John Mills joins us to discuss Echelon’s latest shenanigans.

Robin Arzon is featured in People Magazine.

Barre Classes have arrived.

Crystal gives us an overview of recent Peloton UI tweaks.

45-Minute Strength classes are here.

We’re doing another Zoom call this weekend. Join us! 9/26/20

Denis Morton is featured in a new Peloton YouTube video.

Dr. Jenn Mann – The Science Behind “I Think I Can”

Jenn Sherman gets called out for her potty-mouth and calls them out right back.

Zwift is now valued at $1 billion.

Tunde was on Common’s YouTube show.

Emma Lovewell was on Tunde’s Speak series on Instagram.

We have an update on the Peloton 4 Parkinson’s fundraiser.

All this plus our interview with Andrea Barber.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

175: Andrea Barber (aka Kimmy Gibbler from Full House) Talks About her Love of Peloton

I was thinking we could start with a little update about a past guest.

Donna Carr has been kind of on pins and needles with the wildfire that’s going on in the Bay Area in California.

She was a guest we had on a couple of episodes back talking about how the fire affected their lives.

It’s been a scary time for her and I checked in with her and so far everything is as good as can be expected. She had her birthday. Happy birthday, Donna. She also said that the wind has changed directions and is now on the opposite side of them. That is, for them, good news at the moment. We will continue to hope that that keeps going away from them.

I know we talked about that a couple of episodes back, but I want to give an update that at the moment, everything seems to be okay in her world. Speaking of guests, on the show we have Andrea Barber, also known as Kimmy Gibbler from Full House. It was a pretty funny one, I think. You’ll want to stick around for that. What else do you have in store for people? 

We are going to talk about my favorite anti-Peloton subject and that is Echelon. Robin was featured in People magazine. We’re going to talk about that and my thoughts on the new Barre classes and all kinds of other little tiny things. There’s never a tiny thing with Peloton. It’s like a million things happening every week. We’re going to talk about all the Peloton dish.

Before we get to all that shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts where you can go rate, review, subscribe. We have a new review. This is from RI02840, which just rolls off the tongue. It says, “Love listening to Crystal and Tom. They are so positive and give great info and love Peloton as much as we all do. Hope to meet you two at homecoming 2020. Mrs. Abelack.” I’m assuming that’s the leaderboard name.

Thank you very much. You guys are so sweet. We have the best audience on the planet.

Also, you can subscribe to podcasts if you’re not already aware wherever you get them from. Just hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Check us out on Facebook, Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group and you can sign up for a weekly newsletter where all the links and pictures and stuff like that will be sent directly to you. You can do that at theclipout.com. We have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com/theclipout. You can subscribe to that as well. This might be a good time to give that a shot because we’re talking to Andrea Barber for like 45 minutes to an hour. You might want to see all the Gibbler faces she makes. It will all be on the YouTubes that are so popular with the kids. Go check that out.

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We just played the checking out the competition. I don’t know if we’ve used that one yet. Crystal immediately is like, “Echelon’s not a competition. You can’t play that.” Joining us from Run, Lift, & Live. It’s John Mills. John, how is it going?

How is it going?

I know what you’re alluding to, about the fact that they’re not competition, but they affected the stock price. You never know for sure.

I think they did, but I don’t call them competition because I don’t like their dirty tactics, but let’s just jump in and tell the story the way it went. From the beginning in case you haven’t heard, Amazon and Echelon were reportedly teaming up for a prime bike, which was just for Amazon to be selling. It was a $500 knockoff and the world went crazy. Echelon was on every single cover of everything internet-wise.

CNN wrote about it.

Every outlet was talking about this. Within my group, the same thing. People were posting left and right about, “Did you hear about this collaboration?” There was a lot of talk going on about it.

Amazon didn’t build the bike. Let’s just settle down. I never thought it was a partnership, but then it immediately comes out two hours later after Peloton has taken a 5% dip on the stock market. “Just kidding. They were there and they’re part of it, but it’s actually the same bike they were selling over Walmart.” They just slapped a prime sticker on it. 

Amazon has nothing to do with it. 

That was later.

I believe Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying, “No, you didn’t.”

When it was reported, I was thinking there’s something fishy about it. Just on its appearance, we’re to believe that Amazon in their first step into connected fitness to produce or advertise a bike, a $1.5 trillion company, it’s going to go, “Let me partner with Echelon. By the way, let’s use that bike you were selling at Walmart, and can you just slap our stuff on it?”

I absolutely love the headlines that have been coming out. Amazon stops the sale of the so-called prime bike and calls out the fitness company for pedaling the partnership and made them stop selling it. It has been pulled and they are not to resell it until they changed their branding. It says right here in the article that Echelon does not have a formal partnership with Amazon. 

I caught that headline earlier. Someone was pinging me 5:00 in the morning.

That’s what I woke up to, John. I saw and we posted almost the exact same times. It was probably the same people. It was like, “Ding, ding, ding.” I was like, “Let me wake up.” 

I got why they were pinging me though, because as it was being stated, I understand why folks would go, “Wow.” That makes sense. They say they play in the space as the low-cost vendor. There are other companies that play in that space, Sunny, Nautilus and Schwinn. They play at that price point but other than the Walmart bike, Echelon didn’t have any other bikes in that price point and that bike was only sold at Walmart. It made sense for them to advertise a bike at that price point and the idea that it would be with Amazon and get that type of publicity on the Amazon site. If that was a collaboration, it seemed extremely beneficial for Echelon. I would hear all the positive talk about it while I was dismissing it. In all my posts I was going, “Is that a partnership? Maybe they are saying it is and Amazon just went yeah. Are we sure?”

It seems like it was worded in a way where it was this weird like, “We’re only selling it on Amazon. Therefore it’s an Amazon exclusive.” That’s not quite the same thing as a partnership now, is it? The thing that frustrates me about this because obviously, we’ve never been fans of Echelon around here because of stuff like this. We throw a lot of punches at Echelon in a way that we don’t to other people that have entered the space late like a Bowflex or a Nautilus. They seem like they’re always doing stuff like that. 

I would like to point that out because I had a lot of people push back and be like, “You shouldn’t be knocking a bike just because it’s cheap.” I want to be very clear. I am not knocking this bike because it is cheap. I am knocking this bike because it’s Echelon and I do not agree with their business practices. 

What’s frustrating about this is ultimately even though they got slapped down by Amazon, over at Echelon, I bet you they’re all high fiving each other. This is a win because at the end of the day, all they care about is they got all sorts of major news outlets telling people that there’s a $500 bike out there. If you were contemplating buying a $500 bike, I would say buy one from a different company. If this is what they’re willing to do to get you to know that there’s a $500 bike, then this is probably not the people you want to trust to build your $500 bike. If you don’t have the means to get a Peloton, I understand that, but go and buy a different $500 bike because I wouldn’t trust this company. 

I just want to read this. This is not worded in such a way that it could be, this is flat out lying. “The prime bike was developed in collaboration with Amazon aiming to create an amazing connected bike for less than $500. Amazon looked to us to partner on their first-ever connected fitness product is recognition of our commitment to deliver quality at a reasonable price point.” They are a bad company.

That’s not semantics, those are just untruths.

I got the same pushback as you, Crystal. We want bikes in the lower cost price point. “It’s democratization, John.” I’ve got the same pushback, but I had previous experience with Echelon. Months ago, Echelon had put out a video, an ad on YouTube in comparing their bike, their EX5s with Peloton’s bike and in the comparisons there were all kinds of lies. They also used Olivia Amato’s picture on one of the screens when they were doing the comparison. I posted it in my group and there was a lawyer who was out there and she’s like, “They can’t do that.” She reaches out to Olivia and within hours, the video is gone. We’ve seen this stuff before.

We have and I know what you’re talking about. There were lies in those comparisons. They talk blatant lies. It’s been like that since day one. I have no respect for anybody or any company that completely rips off somebody else’s hard work. I have nothing against somebody that wants to go out there and create something but make it your own. To lift somebody else’s ideas and take it and pretend and push it out there to the world like it’s your own is disgusting. In my opinion, I have no respect.

I’ve been referring to them as Debo in my group for a while because it’s like, “That’s my bike.” That’s been them from day one. They don’t care who made the bike.

They do the same thing to MIRROR, The Reflect. That’s what they have for that. They have a rower and they’re knocking off a Hydrow. They take everything that everybody else has worked hard on and they just make it their own. I don’t like that. It’s gross. 

