TCO 180 | Mental Health

180: Jess King “Karen” Comment Raises Concerns plus our interview with Stephanie Ward

Last Updated: April 30, 2023By Tags: , , , , ,

TCO 180 | Mental Health

 

Jess King’s remarks about “Karens” caused concern for some.

John Mills joins us to discuss Goldman-Sachs downgrading of Peloton stock.

Motley Fool writes about how Peloton is making it difficult for lower-priced bikes.

PC Mag reviews the new Bowflex bike and John Mills has some issues.

Peloton partners with Chase Sapphire for new perks.

Peloton has a new hotel partner in Germany.

GrooveOn offers a new way to use your bike.

Dr. Jenn – How to know when to quit.

Tons of new content for the Bike and Tread. Crystal gives you the rundown.

The instructors are gearing up for Halloween.

Kendall Toole premiered the first ride in her Movie Buff series.

Crystal was featured on the Peloton Apparel page.

Lots of new artist series including Bon Jovi, Steve Martin, and Emeli Sande.

Jess King Experience is back for Season 2.

Chase Tucker has a birthday on November 4.

All this plus our interview with Stephanie Ward!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Jess King “Karen” Comment Raises Concerns plus our interview with Stephanie Ward

This is your last chance to win a pink Peloton.

Remind me, they’re going to do the drawing because this is through another company. It’s a third party called RallyUp.

In case you’re curious, RallyUp is a website that does raffles and sweepstakes. This is technically legally a sweepstakes. We should be clear, but for things just like this, they draw the winner. That way, you know that it’s legit.

They keep all the money and everything. It’s like a third party holding. Everything is kept on an up and up basis. It’s all very transparent. They have to wait three days just in case people mail it in.

You can also enter for free, which is what makes it a sweepstakes, and you have to mail. It’s like the Frito-Lay sweepstakes back in the day. They have to allow a time for mailing ballots. We’re going to count those after the fact because that’s how we roll. We partnered up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and they do lots of wonderful things for people who find themselves in that situation. We have a one-of-a-kind custom pink Peloton, only one in the world. If you go to theclipout.com/pink, you can donate money and you’ll get more entries into the pot based on how much money you donate.

I’m hoping, I’m crossing my fingers, that we cross the $8,000 mark because we are really close to it.

October 31st is the last day. It ends in October, it’s for the month of October. This will come out on a Friday, 30th, you’ll have basically about 24, 36 hours from the time this first drops. If you’re reading this on Sunday, you missed your window. I guess you could still send them money, they’ll take it, but you can’t get entered into the contest. We should have a winner in time for next week’s episode. There you go. Once again, if you want to throw some money in the pot, it’s theclipout.com/pink. Now that we’ve done all that, what do you have in store for people this week?

We’re going to talk about a whole lot of things. We’re going to talk about what’s going on with Peloton on the stock market. We’re going to talk about the earnings call coming up. There’s a ton of fun things going on with the instructors. Everybody’s getting very creative for Halloween, lots of quick hits. Then there’s some fun stuff in the news to cover too. I think that’s about it.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart, TuneIn, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also if you would be so kind, you could leave us a review. It’s like planting a little seed for people to come along after you, that it’s worth their time.

Have you ever been like, “You guys do so much for free, how can I help you?” This is it.

This is the easiest thing you can do. It doesn’t cost you a dime, just a little bit of your time. We have a new review. This is from Kari Gormley. She says, “Crystal and Tom do an amazing job keeping the Peloton community up to date with the latest news and getting to know fellow riders. What makes this podcast so good is that it is done with kindness, open hearts and tons of laughter. Crystal and Tom ask fantastic questions and look for the positive.” There’s more but it’s pretty lengthy, which is great, we appreciate it and I know it’s a busy week. Thank you so much. Also don’t forget Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. There’s all of that, let’s dig in.

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Joining us is the one and only John Mills. John, how’s it going?

How’s it going?

The famous male model, Mr. Mills.

The infamous, that’s probably more accurate.

Look at this Shape Magazine. That is really cool. That’s really awesome.

There’s a whole story behind that. A few years ago before COVID, Erica and I had memberships at LA Fitness and at Planet Fitness. We went there regularly. Even we worked out at home, when we have time, we’d go to these gyms. We traveled a lot. Certain places there would be a Planet Fitness or LA Fitness. We always had somewhere to go. I was always sharing my stories and my pictures and everything when I’m there working out. They hit me up on Instagram and they’re like, “We’ll give you a free membership to Planet Fitness if you continue doing that.” They weren’t someone I followed, so they went to message requests. I didn’t see the message for three months. Three months later, I’m going, “They’re going to give me a free membership.” I responded and then they never responded back. They’re like, “He didn’t care. What’s wrong with him?” I said, “I’m never going to do that again.”

Cut to June 2020, Shape Magazine hits me up on Instagram, “We love that picture. We want to share that. We would do some stuff with it. Is that cool?” I never saw it until a week ago. Four months later, I’ve seen the message from Shape Magazine. I respond to them, “All humbled and I’m so sorry. You’re a great magazine. I’m just an idiot. Go right ahead.” I said how much I love their magazine. Luckily, they still used it. I’m learning one of these days to check those messages.

TCO 180 | Mental Health

That’s probably how I would feel if MAD magazine reached out to me. I’ll be like, “I’ll do Spy vs. Spy.”

If you missed out from MAD magazine contacting you, you’d be throwing things and be so mad.

I was upset the entire night. It was at night when I realized it. I went to sleep all sad, with sad music playing in my head. I woke up the next morning going, “I hope they responded.” When I woke up, I looked and they just liked my message.

Before we get to the breaking news, we should also point out that he’s been very busy this week. He was kind enough to make us get famous. He made a bunch of GIPHYs of us, which is super kind, because we’re older, I don’t know how to do all this.

I’m not old, but I’m old enough that I don’t have the patience. I don’t even know how you do this, but it is amazing. You were like, “We do these steps,” I was like, “Sure, let’s do that.” Thank you so much. They’re fun. I love them.

The best part is it made all the guys on my other podcast super jealous. When we’re having a conversation there, I just slip in a GIF from myself. They’re like, “Where did that come from?” I’m like, “The other show.”

You want to get one for every possible emotion. I’m still looking for more for the different emotions. You’ve got to have one that you can use on any possible situation.

I told Tom he’s going to have to make me do the look. That’s his goal this week. I do the look and a “humpf,” which is hard, especially at the same time. I have to tell you that whenever I pulled out one of those GIPHYs in our text string with the kids, their heads exploded. They’re like, “What?” You made our kids think we are cool.

She was in the New York Times, they didn’t care. We were on TV, they didn’t care.

Now, there’s a GIF and they cared. I’ve got to get every emotion, I’m working on it.

Thank you very much. You were really cool. If anybody’s looking for them, whenever you’re in the GIF bar, if you want to utilize one, you can type in The Clip Out. That’s probably the easiest way to pull all of them.

Make sure you put “The.” We’ve heard it gets a little weird if you don’t have “The Clip Out.”

Anyway, enough of all that, let’s get to our breaking news at long last now that we’re done with the introduction. There’s a little bit of controversy brewing around a comment Jess King made on a ride not too long ago.

Before I play the clip, I’ll give you guys a little background. This is a twenty-minute Country Ride. I think it was October 19th. There was a comment made by Jess. She gives a shout-out. It was a shout-out to an actual Karen, a person named Karen. While she said that, she also was like, “I need to talk about Karens while I’m there. You guys have had a hard year. It sucks.” That was it. Then it led to some things. We’ll watch the clip and we’ll discuss.

