendar so we both could be trying at the same time so I could get a ticket. I didn’t think like, “Kari, you should have your credit card next to you so we’d be ready to go.” Long story short, he got his ticket because he had his credit card right there. It didn’t happen. I wanted so badly to ride with Leanne or Ben because we don’t get that opportunity especially for me. We’re a few hours away. If I plan it, I can almost ride with any US instructor if I think about it. That was disappointing but speaking of the studio, I bumped into DJ John Michael. I talked to him for a good fifteen minutes at their little bar there and he is a doll. In fact, I know you like to have pictures. I have one with DJ John Michael. He’s wonderful.

He’s so nice. He’s such a good person. I love his outlook on life. I love how he’s open about things like depression, anxiety, and how he deals with them. I love how he’s so grounded, honest, and open. He’s a great guy. I like him a lot.

I didn’t realize that he’s talking about depression.

He talked about it on Instagram. He struggles with it. I believe it’s more anxiety than depression. It’s a mixture of the two for him. He talks about why it’s so important for him to be grateful for each day and to your point. He’s talked about his struggles and that now, he recognizes that, “I’m starting to have this moment so I need to go and take care of myself. I need to stay on top of it.” He will post about that on his Instagram. I love hearing people talk about that especially people who have a lot of followers because there are a lot of people in the world that don’t realize that they’re not alone in those struggles. There are so many of us that deal with anxiety and depression. It’s not only you. You’re not crazy for feeling that way.

That goes the whole loneliness thing because when we talk about it, it’s like, “You too,” you don’t feel that loneliness. That’s something people aren’t talking about, maybe they will when this goes live. We’re not hearing about the impact on people being by themselves. We have Zoom and this is incredible, but people are wired to be around each other. It’s how we’re meant to be. It’s so wonderful that we can have this. Can you imagine if the internet went down?

We were talking to the kids about that. It’s horrible that this is happening, but there’s never a better time.

There’s never been a better time to be stuck at home. Years ago, if you didn’t have movies, you’d have to go to the store to get a movie. You don’t even have to do that. Pull it up on Netflix, Vudu, or Amazon Prime and buy pretty much any movie that was ever made.

The things that we’re able to do now is interesting.

How old are your kids?

I have a son who doesn’t talk to me who is twenty. I have a fifteen-year-old and Crystal has a thirteen-year-old daughter named Sydney.

Are you finding women that their chests get bigger when they start riding the Peloton?

No. There are people that get breast implants. There are instructors that have talked about it. Maybe you heard me say something about that at one point or something. I have not heard that though.

Did you say that we said that at some point?

I thought I heard something about breasts. Maybe it’s from another podcast or something because I feel like I’m gaining weight. Do you know what I mean? There’s a difference.

It sounds vaguely familiar. I wonder if it was a joke article that we found and made fun of or something years ago.

I don’t remember that but I will say the only thing I can think of that would lend any validity to that is, it’s because you’re leaning forward a lot. You’re using your forearms which could engage your chest more. That’s the only thing I can think of but I have not experienced that and I don’t know anyone who has. No one has told me that is what I mean. If they experienced it, they did not share that with me.

I was curious about how your journey has been through Peloton and what your health looked like because of it. I don’t think we’ve discussed it on my podcast on how your health has changed. I thought, “I forgot to ask Crystal about that.”

My health has changed quite a bit. I have focused on things completely differently than I did pre Peloton. Everything about my life has changed. I eat so much less meat than I used to eat. I wouldn’t say I eat a lot of vegetables, I still probably don’t eat as clean as I would in a perfect world but I don’t drink as much and I pay a lot more attention to how things affect me. For example, getting the Whoop device that I have has helped notice that my recovery is crappy after I drink the night before and I feel awful for the next two days. I know that it’s obvious that you don’t need a device to tell you that you feel crappy, but to see the numbers and how your performance changes.

I remember Tunde said this when we interviewed her, “If you can change your way of thinking from, ‘I want to look a certain way,’ to ‘I want to feel a certain way,’ that can be a huge change.” I feel that in general has been my experience with Peloton. I work out more because I feel great and I love it. It’s not only, “I’m thinner.” It’s because I feel happier. I love working out now and I never could say that before. It’s changed everything and I feel I’m a lot more of an open person than I used to be because we do this show.

That’s more about the show than it is about the exercises necessarily.

It wouldn’t have happened had it not been for Peloton. It’s all connected. Every area of my life has changed.