I haven’t heard much about The Reflect. That’s one thing that I’ve got to assume, The Reflect must not be doing as well as their bike lines. I rarely hear anything about The Reflect.

I think they probably jumped on it quickly without knowing if it was going to be popular. 

They’re probably waiting for MIRROR to do a big marketing push and then they’ll push it. I always talk about with kinds of promotion. I always say, “I’m in the business of notification, not education.” It’s not my job to convince you to like sticks. It’s my job to find a guy who likes sticks and then say, “Tap, tap, tap, sticks is coming to town.” I feel like Echelon is similar in that. You don’t have to explain a bike. People get that but MIRROR takes some explanation. They don’t want to spend the time, effort, and most importantly money to explain what it is. They’ll wait for MIRROR to reach a tipping point and then they’ll piggyback that. That’s my guess. 

This is back in March, when the Connect Sport Bike came out and they said a similar thing, “This is exclusive to Walmart.” It was $497. When this thing came out and I’m reading through the article and the bottom of the article says, “We think this is the same bike from Walmart.” I started comparing the pictures and I’m like, “That is the same bike from Walmart.”

That’s a game that appliance manufacturers like to play where most of your washers and dryers are made by two companies and they slap a different name on them. Hotpoint has also made Maytag or I might be off on that, but you get what I’m saying. When you see a Home Depot or Lowe’s, they’ll have their store brand, but it’s a Maytag or GE. They’ll have these promotions where it’s like, “If you can find it cheaper, we’ll price match it and give you 10% back in cash or something.” It’s because they know that the brands they carry do not exist anywhere else and so you can’t match it. I did it once by accident and that’s how I noticed. I was like, “I found this at a Maytag store and it was a hundred dollars cheaper.” The guy is like, “That’s not supposed to be a thing. They’re not supposed to sell this there.” Here’s how you know it’s a scam. It took them an hour to figure out how to give me the rebate because they had never done it. They had no clue how to do it. That’s the game that they’re playing. They’re like, “We’ll scrape off the name and put a different name on it.” 

That’s a little bit different because you were in collaboration with the vendor at that point. Everybody from the seller standpoint is on the same page. They’re not just flat out stealing it. That’s a little bit different than what Echelon is doing. In this case with selling it in two different places, I’m not even upset they’re selling it in two different places and slapping a different label. Somebody will question it and somebody is going to be out there. 

Lowe’s was selling the thing and they had already signed a deal with Maytag or GE or whatever. That was all real, which is not what was going on with Echelon and Amazon. 

In my opinion, and I got pushed back on this too, I don’t think it’s a pretty bike. If you do, great, go buy it, be happy but I don’t. I think that my Peloton is beautiful. I can’t imagine having that Echelon in my house for multiple reasons.

Sunny has a $299 bike. They’re working. I’m sure that bike isn’t selling all that well, but they’re covering a particular price point. Schwinn has a $499 bike. I’m sure that’s not doing all that well now with the proliferation of connected fitness, but they’re covering that price point. The same thing with Nautilus, they’ve got a bike in that price range. Echelon, this is a secondary gig for them. They sell appliances and other utility things and when they came in with a bike, that was a secondary business for them, and they advertise it well. They could be taking market share from these other companies that are just doing things the right way while they’re trying to be a little crafty and shifty. I appreciate the idea of democratization. I appreciate that you’ve got players down there. They are providing a service to get that range. That does bug you a little bit about it.

It does because you’re right. I have never heard a bad thing about Sunny. I’ve never heard a bad thing about the Schwinn bike that’s out there. People have used them since I’ve been a Peloton owner and they’ve used them with their iPad. Quite frankly, that’s pretty much what an Echelon is at any price point. You’re just throwing an iPad on it and taking the Peloton classes. It is not fair that this company is coming along acting like they’re better than they are and they’re equals as a Peloton. At the same time, in my opinion, ripping off the ideas and the technology then leaving people in the dust. It’s not cool.

It’s rewarding bad behavior. 

I want the bad people police to get them. 

I wonder when that’s going to happen. I’ve been thinking at some point, people that may partner with them, the industry, or the customers may come to have an impression of their business and business model but I hadn’t seen that to date.

I guess I’m surprised that all Amazon does is put out a strongly worded press release. 

That’s bad to have somebody call you out public. That’s a big deal. 

It is but at the end of the day, they still told everybody there’s a $500 bike and that’s what’s top of mind. That’s what the average consumer is going to walk away with. You would think Amazon would want to make an example of them and send a message to stop the next company. If this is all that happens, they call you out but you get tons of free press about your product, then I would like to announce that The Clip Out has partnered with Amazon.

Somebody brought up an interesting point about that. Peloton uses Amazon AW Services a lot. That might be why it was quick to get the strongly worded. I would like to see this company have their ass handed to them. I feel that way about it.

Especially if there was an impact on the stock. I wasn’t sure, but it did dip.

You weren’t the only one that thought that because when I was looking at my little stock ticker, that article came up and they showed Amazon stock up, Peloton stock down. That is not a coincidence.

It makes sense because if you’re an investor and you all of a sudden think Amazon is going to get into this world now, that is a major that somebody with deep pockets who doesn’t necessarily have to make their money off the bike, they can be like, “Now these classes are bundled into your Prime video subscription.” If you think that Amazon is behind this, that’s where your mind goes, this is what’s coming. It makes total sense. It would affect the stocks. 

Part of what I started to say and I forgot was that some of that pushback I was getting from people was because it was like, “This is Amazon. This is isn’t a bad thing. This is a good thing.” It’s still Echelon. I don’t believe that that is the case. I love Amazon. I know a lot of people have issues with Amazon, but I do too. I am a fan of the convenience factor. Now, the stock was back up and for the first time ever hit a hundred dollars a share. Take that Echelon.

John Mills went and ordered a monocle off of Amazon.

After I read the article then I saw it pre-market going up and I’m like, “They were right.” That was the whole announcement. I’m thinking maybe it didn’t tip. The announcement comes out and it says, “They’ve changed the listing in Amazon. The bike is now listed as unavailable.” I go out there and I start searching and I can’t even find it. I think it was a moving thing, like it was happening in real-time.

There’s the latest with that. That’s more airtime than Echelon deserves.

Don’t trust them. Tell everybody you know, “Don’t trust them.” 

Thank you very much for joining us, John. Where can people find you?

They can find me on Facebook at Run, Lift & Live group or Run, Lift & Live page. They can also find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com. I’ll talk to you guys later.

We’ll talk to you later.

Bye.

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People magazine. That’s a big deal. That’s one of the few magazines left that still get published. You’re getting fewer and fewer of them. Robin Arzon was featured in People magazine. It’s all about her pregnancy.

She talked about basically her hopes with her pregnancy and that she wants to have a very fit pregnancy. I liked this little quote from her. It says, “My entire mission in going through this for the first time myself, is to focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t.” She said that she feels like the conversation around pregnancy, especially being fit during that pregnancy, what kind of modifications do you do? She said she doesn’t believe in starting from a place of limitations. They go on to talk about how she’s the first Peloton instructor to speak so openly about her pregnancy. She’s always Robin when she talks about this and she wants to remind people, women, that they are the most majestic, baddest creatures on this planet. No matter what birth you’re contemplating, no matter how you feel physically, focus on what you can do and let’s create areas of opportunity for that power. We have to keep in mind that she has a type one pregnancy. She’s diabetic as well. She said that she has a wonderful, supportive medical team that is going to make sure that she stays healthy and fit.

It’s another sign about how far Peloton has come since its inception, that its instructors are featured in outlets like People magazine, like “real celebrity.” 

It’s crazy that it’s come to this. I could always see it happening but it’s weird to be here.

I was going back and working on some stuff and I was listening to past episodes. I was way back in the teens on our episodes. It was funny to hear the things that still impressed us with like, “Peloton just did this,” it got mentioned in some small way in the media. Now it’s everywhere.

Since we’ve been doing this for 3.5 years, it’s gone from, “We got excited about seeing a commercial,” to “Are the instructors in the People magazine?” Congrats to Peloton.

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Peloton announced their health and fitness council and it seems weird to then turn around and build classes around, going to bars, especially in this age of COVID when we should be socially distancing. I know that we’re Peloton fans here, but I have to put my foot down and say that this is wrong.

It’s not that kind of bar.

You shouldn’t go to any kind of bar.

It’s BARR. It’s a type of exercise.

That would explain why I was unfamiliar with it.