“While we’re at it, I’ve got to give a shout out to all the Karens out there. I feel like you all have been having a hard year and you don’t deserve that. Shout out to you, Karen.”

Fast forward to today, and it was brought to my attention, should I say whose account this is?

I don’t see why not. She posted it publicly. I don’t feel like we’re outing somebody.

I totally agree with that.

You want to be above board and you don’t want to draw a bunch of hate to somebody. She’s an activist, so she’s sadly probably used to hate.

When you are an opinionated person, people have differing opinions and they let you know. This is from @JessicaWilson.msrd. She says, “Dear Peloton Studios, I appreciate your recent hiring of multiple black instructors in your studios. It seems like you were paying attention to global conversations about racial injustice and want to make changes. As such, would you please remove the twenty-minute ride during which the instructor gives “a shout out to all the Karens out there. I feel you all have been having a hard year and you don’t deserve that?” Being reminded of people like Amy Cooper and the white women who call the cops on black folks for enjoying ourselves is the last thing I want to experience during my unwind time. I can imagine that others feel the same. Sincerely, Jessica Wilson, MS. RD.”

I didn’t get to read it super focused, and now I’m hearing it. At first, I thought she was complaining thinking that Jess King was endorsing Karens or sticking up for them, now I don’t think that’s what she’s saying. I hear her saying like, “Can we not talk about this at all?”

That’s what I hear too. I was expecting something different as well. I was expecting it to be able to be construed as you’re endorsing some behavior based on using that name. To me, it sounds like I don’t want to be thinking about that while I’m riding. I like talking about politics, and maybe you don’t want that coming into your brain while you’re riding.

I would also say the instructors have talked frequently about social issues and that’s also bringing it up. If it’s just the idea of having the topic addressed during a ride is problematic for her, then what do you do about the instructors that are really championing the social causes like Black Lives Matter.

I feel like that’s where it’s really difficult for Peloton to walk this line, for anybody to walk this line. They keep saying two things, “One, we want to stand up for human rights and two, we don’t want to politicize the platform.” I agree with both of those things, however, how do you have conversations and let the instructors be who they are?

That’s a difficult Venn Diagram to draw at the moment.

It’s probably no more difficult difficult today than it’s ever been with the exception of maybe like during the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t know what people are supposed to do or say. I don’t know what the right answers are. I don’t have them. I felt it was interesting to bring up because this person, Jessica Wilson, she has 140,000 followers, which is not insignificant. It’s been liked 7,500 times. Apparently, she wrote to Peloton a couple of times and they never answered. That was a week ago. I think that we’re not going to hear the end of this for a while. I wanted to have everybody see that clip because I don’t even know if it will exist the next time we record. It could very easily be taken down. That’s what happened with Jenn Sherman.

Like you said, Tom, I think that’s just a very difficult line to manage and walk. You can tell Jess King didn’t have any intent there to politicize anything. You could have some feelings riled up just thinking about that topic.

I went into the clip thinking that it was misheard as an endorsement of Karens, when really it’s just it’s got to suck for you if your name is Karen right now. There are way worse crosses to bear than just being a Karen. I have a dog in this fight and my sister’s name is Karen.

It’s something we’ve genuinely talked about, Tom and I. She’s not concerned about it, but we always feel bad because she’s totally not a Karen in that capacity. That sucks.

That woman, she wasn’t even questioning or challenging that aspect.

Here’s the thing. If you read the comments, it gets a lot more heated. It becomes very clear that her actual intent is for no one to have to hear this. It’s about black versus white. It literally says, “Reposting your stories, if you can, hopefully this ride can come down and no other black folks will accidentally tune in and hear this message.” That’s a little different.

I don’t know if it is. It seems like it’s back to the same point. I’m speaking for her. She’s saying when she heard it, it brought her to a place. She doesn’t want to bring anyone else to that same place. To me, it’s still the same thing.

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like it was bringing something to it that was not intended. I don’t know how people are supposed to be free and talk without sometimes doing that, without meaning too.

It’s hard. I agree with that. Especially in a format like this, it’s definitely a line.

I didn’t seem to have her fired or boycott. She’s saying like, “Can we take this down?” As much as Peloton takes down rides, they’re no stranger to doing that for a multitude of reasons.

It’s interesting that Peloton hasn’t responded.

Peloton really needs to be careful because there are things that they choose to respond to, and there are things that you choose not to respond to. What it looks like to me is if you have certain people’s ear at Peloton, they’ll respond. If you don’t, then you won’t. That’s a different kind of problem. I don’t like that one very much.

I think the larger they get, the more that’s going to be a thing.

The more they need to not do that. The more they need to be careful and not take somebody who’s been a rider since the beginning of time, who happens to be your own personal friend, and respond to only that one and ignore everybody else. That’s the more you need to not do that.

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The Peloton stock has been downgraded to Goldman Sachs. It says, “After a 458% rally because of the shipment delays.”

They downgraded it from buy to neutral, which means hold. At the same time, they up the price target from 138 to 140.

That’s good to point out.

Ultimately, the reasoning is based on what’s been occurring in their Fiscal Q2 2021. It’s nothing relative to what’s about to be reported on November 5th. It’s relative to the delays of those shipments that are occurring at the port of LA. They point out in this article that some customers that were expecting deliveries in October received an email message stating that, “Your delivery is going to be delayed for 5 to 6 weeks. If you don’t respond within 48 hours, you may not get it until sometime in 2021.” They’re citing all those things as reasons why the numbers that were expected in next quarter, the last three months of the year, those numbers may not be what we expect them to be because of these delivery issues happening now. Therefore, they’re what they report for those numbers, which they’ll report in February may not hit the target. Based on that, they’re going, “The stock gets probably everything priced into it.” Their growth up to this point, they are just on hold, “Stay right there.” That’s what they’re saying.

Thank you for translating that.

You can look at it multiple ways. You can be like, “This is bad, the logistics.” You could also go, “They’re getting many orders.” There are problems because everyone wants one.

I thought that this was saying that because of the negative connotation that they were going to get for disappointing customers was going to reflect badly on them.

It’s more like, “They’re not going to get that money until the next quarter.”

You can’t count the bike in the quarter’s numbers until it’s actually at that person’s house. They’re saying there are probably going to be a bunch of bikes that don’t get delivered until January. That would have normally been counted in December.

That’s interesting that they can start counting it until it’s at the person’s house. The person’s loan starts when they buy. I would have thought those would be equal. I don’t understand why that starts ticking day one. I’m not saying that’s a problem, but I find it interesting from an accounting perspective, it doesn’t count until it gets to your door.

There’s one more nugget in that article that I found extremely interesting. That was our first glimpse into what they’re spending on marketing. We didn’t know anything. We were going to wait on November 5th, we were going to find out. In the article, it tells you exactly what Peloton spent in marketing for July, August and September, this entire quarter that they’re about to report. It equates to $1.7 million. The interesting part about that is last quarter, they spent $1.2 million, which was considered a tiny amount compared to previous quarters. We knew why, because that was April, May, June, in the middle of the COVID. They didn’t need to spend on marketing because everybody was buying up anything relative to cardio and weight training. They turned a profit because they didn’t have to do any marketing. A quarter before that, they spent $41 million. You see the disparity, $41 million and then all of a sudden they spent $1.2. We found out because of that article, this quarter they’re reporting on, they spent $1.7. They’re still barely spending, which gives you some insight into how much they make.

It also gives you some insight into how much the media companies must be struggling. I’m sure they’re not the only company that has reduced their media spin. Maybe not that draconianly, but that’s a lot of money. You extrapolate that across multiple companies that have stopped doing that, so that’s a lot. There was an article in the Motley Fool, which sometimes we like sometimes we don’t, “How Peloton is About to Suck the Air Out of the Interactive Home Fitness Industry.”

