John Mills joins us to discuss the earnings call.

We have good news and bad news about this year’s Homecoming.

Peloton has all sorts of plans for Black History Month.

Did Bob Treemore figure out Peloton’s next yoga instructor?

Peloton might have a new commercial controversy on their hands.

Peloton is looking for summer interns.

Dr. Jenn – How to make a workout plan.

Cody Rigsby popped up on The Today Show.

NPR quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” talked about Biden’s Peloton.

Shape Magazine picks got-to instructors for any mood.

Robin Arzon was interviewed on the podcast Think About It with Victoria Azarenka

Sam Yo was on SiriusXM with Jenny Hutt.

Emma Lovewell pops up in a Super Bowl ad.

A Peloton member rides her bike for 24-hours to raise money for charity.

A SoulCycle instructor gets the Covid vaccine under questionable circumstances.

Apple Fitness is now available on more televisions.

Echelon has a new celebrity endorsement.

Verizon has a VR app that includes Robin Arzon.

Denis Morton was briefly a mediation instructor.

Matty has a new challenge for your core.

All this plus our interview with Cyndy Leonard!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Announces Homecoming plus our interview with Cyndy Leonard

You made it through a full week with your vaccine. Congratulations.

Thank you. I feel a lot less tired than I did. I was like, “Wrap it up, Tom.”

She was nodding on and off during some of the segments. 

It started to hit me by the end, but I was much better the next day.

It’s been a while since I was married to someone who nodded off.

Different reasons.

I guess we should say here, don’t forget we’re bringing back the Zoom call. 

It’s been kind of crazy because you were working so many hours during the holidays.

With all the Christmas lights and COVID testing. 

Then the holiday got over and my work got crazy. Things have leveled off so we’re bringing it back, like Tom said. It will be this February 6, 2021 at 6:30 PM Central, 4:00 PM Pacific and 7:00 PM Eastern.

I will be at work, but it will be slow so I can do it from my office. If you’ve ever been curious as to what my office looks like, what an exciting time for you.

You will be able to see his Kermes sitting behind him.

Maybe my Tom Servo. I have a show-accurate Tom Servo on my desk.

We’ll just spend the whole day going through your office.

Tour my office. Also, the Clubhouse post-show wrap-up.

We’re doing that every Sunday now. It is through the wellness club. All you have to do is go to Clubhouse, if you have an invite already and you’re part of it, go to the wellness club, sign up to follow them and you’ll get pinged. We are doing a show every Sunday at 4:00 PM Central. We will be going through all the topics that we talked about this week. You can bring up anything, those reactions where you guys email me.

It’s a great time to chime in. Also, we record this on a Wednesday, so if anything happens between when we record it and Sunday, it’s a great chance to maybe talk about some of that stuff. 

There are people that have never even heard of Peloton or they’re thinking about it and they start asking questions and it turns into a fun convo. I hope to see you there.

Before we get to the show proper, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart, TuneIn, wherever you find podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you’d be so kind as to leave us a review. That is greatly appreciated. There are lots of good reviews. We’re just winding through them.

We are very fortunate to have such passionate and thoughtful audiences. Thank you, guys.

This review comes from MOF22. Do you think that means mom of 22? Maybe she’s 22 years old.

I don’t know. I’m scared for her.

She wouldn’t have 22 children, would she? 

I don’t know. It’s possible.

I don’t want to cast aspersions. I don’t want to sound like it but I’m just like, “Holy cow. That’s a lot of kids if you pulled that off.”  

We need to know more about this. Forget the review. You need to stop everything and reach out and tell us that you are a mom of 22.

We have questions. She says, “Really enjoy this podcast for its information and entertainment.” It can’t be mom of 22. There’s no way she has 22 kids and she has time to ride the bike and listening to this show. Something’s got to give. “It’s my go-to for anything Peloton. Love Crystal & Tom’s relationship, all the guests, and all the unexpected info they provide. Plus, listening to the podcast always motivates me and brightens my day. Thank you.” Thank you for the nice review. 

That was so sweet.

We have a Facebook group, Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page, join the group and you can sign up for our newsletter, which gets you all of the links, pictures and all the show notes delivered directly to your inbox every week so you don’t have to go hunting through the Facebook page and group to find them. They’ll be right there for you to peruse at your leisure. 