It’s like ballet-inspired classes.

There’s a whole new batch of Barre classes out. 

I have to explain to those people who don’t know. Since the beginning of Peloton, people have been asking for Barre classes. The fact that they are here is a huge deal and should not be overlooked.

I was going to say, I remember talking a while back, talking about old episodes about there was a lot of scuttlebutt because a couple of instructors had been seen getting certified for Barre. 

Do you know that that’s been over a year?

I knew it had been a while.

It might’ve been eight months, but it’s been long enough to have a baby. Let’s say that. That’s how long it’s taken to put it into fruition. You wonder, John Foley was saying in the investor and analyst meeting that new verticals are dropping. Then over the weekend, we get an email. Some people got an email. I think it might be people who love these two teachers, they take them all the time. It was Hannah and Ally. They got an email, they said, “We’re dropping these classes tomorrow at 10:00 AM. You’re the first to know about it.” This was on Sunday night and Monday, the classes drop. I find that interesting because I suspect it’s not going to be long before we see another vertical dropping. He mentioned it, which means it’s in a short timeline, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it in that setting.

Bigger and better things are always on the horizon. Share on X

It’s closer to dropping the knot. 

I wanted to tell everybody about my thoughts on the Barre class because I took my first one. I did a 30-minute Barre class with Hannah. One thing that struck me and I was fascinated by it, was how strong my Tonal has made me because I did a 30-minute Barre class with heavier weights than they suggested. I used 5 pounds as opposed to the 2 to 3 pounds they suggested and I was able to do the entire thing. That is just a plug for how much strength has changed my abilities. It’s like little things you don’t realize. I know I’m not super skinny because I haven’t exactly watched what I’ve been eating, but that was fascinating to me. Also, I enjoyed this class. I enjoyed that it’s focusing on your legs, stomach, and arms in a completely different way than what we’ve been seeing with the strength classes. There’s room for both. I think this is a great way to do lighter strength that you want to focus on some key areas like your core and things like that. I enjoyed it and I thought it was taught well. It was good. I also thought it was interesting that they put the Barre socks up on the boutique.

Here’s the most important part for Crystal. There are now new things to buy.

I didn’t buy them.

You can get them at the bounce house. 

You can, and a lot of people were like, “Why are we buying hospital socks?” That’s what everybody was calling them. The older ladies like myself, we were calling them hospital socks because they’re the no-slip socks.

My first thought was like, “That’s where you get it like the sky zone.”

That’s true. It’s the same. Either of those socks will work. I did this in my bedroom on the carpet and I had no problem whatsoever. I was fine. Do whatever you’re comfortable with by all means. I’m sure the socks are already sold out. If you didn’t get them that first day, you know how it flows, you get it, it goes fast.

They’ll be back. I know some things come and go, but this seems like something that would eventually be in stock in perpetuity. 

They don’t have other things that you would think in perpetuity. It could have been just like day one. They will be back in my opinion. I don’t know that it will be all the time though. I also thought that it was interesting. They put these classes under strength and at first, they didn’t have their own filter. People were like, “Ahh.” They’ve dropped the Resistance Band classes. It’s clear to me, yet I want to say again, strength is a big thing for Peloton and they are pushing on it. See where it goes.

You also were commenting about, you’ve noticed all sorts of little changes to the user interface on Peloton lately. Nothing huge, but just lots of little things. 

We’ve had so much going on lately that it hasn’t been like, “I need to bring this up.” I’m glad that you did bring it up now. It’s little things like when you’re into class, there always used to be a box that appeared over the instructor’s face and that’s why you did your rating. You would like thumbs up, thumbs down and then it would bring up a larger screen that you could say how hard it was on a scale of 1 to 10, etc., things like that. Now, what they do is they have a bar at the top of the screen. It gives you the option. Do you want to bookmark a class? Do you want to rate the class? Do you want to share the class? All those things are across the top.

The reason that that’s important is many people have said, “Stop covering up the instructor’s face at the end.” They’re talking and sitting there telling you how to stretch and there’s this box over their head and it’s irritating. It was a minor thing, but also something that people have been asking for again since I can remember. Somebody brought this up to me. It used to, the only thing that happened over the left-hand side when you clicked on the high five was the high five. Now, when you click on their name, it opens up the box on the right side where you’re following them on the leaderboard side, and then you can immediately start following them and see their metrics. It’s a shortcut to be able to get to people, which is nice because the leaderboard is ginormous these days, that if you’re trying to follow somebody or see their stats, it’s like fast scrolling. You can’t catch them to click on them twice.

By being able to high five somebody to see their stats, it goes faster. That only works if they’ve high-fived you. They have to be in your high five tray. It’s lots of little things like that. Another interesting thing is that with the Here Now feature. The way that it’s always worked with Here Now is that when you start your ride or run, whoever is on that ride at that time, even if they only have five minutes left, stays on the leaderboard and you see them the entire time you’re in the class. Now, all of a sudden that changed and they went down to the bottom of the leaderboard and changed to zero, so you could no longer see them. That irritated people because they like to use them as benchmarks. They get on that rider run and they like to see if they can pass them. All of a sudden, it changes back and now it’s back the way it was.

I think they made that change without meaning to. My greater point to all of this is that I think that there is something big coming. They’re making all these tiny tweaks and it feels like there’s more. It’s like preparing for something. I don’t know what that is or what that means. Also, a total side note going back to the Barre thing, another thing that we passed over, the Barre studio is completely different looking than anything else we’ve seen Peloton do. All the lighting is different. It’s this like raised platform. It’s very light. It reminds me of the ‘80s, Jane Fonda looking thing, not the colors or the lighting, but just the raised platform piece of it. I was transported back to doing buns of steel.

Maybe they’ll have legwarmers in the boutique.

All in all, all good stuff. I thought it was interesting.

Also, 45 minutes strength classes are now available. 

This is another thing people have been asking for, “Give us longer strength classes.” As I said, I think lots of things are going to be happening with strength. This is another one. For people who can’t find it, because I’ve gotten a lot of messages about this, it is on the live schedule. I know it’s different because they didn’t drop it as on-demand. This time it’s live and it’s Rebecca Kennedy on September 30th. You can see the first 45 minutes strength class. Hopefully, a lot of people take that. If we take a lot of them, they’ll make more. Take the class.

We should probably remind people that we’re going to do a Zoom call on Saturday. We love to hang out with people on Zoom, especially since people can’t go places anymore. Luckily, Peloton canceled those Barre classes that they were planning. Those would have been dangerous. 

I think we need to rename it. It’s no longer The Clip Out Zoom call. It is now The Clip Out Barre call.

If you want to be a part of that, swing on by Facebook.com/theclipout, or probably even easier, join the group and we’ll have a link there where you can join the call when it’s time on Saturday at 6:00 Central. 

For all of our East Coasters, that’s 7:00 your time. I am excited about that. It’s going to be fun.

It’s fun, so come hang out. While we’re doing some house cleaning here, we should probably also drop in that we’ve got a big thing planned for October. We’ve done some cool contests in the past and this one is a contest/fundraiser where the proceeds will go to a wonderful charity. I will say the prizes are cool. You should watch this space. I think we’ll have everything in line for that next episode to tell you what that’s going to be. Get ready to help out and maybe win something super cool. There is a new Peloton video on YouTube featuring Denis Morton that dropped. 

The reason that I pointed this out is that it shows a highlight of Denis going from the bike to the floor to do yoga and highlighting that key feature of the Bike+ how it has that swivel screen. I also think it’s interesting because it shows you how far in advance Peloton has been working on this. He did this whole series several months ago that was like Ride and Flow. They have been planning on this for so long. It was clear that series was made for the Bike+. They just couldn’t put it out there the way they wanted to.

That feeds back into you’re talking about how there are always things being worked on and you never know when they’re going to pop up and show up on your bike. 

Peloton always says they like to surprise and delight their members.

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Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1 Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four bestselling books, including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection & Intimacy. She has a wonderful little app called No More Diets that you should give a shot.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Thank you for coming back once again. 

We’re going to talk a little bit about the science behind I think I can and why thinking you can do something will result in you being able to do it, and then also why it doesn’t work for some people who we won’t name because we would hate to embarrass Crystal.