That one is an interesting one. They’re basically saying since Peloton now has this better best-selling mechanism where they have an $1,895 Bike and they got the $2,495 Bike+. Since they got this lower cost bike, comparable bikes from NordicTrack or Nautilus are in a similar price range, but people are going to be driven towards the Peloton. Peloton is saying, “We’re about to double our R&D spend.” How do they keep up with that? How do they continue to spend on R&D and continue to be progressive and innovative with the amount of money that Peloton is spending? Can they compete with that? That’s the challenging question in that article. If you add to that Peloton saying, “We’re going to be introducing a certified pre-owned program, now we’re going to have a good, better, best strategy.” What’s that costing? NordicTrack, their lowest cost comparable bike is right around $1,600. I don’t know what the CPO price is going to be. It could be $1,500, $1,400. How do they compete with that?

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That article was saying $1,200 to $1,400, which I thought was a little low. We’ve all talked about this before. I think we had this conversation actually when we were on one of our Zoom calls. We talked about the fact that it seems a little too low. If that seems so low, that it’s probably not feasible. That $1,600 range, if you had an option between buying NordicTrack at $1,600 and buying a Peloton at $1,600, that’s a no-brainer.

Especially if it comes certified and it’s still under warranty.

You have all this content that’s amazing.

We’ve got a running challenge going on in my group now with regards to what is the price going to be for this CPO Bike? We already know that the margins to make the bike are about 45%, which means with the manufacturing and the marketing is costing them about $1,300 to make the bike, at least last quarter. My mind was it can’t be below $1,300, my guess therefore went up. I thought it’s going to be just under $1,600. It’s going to be around the cost of the lowest price of NordicTrack bike. My guess was $1,595. The other folks in my group are like, “That’s way too high, John. I’m thinking $1,250 or $1,300.” They’re thinking much lower. I don’t know, we’ll see.

I’m going to go closer to your end. The reason why is Peloton is not going to sell it for cheaper than they need to.

Also, you’ve got to worry about the fact that if they get down to that $1,200 range, then they might start cannibalizing their own sales. Why buy an $1,800 bike when you can get one that’s been certified and has some warranty for $1,200? At that point, you kill that mid-range bikes. I don’t see them going that low.

Plus, they don’t want to compete with the lowest in bikes. They don’t want to compete with the $900 or the $500 Echelon. It’s not who they are. They’re better than that.

Those bikes are a different thing. I’ve got to be honest with you, I just look at NordicTrack and Nautilus. Once you get to the Echelons, I look at those too. When you look at those two, $1,600 is the lowest cost comparable bike. To your point, I don’t think they’re going to want to cannibalize their other business. I don’t know that they want to be so much lower than NordicTrack. I think they want to have that luxury feel.

When I say better than that, that’s what I mean. It’s that luxury thing that they’re talking about, not like they’re literally snobby better than them.

It’s still an aspirational brand and they want it to stay that way. Speaking of competitors, there was a Bowflex review that you stumbled across.

Your comments on this really cracked me up.

Going on with the Bowflex VeloCore review. I’ve been waiting for them to announce their numbers for this bike, which they’re going to announce on November 9th.

We’ve got Peloton on November 5th for their earnings. We have Nordic track or would it be ICON?

It’s Nautilus on November 9th. They own Bowflex. This is their first bike with a built-in screen. It does the whole tilting thing. That was their thing about this bike. I’m pretty sure it’s doing really well in sales.

Honestly, I bet it is. I saw it and I was like, “That’s pretty cool.” I get that there are people that see it and they’re like, “Why would I want that bike? It doesn’t look very sturdy.” I don’t know whether it is or it isn’t because I can’t tell without feeling it. I will say that using the rocker with my Peloton, that is a legit workout to your abs that you do not get on a Peloton. It’s a completely different feel. I can understand. It looks fun.

I cannot wait to hear it. The article did all these comparisons and through the bunch of benefits, pros and cons. What got me about it was the core cons to me are missing.

Tell us about those.

The core cons to me are, one, they don’t have live classes. They only have on- demand. Number two, even the on-demand classes, their library only has 75.

That is a joke. That’s nothing.

The other piece, it doesn’t have the swivel screen or the power meter pedals. That’s okay. The lower cost bikes on Peloton’s range doesn’t either. What’s interesting to me about that point is if you buy this bike, which is $2,199, and then you add the delivery cost, it’s literally the same price as buying a Bike+. Why am I buying that with 75 classes and no live and no swivel screen and no power meter pedals? Why am I doing that?

I feel like there’s a type of person out there that just wants to be contrary.

They’re like, “I don’t like Peloton because everybody likes Peloton.” I’ve been that person about TV shows. If there’s a TV show that’s super popular, I won’t watch it.

I’ve done that.

It’s like she thinks she’s too good for it, then I finally talked her into it. Now, she loves Teen Mom.

There’s one other thing about it as well. Also, they have 75 bike classes. They have no floor classes, so there’s no stretching. There’s no weight, no yoga, none of that. It’s 75 bike classes.

That’s ballsy.

You all should have been listening in the cons. You’re paying $2,400 ultimately in the end.

Doesn’t that feel like the person who wrote the article didn’t do their research very well?

I don’t know. To me, those are the key cons.

To pay as much as you do for Bike+ for that kind of content, I think these other companies are still undervaluing content. They still are in that old world model of their equipment manufacturers. They don’t see the value of the content. In their mind, they’re probably like, “How many classes you’re going to take anyway? You have a video, and you’d watch the video over and over again, like sweating to the oldies, you’re good. You’ve got 75 of these things. If you exercise twice a week, you get halfway through the year.” I think that they don’t understand that the paradigm has completely shifted.

Another thing, there’s no leaderboard. The social aspects are gone. No high-fives and there’s no competing.

There’s no leaderboard at all? Basically what you’re telling me is the only thing they added was you can dance back and forth. Then they took away everything we actually love about the bike.

You can do 75 classes of that. To me, those are the cons. Their stock is up 1200%.

Didn’t their stock start at like $1 or something?

It was like $2.50 a share.

In that industry, you can’t fail. I don’t think it’s a fair time to judge if anybody’s good at their job. It’s pretty hard to screw up. It’s like being a mortgage broker in 2004.

The reason I point out Nautilus specifically is I can’t point directly at any other connected fitness companies that had that type of return. There are only a few of them out there. Lululemon just got into the space and ICON isn’t public, so I can’t look at them. The only ones I can look at are Nautilus and Peloton. Peloton hasn’t seen that type of return. I think there’s something specific to Nautilus that caused 1200%.

I think it’s because it started so low. You’re just doing percentages and because it started here.

Another big key factor there is also you have 30 years in the market. When you do something that the market thinks is awesome, people are going to pay a lot of attention to that because you already have so much money. You already have all of your manufacturing facilities all worked out. You have your people all worked out. You have your marketing all worked out. Peloton has been throwing this together as they grow. They didn’t have 30 years to be like, “We’re going to sit here for 30 years and not innovate. Then all of a sudden, we’re going to create this new product.” I feel like those are two very different things. That’s another reason that you’re not seeing the connected fitness public, because nobody else has been able to. Peloton made the connected fitness. They created the connected fitness market. Everybody else is still trying to catch up. I definitely think in the next 2 to 3 years, we’re going to see a whole bunch more.

I think so too. If this continues, if we hear on November 9th that they truly have been successful with the VeloCore bike, and that’s a blowout earnings call, and they start producing more product, I think Nautilus is going to continue to be a player that at some point we’ll be contending here. They’re small now.