Except for your husband.

You have not.

I have not changed and your husband is still the same. You still have the same husband since you started Peloton.

Tom, you must be so proud of Crystal. I’m curious, what are the big changes that you see?

She’s a lot more confident and outgoing. I remember she had to do a lot of speaking at work. I remember how much that used to freak her out when she had to lead a call or go in and pitch something. You haven’t had those moments in forever for years.

I would have to go to other cities and do sales calls and all I had to do was one part of it. I didn’t have to stay and end up in front of people but it stressed me out. I would be crying anxiety before I left. I was a mess. I don’t have to do that anymore but the calls that I do lead and have to convince people to do things and stuff. I don’t have any stress anymore.

It’s not like talking to Bret Michaels.

No, it’s definitely not.

From Marathon To Peloton: Try each instructor twice because you don’t know if you were in a bad mood or maybe you just didn’t like their music.

It’s such a gift to have people listen to what you have to share. It’s good.

It’s been flattering to see what this whole thing has grown into.

I’m sure you feel the same way with your podcasts and you have almost 300 episodes. That’s a lot of episodes. Congratulations on that.

That’s committed because it’s a term within the podcasting world, podfade. Apple Podcast is littered with shows that didn’t make it past 3 or 4 episodes.

I heard something about if you get past seven, you’re legit. I was in a car accident and had to take some time off. It’s been a journey too. They say, “Go for the niches,” and go out to more of a podcast focused on vitality, relationships, and also on creativity. It’s a little bit broader than doing distance running.

It probably helped that you had built an audience and it sounds like you transitioned over time that your interest gravitated this other direction. Eventually, you were like, “Screw it. I’m going to talk about this now.”

It is now a new thing.

I will talk about this. I’m not doing a ton of running anymore. In fact, because of this podcast that I’m like, “Kari, you should do a Peloton run.” I did. What’s interesting is a lot of listeners are fellow marathoners and they’ll reach out, “I can’t start running again. I’m not motivated.” It’s like, “Let’s look at a bigger question.” You were saying, Crystal, that Peloton opened the door. For me, it’s like, “If I can run this distance, what else can I do?” It goes wider and wider but this goes back to self-care. There’s physical self-care, there’s mental self-care. I would say it’s going more into the mental self-care than the physical.

On that note, I found it interesting. I had to find a balance because as I started into the Peloton world, I met so many great people that encouraged me to try new things like doing triathlons, running, and a longer distance running. I did a half marathon. I’ve never done a marathon, but I found that the stress of preparing for those races is in the longer distances. It’s so stressful that it feels like an anvil around my neck instead of motivating me. When I start off, it’s motivating but there becomes a point where it becomes de-motivating that it pushes me down and it feels like, “Everybody, get away from me. I want to exercise for fun again.” I went all the way. I loved it, went past it and got to that point of feeling miserable about it. I had to come back and be like, “I want to exercise for fun again.” I need to stay there. That’s my spot where I have to stay.

I’m with you. It becomes all you think about. You’re like, “I’ve got an eighteen miler this Saturday,” or training for a half marathon, “I’m doing the ten-miler.” That’s the graduation. If you can do a ten miler yourself, you’re set for a half or you can do a twenty miler and you’re usually set for a full. You’re always thinking about it. It’s always there.

When you have so many other things going on, some people that to be the forefront of their focus and that drives them but for me with so many other things going on, it becomes an anvil. It was stressful because I was constantly feeling like I wasn’t doing the other things I wanted to do. I couldn’t get to them and when I did get to them, I didn’t feel I was putting the effort into it that I wanted to put into it. I am envious of people who are able to do marathons or Ironmans and do the full thing. Physically, I could do it but with the demands of time and how we like to travel and we like to do other things, I don’t think that I can commit to that at this point in my life with everything going on, but I wish I could. I wish I could and not feel like a crazy person. I know that you’ve mentioned Cody several times. I am going to say that Cody is your favorite instructor, I’m guessing.

I do a lot of different Peloton offerings. I like to say that Cody’s my boy and Alex is my man. I have different favorites. I like Matty Maggiacomo for core. I love that he calls him dad jokes. I don’t know if he’s a dad, but I like his humor.

He’s not a dad but he has a great dad.