I come prepared to dig deep with Crystal. I think that the whole concept of ‘I think I can,’ the little engine that code, which most of us have read in childhood. What it is about is programming our brain. It’s like the old Alcoholics Anonymous adage of fake it until you make it that for most people, when you first tell yourself I can do it or anything that you programmed in your mind at first, you don’t believe it. In my clinical experience, and I know that Crystal is a little bit of an exception on this, I’ve been a therapist for about three decades now. Typically there’s a tipping point where you go from, “I don’t believe that,” to “Maybe there’s some truth to that,” to “Yes, that’s true. Yes, I can do it,” or whatever the positive assertion is that you’re working on.

I think that a big part of it is reprogramming our brain. I think that our default unfortunately tends to be with the negative. We oftentimes will grow up with a parent, coach, teacher, grandparent or someone of influence who tells us something negative that clicks for us, that we then start to use in our own programming that we take on in our brain. Then we tell ourselves that thing over and over again, and in my experience, and I tend to be a little cognitive behavioral about this kind of stuff that in order to get rid of those, that negative self-talk, we have to talk back to it. We’re not going to believe it in the beginning, but with repetition creates belief and also creates change.

How many times do you have to repeat something like that to get it through?

I think it depends on how long the negative self-talk has been going. It depends on if there’s been trauma associated with it. It depends on your belief system. I know that I had a very strict Russian coach who had a certain way of talking to us that I did rhythmic gymnastics. I was on the national team for five years. She’s the top coach in the country but part of her coaching method, which she learned in Russia according to her, was calling us names and they were not nice names. I had to work hard to reprogram my brain with a combination of therapy, but also changing my self-talk. For me, it took years of fighting those messages that she had implanted in my brain for that to shift.

It’s not that you do it once or twice, that you get on the tread to take a running class with backs and you’re struggling and you say, “I’m a runner. I can do it,” and now all of a sudden it’s easy. That’s not going to happen. It’s going to take months, if not sometimes years of saying it over and over in your mind. Where a lot of people go wrong is they say, “I just don’t believe it so I’m not going to say it,” or they say, “I’m saying it but I don’t believe it, so I’m going to stop doing it,” but you have to do it over and over for months and months. Again, sometimes years before you reprogram your brain, because this is just reprogramming.

What if you can’t believe it? You know how people say that there are always platitudes that people say to you. “You know you don’t deserve that. You deserve to take a night off,” but you know that you still need to be working hard. They probably can’t be the only one like this. If somebody is like, “You did the best you could,” I can literally go through and pick it apart until I can find something I could have done better. I can’t be the only person like that.

You’re absolutely not. My hypothesis and granted the people who I follow on Instagram who are Peloton people, maybe it’s that we tend to attract what we are. A lot of us are type A. I don’t know if it’s like, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” At least the people who I know who are intensely into Peloton tend to be more type-A people. I think as type-A people, we tend to be a little more self-critical. We tend to have super high standards sometimes to the point where it can harm us. We tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. I also think that the goal to me is finding the balance of having high standards, but also being kind with ourselves while pushing ourselves in ways that are positive, not self-destructive. To me, it’s always a balance. To me, that’s what you’re asking is about, it’s finding that balance. You can always find something else that you did, but also at the same time what’s done is done and you have to make peace with what’s done. If it’s a situation where it’s like, “You did the best you could.” Even if the answer is, “I really didn’t,” you have to make peace with that you didn’t. Also maybe there was a reason that you did that.

Sometimes we don’t work because we’re in a pandemic, our kids needed us, we had a deadline at work. We missed the boat on something else. Can we learn to forgive ourselves when we’re not perfect, when we don’t hit the ball out of the park, when we don’t perform the way we want to? When should we be forgiving ourselves and saying, “What’s done is out?” When should we look at that and say, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” What I can tell you is that beating ourselves up does not help. If beating ourselves up got us to the body that we wanted, or the raise that we wanted or whatever it was, we’d be there by now. In my experience, clinical and personal, when we are able to work on self-acceptance while pushing ourselves to be our best, that is what gets us the best results.

How do you know when it’s okay to let yourself off the hook?

I think that one of the key things is that we can use these experiences that we have, where we have let ourselves down, or we didn’t meet a goal, or we didn’t get that PR when we were so close or whatever it is. We can use those instead of to beat ourselves up and harm ourselves and make ourselves miserable. If we can objectively pull back and say, “What am I supposed to learn from this experience? What can I learn from this so I can do better next time?” That’s when we’re going to grow. That’s when we’re going to intro ourselves towards meeting those goals. When we beat ourselves up, that never accomplishes anything good.

Thank you very much for joining us again. Until next time, where can people find you?

Everyone can find me on my social media @DrJennMann. You can find me on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook.

—

While we’re talking about Jen, Jenn Sherman got a DM from someone complaining about her use of the F word. Was it like, “She’s not using it enough. We need to hear it more often?” Was that the complaint? 

No, it was definitely, you don’t need to use that during your rights. I don’t know what the exact message was because I didn’t see it. That was the impression I got was that you shouldn’t be using that during your rights. She did not care to be scolded. If you haven’t seen it, you should go back and check out Sunday’s class because it was funny. She also did an IG post about it, which if you get the newsletter, you will be able to get the link to that. I’m not going to play it because it goes into IGTV and it’s long, but let’s just say that she said we’re all adults here and I don’t use it because I have to. I use it because it motivates me. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad. I’m not saying that every ride or every class needs to have an F-bomb, but I love that Peloton lets instructors be themselves. This is a great example of that. Not every instructor uses the F word and it wouldn’t feel right if they did. It also wouldn’t feel right if they weren’t themselves. I relate. I feel strongly about the people that I can feel their genuine vibes coming through, and Jen does that for me. Good for her for not backing down. Good for Peloton for supporting her.

—

Some interesting news about Zwift, we talked about them a little bit in passing. 

Big news. They passed $1 billion value after they did some fundraising in which they raised $450 million. This is a big deal because apparently, they’re going to try to come out with their own bike. Not everybody is happy about that. I’m hearing a lot of comments in the Peloton community, especially from our road riders that are like, “You guys should stick with what you do well. Stay out of the hardware.” It will be interesting to see what happens with that.

—

We talked about Robin Arzon being in People and about how you see more and more Peloton instructors living in that world of celebrity. Tunde was featured on Common’s YouTube show.

It is up over on YouTube now, so you can see it. They did a whole show together about wellness and mental health. It was a good conversation. It was episode six of his show. If you’re not sure which one it is.

We’ll also be sure to include the link in the email blast that goes out every week that you can sign up for at theclipout.com. 

The name of it is Commonwell, Com+Well: Common Rides with Peloton’s Tunde.

Speaking of Tunde, she had Emma Lovewell on her series to discuss her story of growing up in a household with an Asian mother and a white father. 

If you missed that, you want to check it out. I love the way Tunde gets real deep with these conversations. It was good and it’s her speak series, and you can find it easily over on Instagram.

Finally, an update on Peloton for Parkinson’s. 

First of all, a long time coming. I want to apologize to Eric Tostrud. He sent me this, but there’s been so much going on and we’ve had such long shows. I’ve had a hard time fitting it in, but congratulations to Peloton for Parkinson’s. They raised their five-year total to $118,000. They raised $40,000 in one day. If you haven’t been out to this website, you should check it out. You guys can still go out there and donate, it’s not closed. Please don’t be shy if that’s something that you’re interested in. If you missed our episode with Eric Tostrud, he talked about what this meant to him and his mother’s battle with Parkinson’s and it’s a nice story. Please check it out.

What a way to go for figuring out a way to still make this event happen in the age of COVID because this is not something that in the past had been virtual and they figured out a way.

Congratulations to the whole team.

—

I’m excited about this one. Joining us on this episode is Andrea Barber. She’s best known for her role on the ABC TGIF staple Full House where she played Kimmy Gibbler from 1987 to 1995. After that ended, she retired from acting and started focusing on her personal life. In the years since, she has become an advocate for mental health awareness, an avid runner, and now a Peloton fanatic. In 2016, she found her way back to the Tanner family home in the spinoff series Fuller House, the number one family show on Netflix. Also, if that’s not enough, she’s also the author of the bestselling memoir Full Circle: From Hollywood to Real Life and Back Again. Ladies and gentlemen, and all points in between, Andrea Barber.

Did you boost my ego or what? Can I bring you everywhere I go and you can do that introduction? It’s fantastic.

If my wife signs off on it.

Only if I get to come too.

She has the right of first refusal on me, but past that. Crystal pointed this out, in all fairness. No one would expect me to know this, but you’re wearing your Century shirt.