That makes me also think that we should mention Clubhouse, if you’re wanting to be part of it and you don’t have an invite, you also can get hooked up through the Facebook group because we have some ladies, Stacy Kaplan and Lisa Silverstein have been helping us grow the Clubhouse group. They’re kind of doing a chain, you get in and then you invite somebody else. Welcome, join us.

If you go to the Facebook group and find that thread and post that you’re interested, they can maybe try and help you get into Clubhouse because it’s a little weird. It’s invite-only at the moment. It’s still kind of beta. Also, we have a YouTube channel. Everything you’re reading, you can also see if you go to YouTube.com/theclipout. We post all of these episodes in beautiful HD glory. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to that as well. That’s all your homework. Let’s dig in, shall we? 

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Joining us from Run, Lift & Live is John Mills.

How is it going?

You guys listened to the earnings call. I just sat down so I know nothing. Entertain and enlighten me.

They’ve never dropped a bomb like that. My head exploded. It was like Crystal shrapnel everywhere. I had to pick it up before we could get on this call. That was crazy. You know what I’m referring to, right John?

I don’t know. A bunch of stuff in there that we went through with got me. I’m not sure what specifically you’re referring to.

That’s fair. There was a lot, the thing that blew my mind the most was that the Tread that’s going to be rolled out nationwide on March 30, 2021. Just kidding. It’s going to be May 27, 2021. Say what now? What just happened? They had a good reason. I actually think they’re doing the right thing. The reason was that there has been a higher-than-expected demand in the UK for the Tread because they rolled that on December 26, 2020 and then Canada is supposed to start on February 9, 2021. They anticipate that all signs point to Canada is also going to have stronger-than-expected demand for Tread. They’re like, “We’re just going to make everybody mad all over again. How about we take all those resources and put all the resources towards Canada and UK first?”

That piece of it is what I caught up first. I had to listen back to them hear why they said that, but I heard the piece where they went, “A question had been asked about demand,” and they talked about some of the effects of the demand in the US is because of those resources being diverted to ensure that they’re the good experience in the UK and in Canada. That was wow. That was interesting. The hundred million that they’re now committing to airfare and new expedited ocean? What?

Being consistent with showing up is going to get you results. Share on X

At the end, I think you missed this question and I didn’t get a good answer to it. It was a little bit of gobbledygook. The very last question was, “Why are you doing that now versus six months ago?”

Because of the New York Times.

I posted the same question in my group.

I was like, “I’ve got to listen to the answer,” and then I got distracted because I was setting up the Zoom. Did you hear them, Tom?

I didn’t hear anything that sounded substantive.

It didn’t sound like a real answer.

I think the real answer is New York Times, Wall Street Journal.

If you can do that now, how come they didn’t? What? They got expedited on ocean? John Foley said something in there, I’ve got to go back and listen, but it sounded like he said something about going into a different port.

He did say that. The busiest ports are, they said, “Four times LA is the biggest one,” but they are four times busier than they usually are. They said that they’re going to start sending some of those shipments into the US, they’re going to send them to different ports that aren’t as busy. It’s going to cost more, but they want to do that because they’re just trying to get the freight and trying to get it in. They said the unloading times at the port are what is taking four times longer.

That’s a good thing to know because that was another question we had. Even if the boat is faster, if it’s getting stuck at a port, it doesn’t matter how fast your boat is. 

Based on the $100 million investment that they’re talking about, they’re saying, “They should be back to normal or to delivery times by end of fiscal 2021 year, which is June.

If that’s true then they need to be put in charge of vaccine distributions.

That’s funny, Tom. The other thing that they said was that the manufacturing capacity is already outweighing the demand. They’re ahead of it. They just can’t get it here. 

Again back to they got expedited ocean freight? That’s a thing? I didn’t know that was a thing.

I’m picture a barge with flames on the side.

I’m picturing instead of 2 knots, it gets to go 4 knots. Those things are so slow.

That one threw me though. I’m still messed up on that. It’s like you go on to work every day and take the stairs and one day someone goes, “There’s an elevator.”

It’s going to be so much more expensive. It’s a lot easier probably at the end of a quarter to say, “We have enough money. Let’s go ahead and do this $100 million.” 