It’s not like Peloton is Coke, but they’re Dr. Pepper.

We’re talking about Peloton, a $38 billion company, and Nautilus isn’t worth a billion yet. They’re somewhere $600 million, $700 million range. They are small, but the prospects and how they’re growing and what they’re doing to get there, it makes you pay attention.

I think Peloton would be smart to keep their eye on them, which I’m sure they are.

John, thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, where can people find you?

They can find me on Facebook at my Facebook page and group, Run, Lift and Live. They can also find me on Instagram, @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

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An interesting new item in the world of credit cards. They’re always looking for things to points and miles and Disney dollars, and now Chase Sapphire has added Peloton benefits.

This came out of nowhere. It wasn’t on my radar for something like this to be out there. It makes total sense that they were working on it because I’m sure that Peloton get some perk. The idea here is that you use your Chase Sapphire card to get a Peloton statement credit for your subscription. This isn’t like per bike or per tread, this is per subscription. If you use your Chase credit card, and it has to be a Sapphire Reserve or a Sapphire Preferred, if you use a Sapphire Preferred card, you can get up to $60 in statement credits. The interesting thing about that I think is that if Peloton has all these people who start paying with their Chase Sapphire card, I bet you Peloton gets a perk for having a bunch of people pay through their services.

It’s like whenever you go to the store and you buy something and you use your card, you know how the vendor has to pay 3% or whatever the charges are, I think that there is a deal that has been reached. Let’s say they’re being charged 3% now, maybe they will only be charged 1%, something like that. I think it’s mutually beneficial. It’s beneficial for the vendor because they’re getting the business. It’s beneficial for us because we’re getting the credits. It’s beneficial for Peloton because I’m betting, they’re getting some perk. I don’t know what it is, but something on that end.

It might even be they get a better credit card processing fee. It could be as simple as that. John Mills posted an interesting article about Peloton in Germany partnering with Kempinski Hotels.

You can now have a Peloton brought to your room. How amazing is that?

TCO 180 | Mental Health

That’s pretty fancy pants.

Westins do that here, but you have to pay a lot more. I don’t know what their particular situation is, what can Kempinski Hotels are. Do you have to pay extra? Do you have to pay extra for the room? Do you get a rental fee for the bike? All kinds of questions that I didn’t get a chance to research.

That could be like Four Seasons in Germany. I don’t know. Who knows? I’m assuming.

It’s like a very nice hotel.

It does, based on the picture, but they always look like that.

I want to talk about a new product that is launching exclusively here on The Clip Out. It’s called the Groove On. The Groove On clips to your Peloton bike. It lets you control the resistance right from your handlebars. You can use it on the original Bike or the Bike+.

There’s a knob there that you can turn.

That’s true. Whenever you’re using the bike and you’re tired, it’s nice to have it right at your fingertips to hit a button and it goes right where you want it to go.

You turn a knob.

I know but a tap is easier than turn.

I get that.

If you wanted to do a cool thing, you could have a Groove On on your handlebars at the top like when you’re in third position and one in first position. You wouldn’t even have to move your hand at all. Where you are first or third, you just hit it with your thumb and you’re moving.

You could just reach down there.

We don’t like knobs.

You, in secret, had one of these on your bike for a while.

Some people have actually noticed and called me out on it. I was lucky enough to be able to try it out to get a prototype. Now you can have one. It’s now available to everybody. Here’s the thing, they’re in the middle of a Kickstarter. This is a regular person doing this. This is somebody who had an idea, and now he has a Kickstarter. You go to the Kickstarter, it’s GetGrooveOn.com/theclipout, and you can get a special promotion, $20 off. You get it for this week. You have a few days. You can be one of the very first people.

It was just a guy who had an idea. I know another guy who had an idea, and his name is John Foley.

—

Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, a licensed marriage, family and child therapist, sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn. She’s got 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. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jenn. It’s been a little bit.

It has, but it’s great to be back with you guys.

I’ve missed you.

Our schedules got all kerfuffle, and now we’ve un-kerfuffled them or de-kerfuffled them. I believe the last time we talked to you, we discussed one of my favorite topics, which is quitting.

Tom, you have to start before you can quit. I’m still hoping to get you on a tread or a bike for even five minutes.

Anyway, we were talking about quitting and we were talking about how the option to quit can sometimes propel you further ahead. Then I thought it would be interesting to talk about when is it okay to quit? What economists would refer to as the sunk cost fallacy. Not everything is for everybody.

Are you saying exercise in general?

No, maybe a specific type of exercise.

I didn’t know if it could be as simple as like that class.

Maybe a certain type of exercise or maybe a certain discipline within that exercise, or maybe you’re sick of playing guitar and any minute you spend trying to play guitar is a minute you’re not learning to play drums.

That’s why I wasn’t sure if you were like you’re taking a class and you’re just not feeling it.

I think it meant more in general like, “This isn’t for me.” Overall, not a specific class but like a discipline.

We tend to focus on Peloton, and I think Peloton is the perfect example as someone who is trained in psychology and sports psychology. One of the things about Peloton that’s cool is that there are all these different disciplines. There’s the Tread, the Bike, the Strength, the Yoga, there’s stretching now, there’s Barre, there’s dance. There are all kinds of different classes. I think that there are a few factors to look at. One is, are you quitting because it’s challenging for you, which indicates it’s probably exactly the thing that you need to do? A lot of the instructors talk about that, the class that you least want to take is the class you most need to take. I know for me, it’s Tabata. I see Tabata I’m like, “Next,” which means that’s probably what I need to do the most.

I’m going to go with high cadence. I see high cadence and I’m like, “Nah.”

I love high cadence. I’ll take high cadence any day, but forget about Tabata or hills. No, thank you. There are times where you have to look at it and have an honest assessment of, “I don’t want to do this because it’s exactly where I’m weak and I need to get strong.” On the other hand, there are times where it’s just not your jam and it doesn’t inspire you, it doesn’t connect with you. Those are the times when you need to be able to go like, “That’s okay. Not everything is for everyone. I’m not going to do these resistance spans. Instead, I’m going to do a different form of strength training. I’m still going to make sure that I get that strength training and that weight-bearing exercise for my bones and my muscles and all that sort of stuff.” Allowing yourself the room to self-reflect enough and to do the activities that sync with you, that’s good self-care. It means that you’re going to do it for longer. You’re going to be more consistent. That consistency is what gets us results in terms of cardio and all of the health benefits.

Do you have any tips or thoughts for people? I would think that it’s easy in that moment to lie to yourself. What’s a red flag, so you can maybe self-suss-out what is not your jam and what is you telling yourself it’s not your jam because you just don’t want to?

I think that one of the things to do is Peloton has so much of a community to it that most people, whether it is you follow another Peloton addict on Instagram or you’re in a Facebook group, or you have friends that you work out with, or that you take a class with from afar that you run it by someone who’s a friend who’s in this world. If you’re in this world, you get it. You know the lingo, you know the MO, you know what the instructors are preaching and you’re also someone who’s probably likely to be willing to call your friend. I think that’s the first place to start. The second is someone who you love. If you don’t have anyone in the community like that, or someone you’re comfortable reaching out, and I encourage you by the way even if you’re not, I’ve had people who I follow on Instagram. At some point we ended up messaging each other and starting a conversation. That’s the way it grows. Maybe there’s someone who you are liking their stuff and they’re liking your stuff, and they’re a Peloton person also to just message them and be like, “Is there something I can run by you? I know we’ve never met, but you’re a Peloton person too. I’d love to get some feedback about something I’m struggling with Peloton.”