This is the first time I’ve worn it. I did my Century ride on July 3rd, 2020, which was also my birthday. It took several months to arrive. Peloton is a little backed up right now with requests and orders. It arrived and this is the first time I’m pulling it out to wear it.

I do feel honored that you did that. Thank you.

I’m a real fan of you guys. I subscribe and listen to your show. I’m excited that you asked me.

I am totally blushing. That is incredibly exciting to me.

Tom had tweeted me or something. He was like, “I see you have a Peloton. My wife has this podcast.” I was like, “That’s cute.” I didn’t know. A few weeks later, my friend Ivy texted me and she was like, “I listened to the Peloton podcast and they mentioned your name.” I was like, “What?” When I looked it up, being vain, I’m like, “Let me download the episode where you mentioned me.” I was like, “This is a legit show. You are the Peloton show.” I subscribed and I’ve been listening ever since. I’m excited to be asked on as a guest.

How long have you had your bike?

I’ve had it since February 2020. It feels years because that’s right before COVID started. I was fortunate to get my bike right before all of that went down. It wasn’t even a Coronavirus buy. I was legitimately interested in the bike before all of that went down. I felt lucky. My wait time to get my bike was four days.

I’ve heard some people say at this point it’s twelve weeks out.

Depending on what part of the country you’re in, it can get bad.

Tom said in the intro there, I couldn’t help but notice that you were an avid runner, but you have the bike and not the tread. I find that interesting.

I have a basic soul treadmill and I don’t even use it because I don’t run that much anymore. I didn’t stop running. Once you’re a runner, you’re always a runner, but because life got super busy. It’s super-hot where I live in Southern California and I lost my motivation to run. However, a lot of my runner friends started getting Pelotons and I started noticing all of their chatter about it. This was in December 2019, right around the time that controversial commercial for Peloton. There’s a lot of buzz in the air, but my friends were like, “Peloton.” They loved it. I felt I was feeling FOMO. I was like, “I don’t know. I’ve never even taken a spinning class before. I don’t even know if I would like this. It doesn’t seem it would be fun.”

They were like, “Go to the showcase store and try it out.” I was like, “Alright.” We were in Santa Monica in early January 2020 before everything shut down and I walked by the Peloton store. I was like, “I’ll go try it.” The lady who helped us was super nice. I didn’t even know how to put on the cleats. I don’t know how to strap these things on. I didn’t know how to clip in. I was very dumb about the whole thing. She was patient and kind and she put on a ride for me. I rode for five minutes and I was super winded and my crotch hurt. I was like, “I’m never doing this. Why do people buy this? I’m not going to spend $2,500 on this piece of machinery and it’s going to sit in my house and be a glorified laundry basket. No, I’m not going to do that.”

I was still mystified. I was so curious because I’m like, “People love their Peloton.” I want to love something as much as people love their Pelotons. That’s how I felt about running when I got into running. I somehow lost that magic and that love somewhere along the way. I’ve lost the motivation. I was like, “I’m going to dive in.” My boyfriend had taken spinning classes before, so I knew he would at least use the Peloton if I didn’t. We decided to go for it and to bite the bullet and buy the bike. We did and it arrived right around Valentine’s Day. I didn’t love it at first. I hated it. I was so bad at it. If people are struggling to love the bike or if you’re a newbie, I hated the first 30 rides. I was like, “I’m bad at this.” I’m uncoordinated. I can’t get out of the saddle. I didn’t have the coordination or the leg strength to get out of the saddle. I felt bad about myself.

If you didn’t like it, what made you persist?

Why did you keep getting back on?

This is a terrible story. She spent the first twenty minutes of this show describing it. It was my friends. It was my runner friends who are now my Peloton friends. I call them my Pelo-besties. We have a whole text chat that we are constantly texting each other. Everyone can see your history of your rides. They’re like, “We noticed you haven’t been riding lately. You’ve been on this meditation streak, but you haven’t been riding the bike in three weeks.” I’m like, “I’m not feeling it. I’m bad at this.”

They’re like, “What do you need? We’ll ride with you. We’ll introduce you to the fun rides. Let’s do some live DJ rides. Let’s do some Cody Rigsby. Let’s make it super fun.” We set an appointment every Friday and Monday to ride together at the same time on those two days every single week. That’s how Andrea got her grooves back. That’s when the magic hit. I started riding consistently and loving it. That’s when I got that Peloton high and I was hooked from then on out. I was like, “This is it.”

What’s so great is that’s not even all that unique of a story in all honesty. We talk all the time about the community of Peloton. There are a lot of people that they maybe fall off the wagon, so to speak, and their friends or Facebook friends that they’ve never met in real life suck them back in.

People flail around. You needed to find a way to connect with your friends on the bike versus having friends that had a bike. That made all the difference for you. I know when I first got the bike, I bounced around. I would take class after class and I enjoyed it, but it was different whenever I found people that I rode all the time with. There used to be a 6:00 AM tribe and we would all ride at 6:00 AM. It was the good old days of Peloton because the schedule’s completely different now than it used to be. There used to be a 45-minute ride every morning at 6:00 AM Eastern. We would all ride together and it was this huge community. You would see people on the weekends and you would high five when that became a thing. You grow with them. You start finding out when people’s birthdays are and their kids are graduating or they’re graduating. It changes everything. You found the magic. That’s awesome.

I had heard that about the community. That’s such a buzzword “community” and I was like, “Whatever.” I didn’t believe it at first. I’m like, “What does that mean? Am I going to meet a bunch of strangers and automatically bond with them?” For me, it happened organically with people I already knew who I used to run races with and now we’re still exercising together, but we’re doing it in our own homes, which is great since we can’t travel anywhere. It hit the nail on the head with the community aspect of it.

You said you started running years ago. What led to you taking up running?

It was similar to the Peloton. I’m influenced by my peers. I am a sheep following her flock. I’ll do whatever. I had friends that were like, “Let’s do the Tinkerbell Half Marathon.” It was the inaugural Tinkerbell Half Marathon in Anaheim at Disneyland. I was like, “I don’t want to be left out of that.” They’re buying wings. I was like, “This is all about the glam and the glitter. I want to do this.” I had never run before. I’m not an athletic person. I was a child actor. I grew up on soundstages. I’d never played sports. I talk about this in my book about how I tried to be athletic in college and ended up quitting the first day of practice because I was bad at it. I hated feeling bad about myself, but there’s something about these communal experiences and this shared pain and this shared excitement that gets you connected and excited about things that you never thought you could do before.

Running transformed my whole life because running came into my life at the same time, I was getting divorced and going through a dark depression and a terrible bout with anxiety. I found myself. I talked a lot about it in the book if you want to hear the good version, but the short version is I found myself out on the roads and running became such a special part of my life. I’ll always be a runner. I’ll get back out there again but right now I’m having too much fun riding the bike.

The best way to go about life is to just dive in. Share on X

Do you do any of the off-bike content? You do the meditations you said, but do you do the weights or do you do yoga? Do you do any of that?

I do. I dabble in it. I always say I’m going to do it. I ended up like, “I’ll find a ride instead,” because that’s what I love, but I will do some of the shorter strength workouts. I’m much more of a cardio person than a strength person, but I know how important it is to have that balanced workout. I will do something like the 10 or 15-minute strength workouts. I’ve tried the yoga. I definitely do the meditation. I’ve done a couple of the runs too. That’s not clicking for me. I need to buy the tread next and to get the full Peloton Tread experience and to find the magic in Peloton running next.

There is something about those jump buttons on the Peloton Tread. You hit the button and it goes up a whole level. When they’re like, “Go to six,” you hit the button six times and you’re there. It’s amazing. Now they call it the Tread+ because they came out with a whole new product line of treads and a new product line of bikes. Now they have the Bike+ and the Tread+, but the Tread+ has these amazing slats that as you’re running are the most amazing cushion you’ve ever run on in your life, except for maybe a Woodway, which is out of my price range.

I’ve run on Woodway exactly once so I know what you’re talking about. That running on a cloud feeling. There’s nothing like it. Who knows? When we’re done with this show, I might be placing another purchase. I don’t know.

She’ll give you her referral. She’s got merch. You have no idea. I know from your Twitter account, one of your favorite bands in the whole world is New Kids on the Block. I have my own band. My favorite band in the world is The Monkees, which I feel is the New Kids on the Block of their day. A couple of them have Pelotons too. Do you know?

The New Kids on the Block has Pelotons? What?

All of them do an AMA thing. I saw people talking that they had Pelotons in the background. I assumed you would know that.