Why don’t they just move some of the money from the marketing budget that they didn’t have to spend?

They did. They said that they have been reducing marketing spend. They’re still planning to do it for another quarter. They don’t think that they need it. They said, this is the crazy part, “Demand has not weakened at all.” John sounded shocked. He was like, “No, you don’t understand. It has not weakened at all. It’s all organic.”

Isn’t that what we’ve been saying? Any of this has been impacting them. They were profitable again, they netted $65 million.

It’s nothing to sneeze at.

They’re making money. Again, I’m back to, there’s expedited ocean freight?

Something I saw in an article about gearing up for this. I thought it was interesting. They were talking about the $4 billion in sales. I was just thinking, remember a few years ago when everybody was excited because they were estimated to be valued at $4 billion? Now they’re doing that in sales.

Speaking of, another fun statistic that came out. Remember I said that it’s already outpacing the demand. They said their manufacturing capacity is six times higher than a year ago, but wait, that’s more bikes monthly per month happening right now than all the fiscal year in 2018. 

More bikes in one month of this year than the entirety of 2018?

Yes. When you think of it on that level, it’s like, “I do see how this has all turned into a big mess.” That’s an enormous amount of freight.

That is crazy. Another thing that I noticed when I looked back at their subscribers in January of 2020, they were just over 700,000. They gained 625,000 just last quarter. They’re growing nuts. Another thing about this is when I first looked at it, I was reading the guidance before the call and I was like, “They made their subscriber count their guidance there and they made the revenue. This looks good.” They were up at 7% and then I look aftermarket and they’re down 8%.

They lowered their guidance on next quarter. They were like, “We’re going to spend this $100 million so you’re going to have a lower guidance.” There went Wall Street right after it.

It’s the craziest stuff. They lowered the guidance on their gross margin and they’re like, “We had to lower it and the expectations are down. Of course, the margins are going to be lower because we lowered the price of the bike and we’re spending more on getting the bikes here.” The market hits you because you didn’t quite prepare for that. All in all, to me, all of these are good problems and everything’s good.

Don’t you think that that could be a really good reason why they haven’t spent the money to do expedited freight because they knew this was coming? They knew that Wall Street would react this way, but will it stay? That’s the other thing. How long is that going to happen? 

Generally, the calls are interesting to me, but there are just a couple of times during this call, I was like, “Really? What?” This was an interesting one. It’s all good stuff in the end.

It is. To your point, Tom, $4 billion of revenue, that’s 123% growth year over year.

To be honest, I’m really shocked about this. I had all these questions that I thought they were going to ask about. Most of them John Foley provided answers to before the call really even got going. Most of those questions were never really even asked. The analysts did start asking in more detail about the shipping and order delivery delay, but they never asked about service-based issue. Hopefully somebody is going to ask something about, “What about the service inquiries and complaints?” That never came up once, ever, in the whole call. They don’t care.

You should be one of the people that ask the question next time. I want you to be beep in and be like, “John, seriously, what are we doing about the service?” He did talk about service. He did talk about it a little bit and they apologized profusely for not meeting expectations, but they also said that they had doubled the capacity of customer service representatives. He didn’t say where they were getting them from.

I will also say that doubling your capacity of customer service representatives is good and bad. You have more people to handle the influx, but that also means you have more people that aren’t as familiar with your company culture or your policies. You also increase the likelihood of somebody maybe having a less than stellar experience because you’re injecting a bunch of new blood into the situation.

Same point on manufacturing, the more bikes you make, the more problems you’re going to have. Just statistically, if you make 2,000 bikes a year and 1% of them is bad, it could still be only 1% is bad, but there are so many more bikes out there that people are noticing it more. 

In the end, you can tell they’re strong. They’ve got strong demand. It sounds like they’ve got a plan and a plan that’s going to turn around a result within the next few months. In the end, it was all kind of wild stuff, but I was all happy. I’m like, “This is awesome.” If you look at how the market is doing, you’re going, “But what?”

They don’t count. They only count for today. They’ll be back up tomorrow.

There’s so much in the present tense. It’s not long-term.

You hear them talk about strength.