Most people in this community will rise to the occasion to be like, “Yeah, absolutely. What do you need?” That’s one thing. If you don’t have anyone in the community or feel comfortable doing that, then reaching out to someone who loves you, your partner or your adult son or daughter, your best friend, your mother, your father. Say like, “This is what I’m struggling with.” Or a friend who’s really athletic. I think all of those are good places. If you’re in therapy, talking about it with your therapist is a good place. It’s important that we are rigorously honest with ourselves. When we’re in tune with ourselves, we know when we’re not, we know when we’re making excuses. It’s very rare that we lie to ourselves and we believe our lies.

I think for myself, the times that I can “lie” to myself are when I’m being lazy and it’s not like I’ve stopped altogether. I was thinking about it today because I did a run and I also did a Strength workout. I was thinking that it’s been a while since I did both in one day. I’ve been saying like, “My Strength workouts are so much harder,” they are like way harder than what I was doing before. I think my body has probably gotten used to that enough that I can go ahead and add the cardio back in. I hadn’t thought about that today, but I’ve been gaining weight. Even though I’ve been doing the same workouts, I’ve been gaining weight. I’m like, “I think it’s because I’m not doing as much cardio as I was before.” That’s like a balance. My point being is that I tricked myself. I talked myself out of it to the point where I had stopped.

There are times in our training process where we just need a break. We need to be able to be like, “I’m not doing cardio for a couple of days. I’m getting my little check mark. I’m going to feel okay, maybe I’ll get up by doing a meditation. Maybe I’ll get up by doing a gentle yoga class.” Sometimes we need to give not just our bodies, but even our exercising brains a break in order to take a breath and then take our ourselves to the next level. There does need to be some kind of recovery and repair. Over time, we can burn ourselves out and we don’t want that because we want good health for life.

Those are all great tips. Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, where can people find you?

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

—

Tons of new content coming at us. It’s crazy time right now.

There is so much, it’s like Peloton is on hyperdrive. I feel like they’ve had so much stuff in the pipeline for so long, then COVID completely messed everything up. We’ve got a brand new bootcamp style that dropped this week. Supposedly, it’s a very intense workout. The key is between this and a regular bootcamp is that there are four rounds. They’re always going to look the same. You’re always going to know what to expect. You’re going to be on the tread. You’re going to be on the floor. You’re going to be on the tread. You’re going to be on the floor. It’s 6 to 7 minutes split up. This is great for people who like a short segment of 30 minutes because they know, “I can get through six minutes of running. I can get through seven minutes of floor.” All it is is 6 or 7 minutes. It’s easier for some people to wrap their head around that. Those started this week. You’re going to see them everywhere. It’s the new bootcamp called the Signature Series 30 Minutes. Take a look for those, they’re awesome-looking.

Next up, we have the Bon Jovi collaboration. This week, there were three rides. There’s one on 11/01, there’s going to be Irène Scholz. Then there’s one with Sam Yo. There’s one with Matt Wilpers. Kristin McGee is doing Yoga and Andy is doing I’m not sure if it’s a Run or a Bootcamp. There are tons of opportunities. I miss one, Kendall Toole. There are all kinds of stuff for Bon Jovi. There’s a Flow with Kristin McGee. It’s a very special one that people do not want to miss. She’s pairing up with Steve Martin. You know how he does his little bluegrass thing? It’s going to be yoga. It is very different from his comedy, which is a much bigger thing in comparison. I can’t help these talents on many levels. Kristin McGee is doing a yoga set to his bluegrass sounds. That’s all it’s going to be. I thought that was pretty cool. That’s October 25th at 9:00 AM. Then Hannah Frankson is going to be doing a ride with Emeli Sandé. I’m sure you remember her. There’s also a new challenge called In The Zone. You have to do eight Power Zone rides in fourteen days. They’re all already existing 30-minute rides. You can find them in the Train Smart Collection. The Jess King Experience is back for season two. That started up this week, I believe it’s 10/29 at 8:00 PM.

It’s now Karen-friendly.

Mom guilt is real, and it is powerful. Share on X

While we’re talking about this, you’ve got wonder if there are going to be new clothes for this because they had stuff that came out this week for Sundays With Love. Then they had the new Grateful Dead collection dropped this week. Then there’s a new Grateful Dead collaboration happening. Then there was also a new collection that hit on 10/26 called Made for Canada. It’s to celebrate the second Pelo-anniversary for Canada. It’s all songs that are powered by music from Canadian artists that you love. I also want to mention that if you are not paying attention to what the instructors are doing on Instagram, you need to stop what you were doing and go follow them for the rest of October at the very least, because there’s so much fun stuff happening. Andy Speer dressed up as Fred from Scooby-Doo, and it looks amazing. Matty Maggiacomo had a whole Psycho scene. I love this. He completely redid the Psycho scene in his shower, but it’s pasta and his grandma is beating him with a spoon. You guys have got to see this. It’s amazing. He calls it Psycho Pomodoro.

Matty, if you’re wondering why you were having so hard of a time recreating the shot of the shower head, send me an email and I’ll explain how they actually got that shot.

I’m totally going to send him a message about that because I bet he’s curious. I love your answer to that by the way. Also Rebecca Kennedy is doing a whole Hunger Games theme. It’s coming up on Friday. What she’s doing is she’s calling out tributes as Hunger Games, and each exercise move is a tribute. On Friday during the actual Hunger Games, you have to do whatever tribute she has picked throughout the week. It’s totally fun. She was all dressed up as the lady who does the tribute calling for the Hunger Games. It was crazy. It was so much fun. That’s just the bare minimum. We also have Halloween Halloween where there’s going to be Matty Maggiacomo totally torturing Jess Sims. You can not miss that. Jess King, I think she said she had four different Halloween outfits picked out for Halloween. There are many Halloween rides, runs, yogas. Do not miss them. This is my favorite time of the year because the instructors are so incredibly creative.

Really quickly, because I had it up on my screen momentarily for the people following along on YouTube. We should probably say that our own Crystal O’Keefe was featured on the Peloton Apparel page.

I was, and many people reached out to tell me it was great. They were like, “You were on the Peloton Apparel page. This is a new feature.” Whenever you get your new clothes, you can model them and then add them to the Peloton website. When you get your clothes and you’re like, “I love this shirt,” you can then upload your own picture to the Peloton Apparel website.

There was a Movie Buff ride where you got a shout-out.

This was the first ride I’ve taken with Kendall that was live. I was curious about it. She’s a child actor and she kept saying how it’s going to be very different and how it’s something you’ve never done before. I was like, “How? You ride, how can you make a difference?” She did. She acted out all these different horror scenes, which I can’t say it in a way that’s going to accurately describe what it is, you just need to check it out for yourself. This is going to be one of those ride types that you either love it or you hate it. I don’t think there’s an in-between. I personally loved it. I thought she really used her own special talent from acting to make it fun and her love of film. She talked all about the different film aspects. She set the scene of each song. There would be a song from the movie, and then she would set that scene, because it was horror, one of the things we were doing is running from people or cycling from people. It was well done.

They did use some interesting film techniques because at one point, the camera came around behind her and “scared” her. Then afterwards, she went on Instagram Live, and she talked all about why she did that. She was basically telling a story with all of those scenes. Each of those scenes actually made their own movie, which was pretty cool to know. The other thing she mentioned is that the Movie Buff series will be taking place once a month. Going forward to the next one will be in November. She already told me that she’s not going to be dressing up like a Turkey. It’s going to be a different one. They’ve already planned out the first 4 or 5. I don’t know what they’re going to be, but I think it’s going to be fun. I think everybody should check it out. I’m not saying everyone’s going to love it, but I definitely think that it’s one of those things that it’s such an experience and it was fun live, that everybody should do whatever they can to be on these rides live.