I didn’t know that and I used to be a big fan of The Monkees when I was much younger before I discovered New Kids on the Block. Not to be insensitive, but when you say all of them, some of them are no longer here. Who are we talking about that has Pelotons?

Some of the guys from the New Kids on the Block.

I thought you said The Monkees.

No. Some of the guys from the New Kids on the Block. That’s why I was like, “I thought you would know this.” I don’t expect you to know about The Monkees.

This was a terrible miscommunication. I thought The Monkees reunited and were riding Pelotons. I’m like, “Half of that band was dead and good for the remaining ones to be riding Pelotons at their age.” This went sideways. Yes, I do know about the New Kids on the Block have Pelotons. They were gifted Pelotons by their manager, Jared Paul. I know an insane amount of information about them. They were gifted Pelotons, which is smart by their manager because it’s these guys have to stay in shape so that they can do their 50 city tours when they go on tour. I only know of Joey McIntyre, who’s my personal favorite. I’ve seen social media evidence of him riding the bike. The other guys, I’ve never seen them sit on the bike. They have the Pelotons. I don’t know if they are sitting on the Peloton. Joey McIntyre is, which is again, why we’re soulmates because we both love Peloton. One of the many reasons that we should have gotten married when I was thirteen, like I said.

Does your boyfriend know about all this? Is he cool with this Joey McIntyre thing?

I warned him. We’ve been together for years. He knew what he was getting into. I’ve been in a relationship with the New Kids on the Block for a lot longer than I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend, Michael. He knows.

They do have seniority.

It’s like when we first started going out and The Monkees did a reunion tour with Mike Nesmith for the first time ever. We just started going out and I was like, “Can you watch my kids so I can drive to Minneapolis to go to the show?”

I watched his kids while he went to Minneapolis.

You’re still together?

She’s great.

That’s true love. You got yourself a good one there.

I have to ask because I am a huge Full and Fuller House fan. What was it like being a childhood actor, working on the set? To you, is it a normal day? It seems so amazing.

To everyone else, it’s alien.

I don’t know any other way of childhood. I do now because I have my own kids, so I’ve been experiencing a very normal childhood through their eyes. For me, I started acting when I was five, so I don’t remember life before acting. It’s always been normal for me to go on lots of auditions and to get rejected a lot and then do a lot of commercials back in the day. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, commercials were still important. I did tons of commercials. I was on the soap opera Days of Our Lives for 3.5 years. That was my first job when I was six until they fired me.

This is so dramatic. I got fired at the age of nine because they wanted to age my character to a teenager so they could have a romantic teenage love storyline for the summer. I got the act at age nine. That’s okay because that led me to Full House at age ten. Bigger and better things always on the horizon. It was normal to grow up on Stage 24 at Warner Brothers. People are like, “What was it like?” I was like, “That’s life. You show up and you make friends and it’s like your second family because you spend so much time with them.” Fortunately, we all got along and loved each other and made each other laugh a ton. When you’re on a set with Bob Saget and Dave Coulier, it’s impossible not to laugh every single day.

Our live audience show was every Friday night. That’s how I spent my Friday nights growing up. Another big factor here is that my parents placed a lot of importance on education and wanting to make sure that I stayed enrolled in my local public high school. Anytime I had a day off or a week off or a hiatus, I was in my regular public high school. I was going to Spanish class and doing those terrifying oral exams or biology classes. I was there for the labs. It was very important that I still had friends outside of Hollywood. I would say I had the best of both worlds, both growing up on a soundstage and growing up in Orange County, California, living the life and talking about boys and eating Taco Bell and watching Beverly Hills 90210. That was also a big part of my childhood as well.

I’m curious, when you go to a “regular school” how do the kids treat you? Is it because it’s LA, there are many kids going through similar experiences that they’re like, “Whatever?”

No, kids were mean. When you were 15 or 16 and you don’t know what to say, kids don’t know how to express themselves well at that age. It doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity or not, they’re going to find the one thing that’s different about you and harp on it and make fun of it. Whether you’re tall or you have red hair or whatever it is, they’re going to make fun of it. The kids were like, “Gibbler, don’t you go off your socks.” They would write stuff on my locker or talk about me behind my back, whatever, but it’s not a sob story because I feel like everybody goes through that at some point whether it’s middle school or high school. That happened to be the thing that kids made fun of me for, but I don’t remember it bothering me. I’m sure it did at some point, but I had a great group of friends that were like, “Hang out with us. We’re the yearbook committee.”

I was a theater nerd, I feel you.

I feel it wasn’t the coolest group, but it was the nicest group. That’s where I found my best friends and some normalcy. Those are the kids you want to hang out with, the kids that are keeping up.

It seems that all of those experiences help you be grounded and be down to earth. If that’s what it takes, then maybe your parents should talk to some other Hollywood parents and see if they could spread that around.

It was a brilliant solution for me. I credit my parents with all that. I know that’s not necessarily the case now. A lot of kids now are doing homeschool or independent studies. It’s hard logistically to coordinate that with seven teachers at a regular high school and then the studio teacher on the set and getting assignments back and forth. It’s a logistical nightmare and it’s very difficult. For a lot of kid actors now, they do homeschool or independent studies and that’s fine too. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s lots of ways to find normalcy without being enrolled in a public high school.

That’s a good point too.

You started young. Do you ever stumble across something that you’re in and you’re like, “I was in that?”

No. Everything that I was on as a child, most of it’s on Betamax. There’s not a lot. This was before YouTube. There’s not a whole lot of stuff out there. I’ll see clips from Days of Our Lives because the soap opera fans are hardcore and we’ll find footage from before TV. I swear they’re going to find footage and put it out there. I’ll see that stuff, which is fun and it’s sweet. No, I don’t come across things that I’m like, “I don’t remember that.” I’ll find pictures. Now I’m going through a lot of pictures because my parents moved out of their home. My mom’s like, “Here’s your entire childhood in a box.” Now, I’ll go through pictures. I’m like, “I don’t remember meeting that person,” or whatever. It’s better. I was so awkward as a teenager. I try not dwell on that too much. I looked awkward back then. I made an entire career out of being an awkward person. I’m awkward enough now. I don’t need to relive it as a teenager.

I made a hobby out of it. At least you’re getting paid for it.

Going back to Peloton, when the world gets back to normal and we can all travel easily again, do you ever envision yourself going to the Peloton New York studio and taking a class in the studio or anything like that? Does that appeal to you?

That’s right. People used to ride in the studio. They closed down the studios. I would love to do that if that’s ever a thing again. I would hope it would be at some point. I would love to do that now. I wouldn’t have said that in February 2020 because I felt bad about how terrible I was. I’m like, “I don’t want people watching me or the instructor pointing out.” Now, I feel confident enough that I could hold my own in a class. That would be amazing. I would fangirl over all of the instructors or whoever was in the studio that day. I would definitely want selfies, which I feel bad. I’m sure everybody asks them for selfies. They’re like, “We’re here to wear to sweat.”

No. They were welcoming. They build in time after the classes. Everybody lines up and they do selfies right outside in the lobby. It’s perfect.

They are celebrities. They’re trainers and they’re good at what they do, but they are celebrities too because we’ll go crazy over them. I include myself in that group.

They literally welcome you with open arms whenever you come up. I’ve seen tearful reunions. I’m thinking of one person in particular who had wanted to meet their favorite instructor for four years and couldn’t travel and finally got to meet her in person. It was recorded and shared one million times on Facebook. It was a huge moment and they love that.

That makes me feel great. That’s my goal now. My goal is to get to a class someday. There’s the one studio in New York.

There’s the one in London. I feel New York’s probably easier.

I feel the instructors have the right amount of celebrity where they can be known within a certain world but they can still go about their lives relatively normally.

That’s the perfect amount of celebrity. That’s how I feel too because I can still walk around my local Target or whatever and be mostly unnoticed, depending on if I wear a hat or sunglasses or something. I can live a normal life and if I get some people coming up to me and say, “Can I get a selfie or an autograph?” I’m like, “Sure.” It’s never intrusive. It’s always kind. It’s a big ego boost. It’s nothing where I would need security or can’t go out and live my life.

Do you have a preferred instructor or two?