I did. That was interesting because I don’t even remember what the question was. I think I blanked out a little because it was really long. It was one of those long-winded, took three minutes to ask the question and I was gone but John was like, “It’s a strength. We’re looking at it. I don’t know that I would say it’s just content. We think that that might be one thing. It might be like P90X was, where it’s just content and it’s all body strength but we’re also looking at innovating and creating things. We can’t announce anything today.” Something’s coming.

That’s what I got from it. Something’s coming. He’s trying to play us.

Last time he was all, “I just want free weights,” this time he’s like, “There might be a platform.”

It’s like growing up when your parents were just like, “Things are tight this year and Christmas isn’t going to be that great. I hope you enjoyed everything,” and then they pull the PS5 out from behind the Christmas tree.

They’re trying to do that to us. I think they’re about to do that.

Anything interesting about Precor that you thought we should mention?

Not specifically about Precor. The same stuff that we normally hear, “They’re great people. They know how to manufacturer a fitness equipment really well, this is going to be awesome. They’re the greatest producers on the planet.” The things that we’ve normally heard. I didn’t hear anything interesting there. What was interesting to me is them saying, “The Taiwan facility, the Mac Tonic facility specifically, is open and it’s ramping up.” That’s the first we’ve heard about that.

“Shouldn’t you guys have put out a press release about that or something?” They were just like, “Yeah, it’s been open. Don’t even worry about it.” Do we assume since December then, because that was when it was supposed to open?

I guess. They didn’t say when. It just says in the paper that it’s open and ramping up.

What about the Shin Ji, the other one? The new plant.

That’s it, the Shin Ji.

Tonic was purchased a couple of months ago. Shin Ji broke ground months ago, but it’s been up and running and we don’t know how long.

You can’t do ribbon cuttings during COVID.

I think they’re trying to hide it from us. I think they don’t want us to know what their capacity is until they’re ready. 

I thought the demand was nice to hear in the UK. That was good to hear. I was wondering about that. How many people are really grabbing out there?

They said it’s much higher than they expected. I thought that was great news. I didn’t hear any bad news. From a customer service standpoint, it was good news, I thought. 

What do they normally do on expedited? Do you think that’s normally for produce?

I don’t know. It’s still a slow boat from China. That saying is a saying for reason, it still takes a long time. It was expedited a day sooner. I don’t even understand how much sooner we’re talking about.

That’s why I’m wondering if it’s produce-related because obviously, there’s a shelf life on that. Maybe that was part of the problem, everybody’s got to hit the gap for like, “We’ve got to ship a bunch of bananas or something.”

I just picture some Big Break boat with some guy on the front wheel, “Get out of the ramp.”

“We’ve got Peloton bikes. Move it.”

“Push these bananas over the side.”

I think we’re done. I don’t think I have anything else to add. I was just blown away by the Tread being pushed back. That blew me away. Now, there are only select zip codes in the United States that will start on February 9, 2021. That is going to create such a crapstorm.

Any insight as to which ones?

No, I don’t even want to know because then people will come to me and ask me if they’re in that zip code and people will be trying to move their address into that zip code and it will go crazy.

It will be like school districts. “I live in my aunt’s house now.”

That’s going to be all over the news.

People will be like, “Can I just come and pick it up?”

Don’t forget we just talked about the fact that there are Treads sitting in warehouses already ready for this distribution. This is hard for people who were waiting for this moment.

Is that maybe the selected zip codes? Those are the areas that are already there so might as well push them out?

I don’t think so because Gina told me this, she lives in Philadelphia, she is not one of the selected cities. It was like nine cities and I assumed it’s the same zip codes. They were like, “It’s sitting back there in the distribution center, but you can’t get it until March 30th.” She was always going to be March 30, 2021 and now she has to wait until May 27, 2021. I just thought, now that we know the dates with homecoming and everything, do you think that’s when they’re going to talk about strength then?

They’ve got to do something bigger than 2020. They’ve got to be announcing something. I’m going to say it right now. I’m predicting they’re announcing something.

They said in the press release that they were announcing things.

Didn’t they say in the press release in 2020 that they were going to announce things?

They did. I don’t even remember what they announced in 2020.

They did say that but then they came back and said, “Probably not.”

“We were just kidding.” I’m sure 2021 will be better than 2020. We’ll stay tuned.