—

We do have a Peloton birthday this week, November 5th, country music superstar, Chase Tucker.

Happy birthday to Chase. That’s awesome.

Swing on by the Chase Tucker page and say happy birthday.

—

Joining us is Stephanie Ward.

How are you?

I’m doing great.

I always like to start the interviews off with how did you find Peloton?

I found Peloton through my sister and I’m an extreme Peloton newbie. I have not been around Peloton for even a minuscule amount of time compared to you or anybody else reading. My sister got a Peloton right before COVID. I didn’t know anything about Peloton, but she kept telling me, “This thing is the best purchase I’ve ever invested in.” We looked at purchasing the bike, but I didn’t know and she said, “The app is being offered for free for three months because of COVID.” I download the app. “Let me jump in and try this.” I had a treadmill in my house. I ran before I had Peloton. I was like, “I am a runner. I occasionally run 2 miles every 6 days. I’ll do a walk and run class with Olivia Amato. How hard could that be?” I thought I was physically going to die.

My husband walked down after the class was over and I was laying on the floor and he was like, “Are you okay?” I was like, “No, I don’t think so.” He was like, “How was the class?” I was like, “I loved it.” He was like, “That’s weird, but okay.” I kept doing it. One day he came home with a regular spin bike. I started doing the spin classes, yoga and the strength. I started drinking the Peloton Kool-Aid. That was in April 2020. In July 2020, I was asking him, “I want to order this bike.” He said, “I don’t know if we want to invest in that.” I said, “You take one class on my spin bike and tell me that it doesn’t suck.” He took one class in the spin bike and was like, “Yeah, we’re going to order the Peloton.” That night we ordered the Peloton and it has been the best thing ever.

I love how enthusiastic you are. You remind me of me whenever I first started. I have many questions for you. That approach never would have worked for me because Tom wouldn’t have gotten on the bike.

I’d have been like, “How about you get the bike but I don’t ride it?” I believe that’s exactly how it played out.

As long as you get the bike, who cares?

When you said you got the bike because of your sister, I was like, “Is your sister going to be upset that she led you to Peloton and you are on the show.”

She did say she was like, “Exactly how did you manage this?” I was like, “I don’t know. I thought to myself, ‘Let me reach out to Crystal and see.’” She’ll probably be like, “You’re sweet, but no.”

Does your sister live near you because you mentioned that you live in Alaska? I’m wondering about the logistics of getting a bike in Alaska. That sounds far away.

I’m from New Orleans originally. My sister lives in New Orleans with my whole family. We live in Alaska, which is where my husband is from and we ended up moving here for his job. We live in Juneau where you cannot drive into Juneau. You either have to fly or come by boat. My bike came here on the ferry and there’s no team here. My husband had to go to the ferry dock, pick up the bike in boxes, bring it home. We loaded it into our gym and then he set it up all by himself.

Does it cost more to get it delivered to Juneau?

It was pricey, but I finagled my way into a refund because when I originally ordered my bike, my specific question was like, “There’s no way there’s going to be a team here to set it up.” She was like, “No. They’ll come to your house. They’ll set the whole thing up.” A week later after I ordered my bike, they were like, “No.” I called them and I explained. They were like, “Let’s refund you the delivery fee.” I was like, “That’s awesome.” The only people that ship for free up here is Amazon and even our Prime is 2 weeks, not 2 days.

My next question was going to be how’s Amazon Prime work in Juneau?

Occasionally, you get a little surprise where your notification being like, “Your order’s coming today,” and you’re like, “Sweet.” If I’m ordering Christmas presents for the kids or anything like that, you got to think way far out because it takes at least 1 or 2 weeks, and then sometimes it’s like, “It’s delayed in customs because it goes through Canada.”

It’s weird that it would take longer for Christmas presents to get there because, geographically, you’re much closer to Santa.

 

TCO 180 | Mental Health

 

You would think that Santa would fly down from the North Pole, but no.

How do you end up with a husband who’s from Alaska and then you end up in Alaska?

Everybody asks me this because it’s bizarre, but I left Louisiana to move to Orlando, Florida. I worked at Disney World for a while. My husband had followed a girl down to Orlando and he’s a pilot. He was working as an airline pilot in Orlando and had started his own management company and was flying small airplanes down there. We ended up having mutual friends and we met, started dating, got married, bought a house. His ultimate goal was always to work for Alaska Airlines. He lived in Florida, built up all of his hours in order to be able to apply. Right after we got married, we got our first house for maybe a year and then they hired him. He and I have been together now for many years.

How long have you been in Alaska?

We moved here in 2015. We lived in Anchorage for the first few years, but I wasn’t a fan of Anchorage. Juneau is a small town. There’s a lot of families. I had some girlfriends here already. We like it a lot better here. It’s a good place to raise kids.

We were in Alaska in summer.

Did you do a cruise?

We did a Disney Cruise, Ketchikan and Skagway.

I haven’t been to Skagway yet, but I want to go. When its open and there’s tourists pre-COVID, it’s supposed to be a fun place.

It is and one of our fellow Peloton friends is there too. If you do go, let me know. I can connect you two.

It’s such a different way of life up there.

My boys love it because their dad can fly an airplane so they get to go on airplanes all the time and then we have a boat. We go boating and they get to do fishing, hiking and we take our boat there in warm hot springs, natural springs. I’m a Southern girl. Coming from the South and coming up here, I knew it was going to be an adventure and that’s what drew me to coming here with my husband. It’s been hard in some aspects, but then it’s also been great and my kids love it.

I’m wondering about the difficulties because I know when we were talking offline, you told me that there’s been a journey that you’ve had with anxiety, depression and all of that. I would love to hear that and how that coincided with moving to Alaska because I know there are special things to think about with the daylight up there.

I’ve never had anxiety or depression ever. I didn’t even know when anxiety would feel like before I came up here and it wasn’t so much being in the darkness. It’s definitely hard because when you get to a point where it gets to be the longer days, you’re almost up to 24 hours of darkness and it’s not quite 24, but on the longest days, it gets in the twenties as far as hours of darkness. It is hard in that aspect, but I was here for a year before I had kids. It didn’t bother me especially because my husband’s job, we got to get out traveling during the winter is key.

Once I had the kids and both my kids were born in the winter. My first baby was fine as far as the labor and everything like that, but he was sick in the whole first year of his life. I lost a lot of weight and stopped exercising because I wasn’t eating because I was stressed. Before he was even two, in fact, he turned one in February and then I believe it was in March I got pregnant with my second baby. I was going to have a toddler who was under two and then a newborn, and then we moved to Juneau, also. It was a lot going on. During the pregnancy, everything was fine. The labor was amazing. I wanted to do natural labor with my first and I didn’t get to.

With my second one, I got to do a natural labor and a water birth, which was important to me. That was great. The first night that we took him home, I remember lying awake and I could hear him breathing funny. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a pug breathe, how they sound like they’re snorting, like it’s labored. That’s what he sounded like. I remember I picked him up and I sat in the recliner with him and I stayed up all night, listening to him breathing. The next day I took him to the pediatrician and she said, “No, I don’t like the way that sounds. I’m sending you to the NICU.” She sent us to the NICU and I was hysterical because they have this tiny little human who’s having a hard time breathing, which is an extremely scary thing.