That’s such a hard question because I love each of them for so many different reasons, but I joke that I’m in a steady relationship with Matt Wilpers because I’m doing the Power Zone challenge. It’s my second challenge. I’m seeing a lot of Matt Wilpers, so he’s my Peloton boyfriend. He’s great. He’s a great coach. I know he’s not the most fun or funny instructor or whatever, but he’s happy and such a great coach. I learned and I’ve improved so much from taking his classes and learning about technique. It’s great. He’s adorable as well. If I had to pick one, I would say it’s Matt Wilpers.

He was our first guest.

You have talked to Matt Wilpers?

Yes, many times.

I’m fangirling. I’m blushing. He hasn’t accepted my friend request on Peloton. We might have to break up after this challenge, but that’s awesome. I’m going to have to go back. I’m a new fan of your show. I only started reading in March 2020 or whatever.

There are a lot of them, so it’s okay.

You’ve got plenty of time. There’s plenty to catch up on, but he was on episode 1 and episode 2.

I’m going to go back. I’m going to read.

We can do a running commentary on it.

If you are going to go back and listen, I feel I am required to tell you that we mispronounced Peloton. We got a lot of crap for this.

In our defense, you’re going back almost four years. There were no TV commercials. We had no idea how to say the word.

That’s not that bad.

It’s not like we put in a Q or something.

Being a Peloton show, you probably should know how to pronounce it.

We had never heard it said out loud. We were like, “I guess this is how you say it. I don’t know.” There’s a time difference. You’re in the LA area. It’s like, 3:30 there. We’re in the Midwest, so it’s 1985.

We’re still watching the original Full House upstairs.

I have acid washed jeans on while I’m recording. I only dated her because she’s named after my favorite brand of Pepsi. That’s how back in time we are. We’re the only show that’s in sepia tone. I can do this all day.

I’m glad I didn’t know any of this before I agreed to do this.

You never would have said yes.

I would have said yes, but if you were mispronouncing the name of the bike, I don’t know. I might decide this whole thing first.

The funniest part about that is we recorded the first four episodes before we released them.

By then we knew.

With Matt Wilpers too. You can’t can those episodes.

It’s not like he corrected us.

Thanks a lot, Matt.

He’s too nice.

I have to clarify something. You said this is your second challenge. Does this mean you’re in the Power Zone pack? Are you doing the Power Zone? You were in deep. You went deep.

I went so deep and I didn’t know. I did this summer challenge because my friend Owen was basically like, “You have to do this. It’s so great.” I’m like, “Okay, that sounds cool. Accountability. That’s fine.” I joined not knowing anything about Power Zone Training. All of a sudden, there’s a Facebook page for the team. They’re posting all these graphs and there are all these numbers. I’m like, “What is happening? I was an English major. I don’t do numbers. Why are you posting these graphs?” I knew nothing about it. This is the best way to go about life is just to dive in and don’t learn. Don’t study, learn or explore. Dive right into the second challenge. Now, I love it. I’m obsessed with graphs now. Now I pay for the $7.99 on the Power Zone pack. Who am I? I don’t recognize myself anymore. I’m obsessed. I love the challenge. My team is in third place. I’m excited that we’re close. I’m doing all the extra credit rides and everything. I’m motivated.

That explains why you’re not having time to do any of the other off the bike stuff. You’re exhausted. Are you on a 3-ride team, a 4-ride team, a 5-ride team?

I’m on a four-ride team called Home Zone. It’s seven rides a week. You got to do the extra credit stuff because you want your team to be in third place or higher. I’m doing everything. I’m squeezing every little point in credit out of this as I can because I don’t want to let my team down.

It’s the peer pressure, but here’s the thing. This happened to me. I loved those then I started feeling I was stressing over getting enough time. I was also because I was training for a half marathon at the time. Between the two, I was like, “I can’t.” I’m trying to work and take care of the kids and do this show. I’m like, “I can’t do it all.”

I was like, “You can’t have a part-time job. This is your part-time job. Get back to work.”

You’ll have to quit everything else so you can complete the Power Zone challenge.

I quit. I was like, “Now I’m going to ride for fun. Now, I only ride for fun. I don’t ride for structure because it stresses me out too much.” If that ever happens to you, make sure you keep the fun. That’s all I’m saying.

I can definitely see that happening because towards the end of the last challenge, it was getting to be a slog. Now, if I want to write seven rides a week to get in all my rides, I want to ride every day. This is great. I do one ride a day every morning. It’s keeping me accountable and it’s fun. It’s not stressful. While my boyfriend, who was also doing the challenge, he was trying to cram in all the rides on Saturday and Sunday. I’m like, “No. You hate it because that defeats the point of training.” It’s not only to training and then you’re riding the bike for 2 or 3 hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays.

It’s not an algebra final. You can’t do it all at the last minute. I couldn’t do it then either.

You can’t cram for the Power Zone challenge. You have to spread it out.

You can cramp for the Power Zone challenge.

I’ve done that several times too. Those Power Zone Max rides are no joke.

I prefer the Power Zone Max over the Power Zone Endurance or a Power Zone ride. The Power Zone Max, it’s like, you hit those peaks and then they’re done after a few seconds versus an endurance where you’re like, “Seven minutes. I want to shoot somebody in seven minutes. Make this stop.”

I can see that because when you’re doing those zones 6 and 7s, you’re only there for 30 seconds maybe. I did a Christine ride where it was seventeen minutes long, a seventeen-minute interval. I’m like, “This is only a 30-minute class. How can it have a seventeen-minute interval at zone three or whatever?” I can see why you the Power Zone Max rides. It gets your heart pumping. They’re very exciting.

That was all from your favorite instructor.

That was all one question?

Yes. Who’s your second favorite?

What else you got?

It’s a two-parter. You asked how much time I had for this show. You didn’t know that we’ll be going into tomorrow.

I’m laughing hard.

I’m sweating here.

I hope you got your Fitbit on. I know you’re relatively new, but do you have any advice for new people that are getting their bikes?

I would say stick with it. I hated the first 30 rides, so keep doing it. Eventually, your crotch will stop hurting. I promise. Give it seven days, you’ll stop hurting and you will get better at it. You’ll be able to get out of the saddle, but you will hate the first 30 days. It’s like when I first started running. The first month or two running, it sucks. You’re so bad at it. You have to build up and then you’ll be proud of yourself and love it. Do I have any advice? No. Go get past the 30 days.

The same advice Crystal gave me when we first started dating. “Get past 30 days, your crotch will stop hurting and you’ll be better at it.” She had that engraved on my wedding ring when we got married.

This is a one of a kind show. I have to say I’ve never done anything this before. The most fun I’ve ever had. It’s funny. When are you going to get on the bike, Tom?

I’m sorry. I know you’re pressed for time.

Four years of your life talking about this and you won’t even sit on the bike.

She’s got a good point.

I always tell people that it’s like Harpo Marx. You don’t want to hear Harpo talk. It’ll ruin it for you. You don’t want to see Norm’s wife on Cheers.

She’s not buying it.

No. If you’ve noted four years to a show and it’s not just your wife’s show. You told me in that original tweet, you’re the cohost. You should build it up and make it a thing and get the community involved. Create a hashtag like #GetTomOnTheBike or something. I’ll be there for it. Live stream it. Everybody will watch your inaugural ride on the Peloton.

People have done big things to try to get Tom on the bike. Somebody designed an entire bike. It’s an image made of chicken tenders. They made the bike out of chicken tenders. Everyone knows that’s Tom’s favorite meal.

I’m a bad eater too. I’m super picky. I always tell people that I have the culinary tastes of an eight-year-old boy at a theme park. That’s how I like to eat.

He eats zero fruits and vegetables.

I haven’t had fresh fruit or vegetable since probably the Bush administration, the first one. It’s been a long time.

This is like my kid’s diet. You probably eat the same thing as the kids. I don’t know how old your kids are, but chicken nuggets, dino nuggets.

I love it when they’re in shapes. They taste better. That’s great. Costco used to have Mickey nuggets, they were shaped like Mickey Mouse.

We always want to buy the Mickey nuggets.

They were breaded in panko. I don’t know what that is, but it’s healthy, I think, so it counts. It’s like a vegetable, maybe.

This is my life. It’s my four separate meals every day.

This is true love. What a love story this is. Crystal has goals. You guys are goals.

When people are like, “Tom, you’re so supportive of Crystal and her Peloton obsession.” I’m like, “Listen to the crap. It’s the least I can do for her.”

I’m still sweating.

I started to cool down and it started back up again. That’s a good thing you have your Peloton shirt on. You are breaking it in appropriately in sweat.

Definitely, I didn’t sweat this much in my 45-minute class. I’m sweating more now than I did then.