I’m in the Peloton Monthly Challenge Tribe and someone said, “Matty announced doing a 21-day challenge with this ten-minute core. It’s been great and as I’ve done it. My dad who is in Tucson, I got him to do it. I’ll call him on FaceTime and say, “This is our class,” and we’ll do it. Some days I’ll call him about something else and he’s like, “Hold on. I’m doing my class with Matty Maggiacomo.” That has been wonderful to have. I love nighttime meditations. They have been a game-changer.

I remember you talking about once with a famous tennis player on how she said she loves her nighttime meditations. I like them. Kristin and Anna are my favorites for the nighttime meditations. I also like Robin. I like her during this time of quarantine especially. She’s been empowered. They’re all great. A lot of times too, it’s the music they play. One time I found, “There’s a new low impact twenty minutes. It’s exactly what I wanted to do.” I get into it and I haven’t checked the music and I’m like, “Next time, make sure you check the music.” It’s only twenty minutes but if there’s another class that’s twenty minutes and I prefer the music, okay then.

What is your leaderboard name?

Not original. It’s KariKG.

How did you come up with that? You’re like, “It was assigned to me at first.”

Should I be Kari Gormley? Most people don’t go by their names. I was like, “Should I do something about flourishing or positive psychology?” I ended up with KariKG because I was overthinking it. I was like, “Kari, do the name and you can always change if you want to.” For now, I am KariKG.

I love it. It’s you, it’s simple and down the road. There are no fancy thrills and frills. It’s just KariKG.

The instructors can pronounce it. They don’t worry about them struggling on a shout-out.

There are no crazy numbers involved. There’s something to be said about that.

Do you have any advice for people starting out? You should have good advice with all the positive psychology.

I love that you asked your guests that because when I was new to Peloton, I was like, “Tell me more.” Like many people said, and I asked this question in Cody’s group, the first group I joined, “Try all the instructors twice.” Like a marathoner, I almost made a training plan where I had everyone’s name and see if I had it twice. This is what happened when I became a runner. I would read running magazine cover to cover. It’s a little intense here. I organized the lunch for the Delaware Peloton riders and got their words of wisdom. I would highly recommend trying each instructor twice because you don’t know if you’re in a bad mood or maybe you didn’t like their music.

Maybe they’re having an off day.

They could be too. I remember going on Alex’s at first because I saw a live ride was coming up and I hadn’t taken this class yet. I was like, “Here we go.” He had me away when he said, “Welcome to the family.” I was like, “Nice.” I liked that. When I met him in the studio, he was like, “Who’s new to my classes?” I raised my hand. He said, “I’m going to kick your ass.” I would definitely say try the different instructors, for sure. I would also say play with your seat adjustment because every single person I talked to gave me a different adjustment from the person at the store to the person who delivered it. I was even talking to my osteopath who has a Peloton. I’ve taken videos and he was like, “No, do this. Do that.” Play around with it.

I read on your show, Sam Ettari who started the Peloton Monthly Challenge Tribe. I was like, “These are cool and they’re meeting together once a year. That sounds fun.” I was able to get in which was cool. I made some friends there and even went to a party with one of them. It turns out she is friends with a friend of my husband from work. They went to business school together. I would say get involved with a group because you’ll try new things. For instance, we’re doing bingo. It’s like what you did but it’s a little more than picking an instructor. We have a new card every week and they have a lot of different challenges and things that I normally wouldn’t do. Pick a class from your lowest one and do it. Call a friend and do a ride together. Another one is I finally did a boot camp. I never would because I don’t have the Tread. They’re like, “You don’t have to do the Treads.” I went on the Bike which I didn’t know I didn’t do before. I did a ten-minute scenic ride while they were doing the Tread.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it. Before we go, where can people find you?

You can go to my website KariGormley.com. The podcast is The Flourishing Experiment which you can find in all podcasts. I’m a bit on social media. Tom and I were talking. This is my favorite form if you can call it social media podcasting. I am @KariGormley on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I love email. It’s Kari@KariGormley.com.

Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it and for having us on your show.

It’s been a blast and it’s so great to get to talk to you again.

Thank you. You too, Crystal. Thank you, Tom. This was a lot of fun.

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That brings this episode to a close. What pray tell do you have in store for people next week?

We have Ariel Brown. Ariel Brown is a long-time Peloton rider. Also, she is the Creator of the Emotional PPE Project, which is a really cool organization. You are going to love learning about it. Please make sure that you tune in. You’re not going to want to miss it.

Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. When you’re on the Bike, be sure to use, #TheClipOut. We greatly appreciate that. Be sure and subscribe wherever you get your podcast from, so you’ll never miss an episode. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.