Thank you very much, John, for joining us and working around, I don’t want to say our schedule, Peloton schedule and their quarterly earnings call, but thank you. Until then, where can people find you?

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

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It’s not often you get to hear a sweeper you’ve never heard before. How about that? It’s not brand new. We’ve had it for a while, it’s been sitting there waiting. 

It’s been waiting for this very moment.

We had to dust it off and ta-da, homecoming. We finally have some idea of what’s going on at homecoming. Good news? Bad news?

Good news. We have dates, April 30, 2021 through May 2, 2021. They are continuing the tradition of the first weekend in May.

I like to think I would have always had a date for homecoming, honey. 

No, the date that it is occurring. I would have been your date for sure.

I was like, “That’s not breaking news.”

I’m absolutely with you. Here’s the thing, it’s digital.

They’re doing digital once again. 

I’ve just got to break this down a little bit. First of all, you guys need to know that they’re asking for you to RSVP. Why? I don’t know, but they are. Here’s the thing, I think you guys need to, and I have a feeling there are going to be things that you get by doing it, that you really are going to be so mad at yourself if you don’t. There could be swag sent to you, maybe they’re going to have breakout rooms with instructors and you have to RSVP and things like that.

Maybe they’re going to have Emma Lovewell come to your house. Probably not but if they did, you wouldn’t even be in the running.

You wouldn’t because you wouldn’t be registered. Just take the time and register because there might be a cap and you might really be kicking yourself.

It doesn’t cost anything. All it costs you is your time.

Here’s my bold prediction. We’re never having an in-person homecoming. I think this is it because they have grown a billion percent since the last homecoming that was in-person.

That one sold out in like fifteen minutes. 

It was so crazy and the year before that, they kept trying to make it bigger but now, with the increase in people being so much over two years, I think this would have been pushing it to be the last one, anyway. Now I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

That’s a shame because they were fun. I also get that as they’ve grown in size, how do you do that and keep it?   

It still has to be enjoyable. I know they could still do some kind of lottery. Guys, please don’t send me a million messages telling me how I’m wrong because I’m just telling you what my prediction is. I feel like I’ve already been arguing with some of you online. Here’s the deal, I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong but you’re not going to convince me. You need to take that energy and give it to Peloton because I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to make enough people happy at this point with doing it. That’s why I think that, and also I’ve been in business long enough that when you skip things twice and nobody got really upset, then you just keep doing that. It’s so much cheaper and easier. That’s my prediction.

We hope we’re not right. It was fun, we love going. 

I still want to hang out with you, guys, so we have to figure something out, but it just may never be at homecoming again. I have faith.

Peloton is doing lots of fun stuff to celebrate Black History Month.

First of all, what they did is they paired up four instructors with four artists and created different looks for Black History Month. If you’re watching our YouTube channel, you are seeing pictures of that. The drop occurred and into the boutique. That’s interesting because I already got my clothing. It appeared the fastest ever by far. It arrived via DHL, which never happens. I think that they were very thoughtful and intentional in getting this to people ASAP so that they could actually use it to celebrate Black History Month and I’m very glad that they did. There are going to be Black History classes all month. Also, they are committing to donating money.

Here’s the different art that they have. They have Light The Way, which is by a Nigerian-born multidisciplinary artist, Temi Coker, who lives in Dallas, Texas that was developed alongside Jess Sims and Chelsea Jackson Roberts. You have Bring Your Whole Self, which is by self-taught South African lettering artist and designer Hust Wilson and they collaborated with Adrian Williams and Tunde. Then, United We Move by Monica Ahanonu and she collaborated with Ally Love and Hannah Frankson. Come Into Your Power by Sanford Greene, he’s worked with Marvel, DC, Dark Horse. He did his design in collaboration with Chase Tucker and Alex Toussaint. If you scroll down, we also have the information of where they actually donated to. They are matching the artistic effort. They are launching a partnership with the Steve Fund.