We went to the NICU and I remember it was five doctors and nurses all around this little incubator. They put him in there and they’re attaching them to all these wires and monitors. I was a mess and they were trying to ask me questions. I was like, “Ask my husband. I can’t answer you right now.” We were in there for two days and they told us his oxygenation levels were fine, but he was having a blocked nostril. As time went on, as his nasal cavity grew, then the problem would solve itself. What happened was is that normally babies cry when they come out of the womb and expel amniotic fluid and anything else that is up in their nasal cavity. He didn’t cry.

He had things that were blocking and also the tininess of his nasal cavity combined those things to make it hard for him to breathe. We went home, everything was fine. A month later, my mom was in town because my husband was gone. He woke up in the middle of the night and he was having such a hard time breathing that when he unzipped his pajamas, you could see his rib cage because he was pulling his chest in so hard, to breathe.

I rushed him to the ER, it was 2:00 in the morning. My mom stayed with my older son and he had RSV, it’s a respiratory virus and it can be dangerous for infants. In adults, it presents itself like a bad cold, but in infants it is dangerous. They put them immediately on a breathing treatment. We were in the ER for 2 or 3 days and then they released him. All this combination of factors with this child and it was also in the winter and that’s when I started every single night, I would wake up in a full-blown panic attack.

Your body was trained to be on high alert for everything.

I would wake up and I would have racing heart, sweating, nausea, I couldn’t physically could not calm myself down and it was every single night. In combination with the loss of sleep, it makes your anxiety worse. I felt like I was living under this cloud and I thought, “I can’t do this anymore.” I went to a therapist and she put me on an antianxiety medication, which was fine. I was happy to do anything that was going to make me feel better.

I remember her looking at me and saying, “What is one thing you used to do for yourself that you don’t do anymore?” I said, “I used to run.” She goes, “Why don’t you do that anymore?” I was like, “I have a toddler and an infant. It’s not something that I think about. I think about taking care of my kids and myself because they are little.” She was like, “You have got to find something to take care of yourself, to do for yourself. I don’t care what it is, you need an outlet.”

I started the antianxiety medications and that was all fine. It was a few months after that I started running again, but not. I would do it sporadically, still having a lot of anxiety and my sister had texted me about Peloton and she said, “I think this would be good for you.” I swear, I took that first class and I was immediately hooked. Now, I work out every single day. I’m bad about taking days off, but I have lowered my anxiety medication in hopes of eventually weaning off of it. I am happier. Even my husband is like, “You are a whole new person,” because I’m positive where I used to complain all the time, negative all the time and was never happy. I was not in a good place, but now physically, emotionally, mentally, I am happy.

I’m in the best shape of my life. I’ve lost 18 pounds. This is all since April 2020. It’s been this huge change in such a small amount of time, but between the outlet of exercise and how amazing the instructors are. The things that you hear while you’re sweating out your emotions, I saw multiple therapists. I talked to my girlfriends, I talked to my husband, nobody could do what this has done for me. It’s been such a transformation. I’m like, “I can’t stop this. It’s amazing.”

Do you think that is about their words of empowerment or it’s the combination of moving while you’re processing? For you, what do you think is the key ingredient that makes it different than a talk therapy situation?

I think it is the movement in combination with the empowering statements that they have to make and the things that they have to say and I know that they say this a lot too, that movement is medicine. When I was a runner before my kids, I felt so much better after I went for a run. Even if I’d had a bad day or feeling sluggish, I would go for a run and I would feel amazing afterwards. Now, I’m not only feeling like I’m getting that exercise to let my stress out, but then I’m also feeling like I’m working with a training partner who is motivating me, empowering me and making me see the good side of life like flip the script and make me think about things in a different way instead of thinking of things negatively. There’s always something that you can look at your situation in a different way and say, “I am lucky.” I definitely feel like it’s a combination of the two. It’s magic.

I was thinking back to the story about your son, how lucky you are that Juneau has that healthcare infrastructure. It’s far removed. That was where my head immediately went into. How far do you got to go to get stuff like that done?

We were in Anchorage because I had my first son in Anchorage and I wanted the same midwife to deliver my second son. My mother-in-law at that time was living in Anchorage. Right around my due date, we went to Anchorage to have him and thank God I did because there is no NICU in Juneau. I would have had to have been medevacked out to the NICU.

Which would add a whole another layer. Are both sons healthy now? It sounds like they are. You said they’re active and rambunctious. Is everybody all good?

Yes. They are healthy and happy and we are lucky because there are lots of ways that could have gone, but they are healthy, extremely active and all good.

You said you were taking antianxiety medication. Did you ever have to take anything for depression as well or whatever medicine you were taking? Not that you have to share that. Did it address both?

It was a combo anxiety and depression medication. It definitely did both.

I’m always curious about that because I’m fascinated by the fact that anxiety and depression often go hand in hand. To me, that’s interesting the way our brain works. There’s got to be something there that this isn’t healthy and isn’t working, which then makes you feel depressed because you’re anxious about everything, but then it doesn’t offer you this help switch of like, “Hey.”

I feel like because I was having the anxiety, then I got angry and upset that I was feeling this way and I couldn’t do anything about it. No matter what I did, I would do breathing exercises and all these things that I was spending was like nothing helped me like exercise and what I’ve been doing has for sure. I wouldn’t say depressed like in some people where they can’t get out of bed. That was not the way that I was because I had known my children needed me, but I definitely was not there for them. I’m much better of a mom, a friend, a wife now than I was then.

When your doctor was telling you about, “You had to take care of yourself.” I think a lot of times people lose sight of the fact that taking care of yourself up to a point is taking care of your children. You have to be in a certain mindset and healthy place to be able to take care of them effectively.

Mom guilt is real.

It doesn’t ever go away? Not with something you want to hear.

I know my mom has told me that hundreds of times and I’m like, “I believe you because mom guilt is real and it is powerful.” Even now, I have days where I go for a long run or something and I’m like, “I’m missing out on time with my kids, but they’re fine.” When I come home and I’m happy, then they’re like, “Mom, do you want to play?” I’m like, “Yeah, I do.” Rather than being like, “Not now.”

By making yourself healthy, you’re also getting yourself more time with your kids. It’s also you’re adding on to the end of your life, which is great. That’ll be more time you have with them. It is definitely important. I also think that when you’re a new mom, it’s hard to focus on yourself because I think that our bodies are trained to focus on the baby. I never had two little ones at the same time, so I don’t know how that feels but I can only imagine that it would make it more intense, more ways that you have to split up your time. From a biological level, you’re focused on their needs.

At some point, their needs become a little bit less, but like you’re already on that wavelength and schedule. It’s hard to pull back and be like, “What do I need now? Now they don’t need me as much. What can I do for me?” That never occurred to me to even have that conversation. I think a lot of women go through that. I think that’s a common, easy thing to fall into and then add panic attacks on top of it. I can’t even imagine how difficult that was to get out of that cycle.

When I was going through that time, my sister called me and said, “I have a girlfriend who’s been through. She’s not going through anymore, but she went through exactly what you’re going through. Her husband’s a doctor, here’s what medicine she’s taking and she wants to talk to you.” I talked to her and she gave me all this advice. She was pet talking to me like, “This is not going to be forever. You will not feel this way forever. You’re going to get through this.”

I would periodically text her if I was having a bad day or whatever. Now, I had a girlfriend texted me that said, “I have a friend that’s going through a hard time and she wants to know what you went through.” I’m like, “I’m on the other side of this. This is nice. Now, I can help someone else.” A lot of moms go through it and I’m keen on talking about it because a lot of people don’t talk about it and they think that there’s shame in getting help or taking medication. I’m like, “It’s not going to hurt you. It’s only going to help you. If you need that, do whatever is going to make you a better you and happier.”