Do you typically ride in the morning then?

I do. Lately, I’ve been getting up at 5:00 or 5:30 to ride. I’m not even going to a job. There’s nothing I have to get ready for. A lot of my team are East Coasters. That’s when the group rides are. They’re riding an 8:30 their time, which is 5:30 my time. I complained about that for a while, but then I realized I’m like, “Everyone’s home now.” My kids are doing distance learning. I am never alone in this house. Somebody always needs something and 5:30 is the one time where I feel like I’m alone because everybody’s asleep and it’s dark. I can sit there and grind out these rides and I feel great afterwards. I can have coffee in the dark and it’s quiet. My favorite time of day are these 5:30 rides. I get to ride with my teammates too and get all of the high fives too. It’s a beautiful way to start the day. I don’t ride well in the afternoons or evenings. I’m more sluggish. It doesn’t work for me as well. I’m better riding first thing in the morning.

My outputs are much better in the evening. In late afternoon, my output is way better than first thing in the morning. I’m curious, does your team know that you’re you? Do they know they’re riding with the Andrea Barber?

They probably do now. I don’t think they know. I’ve never brought it up. There’s no reason for me to bring it up and nobody has ever said anything to me about it. I keep dropping these little Easter eggs. Everybody uses lots of gifts. This is a gift-heavy group. Anytime I was like, “We’re in third place,” everybody’s doing the like, “Yay gifts,” or whatever. I have a huge library of Kimmy Gibbler gifts because I have an expressive face. There’s a Kimmy Gibbler gift for any type of situation. All the gifts dropping in or Kimmy Gibbler gifts. I keep waiting for someone to pick up on that and nobody’s picked up on it. They’re like, “High fives.” Maybe let’s test them and see if any of them listened to The Clip Out. If they do, I’ll tell you, if they say something in the Facebook group. This will be our experiment.

Test our reach. I love the marketing A-B aspect of that.

That was a lead up to see if you were going to share if you want your leaderboard name was or do you want to keep that private? We totally understand if you do.

We get it that you don’t want the whole world to know.

No, I debated for a while. I talked about this with my Pelo-besties on our text thread. I’m like, “Should I share my name or not?” Finally, I decided I have nothing to hide. It’s numbers. I’m proud of them. Yes, I am Book Rider. It’s funny but that’s what was available when I chose my name.

It’s one more book than most people have written. You used your English degree. How many people get to say that?

It’s the only time I’ve ever used it.

Normally, all you do with an English degree is teach other people that are getting English degrees. It’s like a pyramid scheme. It’s funny we have this account. I was a Mass Comm major and I worked in radio for five years. I used my Mass Comm degree. How about that? That doesn’t happen often either. Normally, we’re just a waiter.

Your stock went up. That’s impressive.

Let me bring the stock back down. I graduated when I was 45.

It gets even better. He had one class that he never took.

Math.

Math is a bitch. No judgment from me.

I had to take an algebra class in order to get my degree. I sat on it for 22 years.

At least you have followed through and you went through and you and you did it. Congratulations.

It’s all about pacing yourself. Book Rider, you will get inundated.

You’re going to get lit up. Prepare for some followers.

I’m fine. Maybe Matt Wilpers will finally respond to my friend request. That would make it all worth it to me.

I’m going to message him on Instagram. I’ll be like, “What are you doing? Why are you ignoring Andrea Barber?”

He doesn’t know to me because I’m incognito with my Book Rider. I’ll have to be more obvious to get his attention.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us. This has been a lot of fun. We appreciate it.

This has been unreal. No other hour in my life has been like this and this has been fun. You guys are awesome. I love your show. I love your camaraderie. You make me laugh every week and it’s been such a joy to be on the show. Thank you for asking me.

Thank you. If you want to be found, tell people what your Twitter handle, Instagram and all that stuff so people know where to go cyber-stalking in a polite way.

I’m @AndreaBarber. It’s simple. I’m Andrea Barber everywhere except on Peloton. Usually, Instagram is a great way to get ahold of me. I’m on Twitter sporadically, I guess, usually to reply to your message, Tom. I don’t go to on Facebook unless I’m checking in or dropping Kimmy Gibbler gifts into my team page. Instagram is probably the best way to get ahold of me.

Thank you. This has been a lot of fun and we appreciate you taking time with our little dog and pony show.

Thank you. I will send an email to the contact you gave us and we’ll let them know when everything’s going to post and all that good stuff. You can share or not share or whatever, but at least get to listen.

I will share and listen. I’m excited. All of my Peloton friends are excited too. There’s like, “You’re going to be on The Clip Out.” This is mutual fangirling here.

It’s funny because you’re on real things like The Today Show and you’re excited about this.

We’re in our basement.

This is real. It’s four years and you’ve learned the name. Now you pronounce it correctly. You’re legit now. Now that you’re saying it correctly, you’re legit.

If I was on the other one like, “The Today Show.”

Thank you for this. We will let you get back to your day, your night, whatever time it is. Stay safe out there. I don’t know how close you are to the fires, but please be careful and safe and all that.

Thanks. We’re good. The closest fire is probably 60 miles away. That’s the gender reveal fire. It’s orange and strange outside. Lots of ash, but we are we’re in a safe place.

This is apropos of nothing, but I was thinking about this. This sounds like I’m setting up a joke and I’m not, so it’s a tick. I can’t help it. With the smoke and the ash in the air, wearing a mask when you’re outside, does that make that better or worse?

I haven’t been outside in four days because we had some bad heatwave over the weekend. It got up to 111 here. It got up to 121 in Woodland Hills. I haven’t even been outside except to let my dog out. I haven’t been outside with a mask yet.

I was curious if that filtered it or if it made it even worse because there’s so much gunk in the air.

It would probably make it worse because of the heat and the yak and it’s more difficult to breathe with a mask it too. That plus the smoke and everything else. This is why I’m indoors. I’ve got my Peloton. All I know is that indoors, air conditioning and a Peloton.

I was curious how that was affecting people with the mask. That’s good.

I’ll go for a test walk around the neighborhood with a mask and I will have to get back to you on that.

Once again, thank you.

You were amazing.

This was a lot of fun.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks, you guys. You’re a blast. I had so much fun.

—

I wonder how many people are going to follow her on the leaderboard now. 

I bet a lot. Sorry for all your followers. You’re about to get sorry, not sorry.

I think she’s okay. She wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t okay with it. That was a lot of fun. 

It was a ton of fun. It was an absolute blast.

What pray tell do you have in store for people next episode? 

We are going to be talking to Michelle Guobadia.

Until then, where can people find you? 

People can find me at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe and they can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the bike, the tread, pretty much anywhere @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online, Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Wherever you’re getting your podcast from, be sure and subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Of course, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com and you can watch everything at YouTube.com/theclipout. That’s it for this one. Thanks for reading. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

Important Links:

• Donna Carr – previous episode
• Apple Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Facebook.com/theclipout
• YouTube.com/theclipout
• Run, Lift, & Live
• Run, Lift & Live – Facebook group
• Run, Lift & Live – Facebook page
• @RunLiftAndLive – Instagram
• Robin Arzon
• The Clip Out Group on Facebook
• The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection & Intimacy
• No More Diets
• @DrJennMann – Instagram
• Snapchat – Dr. Jenn Mann
• Twitter – Dr. Jenn Mann
• Facebook – Dr. Jenn Mann
• Zwift
• Com+Well: Common Rides with Peloton’s Tunde – YouTube
• Instagram – Tunde Oyeneyin
• Eric Tostrud – previous episode
• Full Circle: From Hollywood to Real Life and Back Again
• Guest – previous episode
• Episode 2 – previous episode
• @AndreaBarber – Twitter
• Instagram – Andrea Barber
• Facebook – Andrea Barber
• Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe
• Instagram – Crystal O’Keefe
• @ClipOutCrystal – Twitter
• @RogerBert – Twitter
• Facebook.com/tomokeefe

About Andrea Barber

Andrea Barber is best known for her role on the ABC TGIF-staple Full House where she played Kimmy Gibbler from 1987 to 1995. After Full House ended, she retired from acting and started focusing on her personal life. In the years since she has become an advocate for mental health awareness, an avid runner, and now a Peloton fanatic.

In 2016 she literally found her way back to the Tanner family home in the spinoff series Fuller House, the #1 family show on Netflix. She’s also the author of the best-selling memoir “Full Circle: From Hollywood to Real Life and Back Again…”

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