I think there’s a stigma attached to it. I think the shame that you said and I also think that I personally have dealt with being anxious. I am an anxious person and depression as well. I didn’t want to take medicine because I didn’t want to lose parts of me. I didn’t want to be dependent on the medication. I was afraid I wouldn’t feel emotions in the same way I felt them before. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be who I am at my core. That’s scary to some people like myself. That’s another reason that people don’t talk about it because it’s a weird thing to think that taking a drug could make you a different person, but we all know people who have taken recreational drugs that have become different people. It’s hard not to relate those two things.

I don’t even like to take Tylenol. My husband is the same way, we don’t like to take medication. When she was like, “I’m going to prescribe this,” I was like, “I don’t know.” I was in such a bad place that I was desperate that I will do anything that will make me feel better as long as it’s not going to harm my body. I get annual blood work every year and everything’s always fine. I’m coming down off of it. I want to try to live without this. I put the Band-Aid on for a while, but I’m not going to do this. I don’t want to do it forever and you shouldn’t depending on what your doctor says.

I think that’s a good thing for people if they’re in a similar situation to keep in mind that some people it’s a maintenance thing that they need forever. For other people, it’s a means to an end and you can maybe get over the hump and then find other you can start to back off of it. If it’s you, that’s always a potentiality.

Do what you need to do in order to be your best self, to feel your best, work with your doctor and do what’s right for you. There’s no shame in anything that you need to do to make yourself feel better.

It sounds like all the exercise that you’re doing is cardio-focused, which I know raises your endorphin level and love it. I’m also curious if you ever do any of the weight classes that Peloton has. If you get the same feeling after you’re done with those classes?

I do the strength classes but it’s definitely is in combination with cardio. The bike bootcamp would be the one thing that I could say that I did get the endorphin feel good because you can’t not with how as your heart is during those. It’s insane. They’re hard but they’re great. I’ve only done a couple because I know they came out but I love them. I went for a run and then I did a core class, but if I had done that core class, then I would have been like, “I need some cardio.” Cardio is what makes me feel the best, but I know I should be doing the strength in combination. I do the strength classes, but I also have to have some cardio to go with it.

I love all the cardio and I’ve been trying to focus on strength, but I can tell in myself for sure that feel good feeling that I get, it’s much more pronounced from cardio rather than strength. I still enjoy the strength workouts. I love them but it’s a different feeling. I was curious if you had the same effect.

I have to sweat in order to feel good.

Do whatever is going to make you a better and happier you. Share on X

Like you accomplished a thing.

I love the core classes and the body weight lifting, everything, I love it all. I do sleep meditations, yoga and I do all of it. I dabble in all of it but my main focus for me and what makes me feel the best is definitely sweating and getting a great cardio workout.

It doesn’t sound like you have a Peloton Tread, but do you have a treadmill to run inside?

I have a treadmill. You can’t get the Peloton Tread in Alaska yet. We have this treadmill and when we got the bike, he was like, “How long until you need the treadmill?” He works out with me. I was on the treadmill taking a run with Matt Wilpers and he was on the bike, doing a ride with Dennis. He was done before me and he randomly, come in the gym and he is full on, “You do it. I know it’s making you feel great. I love the person that you are now and how happy you are.” He’s all about it. He can’t complain.

I was trying to imagine how you could possibly run outside in Alaska during the winter. I was like, “How would a person even do that on a regular basis?”

I don’t think I run outside during the winter. I run outside here in the summer. Even the fall days, sometimes it’s rainy but you go out anyway because sometimes you need to run outside. In the winter, I’ve always done it on the treadmill, but I do see people do it and they put ice cleats on their tennis shoes and I’m like, “I’m going to get on my treadmill. That seems a lot for me.” My gym is warm. No ice, no snow. If some people, it’s more power to you, that’s your thing.

Since Juneau is remote, what’s COVID like up there? Does it feel safer because it’s harder for it to encroach?

There are many outdoor situations there too.

Juneau has been super cautious. We don’t have many cases here. The public schools are closed, they’re all doing virtual learning. The private schools are open. My oldest son is in private preschool and he goes three days a week. All the teachers have to wear masks, gloves and everything is sanitized. They wash their hands probably ten times a day. The restaurants are open. The bars shut down for a little bit because there was a little bit of an outbreak from a big social gathering that somebody had. They’re super conservative here. I have a nurse friend who works at the hospital here and I randomly texted her and say, “What’s it like over there now?” She said, “There’s been nobody here on ventilators. There has been nobody that’s been severely ill and hospitalized. They may have had a few cases go through and then they send them home. They recovered but they’re very cautious up here.”

They’re being careful in keeping numbers down, that’s wonderful.

We do feel like we’re in a bubble here a little bit, but at least I do. I feel a little bit removed from the rest of the country and a little bit safer.

Speaking of school during regular times, what does it take for a kid to get a snow day in Juneau?

It’s a lot. There was one snow day in 2019.

What was that day? How +++++++++++++++++++++++++bad it was?

It might’ve been 3 or 4 feet. I don’t know. I’m not a meteorologist and I feel like my head is consumed with my daily life with my kids. My mom will call me to give me news updates. I’m like, “What happened? I don’t know.”

TCO 180 | Mental HealthEvery time I talked to my mom, all she wants to do is talk about the weather. I’m like, “It’s not that different. We live two hours away from each other.” “I don’t know. I don’t care. I did my thing.”

I think that day it was more that the roads were bad. They were worried about the roads being icy more than the snow, but it would have to be bad for them to get a snow day because we don’t get incredible amounts. Anchorage gets a lot more snow than we do. I used to live in St. Louis and Afton for a little bit.

What is your leaderboard name?

My leaderboard name is MomSwag2016. I am a member of Robin’s Sweat with Swagger Crew and she is my guru. I love her. I was on the Hamilton ride with you and I stalked you on the leaderboard and high-fived you three times until you high-fived me back. I only have three people high-five me. My husband came in and I’m doing this ride. It popped up because I follow you and it was like, “ClipOutCrystal’s on this ride.” He was like, “Who’s that?” I was like, “The girl interviewing me tomorrow.”

I do remember seeing that because I high-fived you and you high-fived right back. I was like, “I’m not doing it again. It’s too much high-five.” We’re in the middle of an interval.

I was on the live ride when she announced she was pregnant. My sister and I were taking that ride together and she announced she was pregnant. That was fun to be with my sister on that. I’m MomSwag2016. I became a mom in 2016. I love Robin. I feel like she always talks about, “I can’t enough mom swag. I love mom’s swag.” I was like, “Perfect.”

Do you have any advice for people getting their bike?

I feel when I first got my bike, I was focused on output, wanted PR, wanted to go up the leaderboard and I got stressed about it. I was like, “This is stupid. I was going to get on the bike, have fun and work hard. Whatever my output, is what my output is for that day and it’ll be fine but I still got on the bike and I did it.” Get on your bike, do the workout, have a great time. Enjoy, take a multitude of instructors. I took a Jess King experience the other day and it was my first one. It was awesome. It was amazing. Have fun with it. Don’t overthink it and be glad that you had a Peloton in the first place.

Where can people find you on social media if you would like to be found?

@SWard0514 on Instagram. I am @StephanieWard on Facebook and I am MomSwag2016 on Peloton.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us and I know you were kid-free during this time.

My husband was like, “Why don’t you text me when you’re done?” Maybe I’ll wait a half-hour.

Thank you for doing this. It was a lot of fun and also educational. Thank you for sharing your journey and experience with anxiety and depression. I appreciate having those discussions with people and keeping it real.

Thank you. This was fun.

—

That brings this one to an end. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on 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. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in, until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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