This is really cool because it is the largest nonprofit focused on mental health for people of color in the United States. I didn’t even know that there was that kind of focus on mental health. Peloton is doing a $100,000 investment and then the Steve Fund is going to take that money and they are going to develop and deliver urgently needed mental health and emotional well-being resources and programs for young people of color and their families. In addition to all that, Peloton continues to keep working on their pledge that they made back last June. That was a $100 million commitment to becoming an anti-racist company. Good for them. I say, “Bravo to Peloton,” and I loved the designs that came out. They were beautiful. The bold colors, especially the bright blue, it was this gorgeous blue, like peacock blue. The only reason I didn’t get that one is because it came with capri leggings. Especially this time of year, I really liked the full-length leggings so I got the set that Tunde was wearing and those were gorgeous as well.

I also thought it was interesting that this collection release was covered on Good Morning America. We’ve seen Peloton obviously pop up in the news a lot, whether it be about instructors doing little mini classes on various shows like Live with Kelly and Ryan or what have you, but I feel like this is the first time we’ve ever seen anybody talk about like, “Here’s their new line of clothes.”  

I think it is the first time. I’m not shocked by it because there’s an awesome angle where they’re giving back and they’re doing this huge push and the collaboration with the artists. It makes sense that if any of those lines were going to make it into the news, this would be the one to do it, but you make a good point that it’s again, the growth of Peloton, the trajectory that we’ve seen over the time period that I’ve had the Peloton and obviously beyond before I had my Peloton. Just in the last few years, it skyrocketed. Part of the morning news.

Last episode’s guest Bob Treemore, who’s always tweeting interesting things about Peloton, had some interesting insight on a potential yoga instructor. 

He tweeted about this. He basically is thinking that the name of the next yoga instructor is Mariana Fernandez. He thinks that because of some things he saw on Peloton server, that he did not hack. It’s legal what he did, we covered this in the last episode, but for those of you still complaining, it’s not a hack, anyway though. The reason we think it’s this particular account is that she lives in New York City and she’s a yogi. Her account is mysteriously locked down. We think that Peloton is trying to be very secretive about this. I also think it’s interesting and noteworthy that she is Mexican because we have wondered if we are going to start getting Spanish speaking classes. Could this be the person who’s going to start that for the yoga side of things? I don’t know. It is all speculation. From what I hear, she’s a great yoga teacher because somebody reached out to me and told me that. It will be exciting to keep an eye on that. For those of you that are still asking about Bradley Rose, his name is still in there but we don’t know when that’s going to happen. They usually announce in pairs, but there’s some other stuff happening out there too. We’ll keep an eye on it and let you guys know all of the details.

I stumbled across many controversies. People that were not happy with the latest Peloton commercial because it shows a baby in a crib. I guess there’s a community that says, “This is not the way babies are supposed to be in cribs anymore.” It seems like the medical community has shifted. It’s been a while since I’ve had to contend with infants, thankfully. 

Even when I had my daughter, which was years ago, they definitely said to limit what was in the crib. They did not encourage bumpers anymore. They don’t tell you to put bumpers in the crib. They tell you not to leave excess blankets or pillows, for sure are a no-no, and stuffed animals, especially when they’re really small. They don’t think that that’s a good idea. Unfortunately, all of those are in the commercial. I wouldn’t have noticed that if somebody paid me to look for it.

It’s really weird. There’s a ninja throwing stars in the crib, which I thought was a bridge too far. There’s a BiC lighter, a rusty hypodermic needle. I’m like, “What is happening here?” It’s insane. 

The whole point of this is that somebody started a petition and they’re trying to get to a thousand people to sign this petition and ask Peloton to correct this or remove all items.

I’ll say this. When I stumbled across this, 250 people have signed up. Now it’s up to 664. It’s not like it’s at 40,000 or something, but it’s seen a significant jump throughout the day. I know some people have been dismissive of it and I understand there’s the kind of thought processes like, “Come on, babies have stuffed animals,” but there really seems like there’s been a shift in what they recommend. 

I don’t think people are dismissive. There are some people that are dismissive of that, but I think overall people are more dismissive of, “It’s a commercial. Are you really getting your baby advice from a commercial?” I’m not even saying that’s what I agree with. I’m telling you that’s what people are dismissive of.

I don’t know that it’s necessarily baby advice, but if you’re trying to convince people not to do this, this could potentially normalize it for people to think that it’s not that big of a deal or they’re not even aware of it.

I guess I’m just like, “Who’s paying that close of attention to the commercial?”

The kid is in danger.

I have mixed feelings about this. I really do. I wouldn’t pay that kind of attention. I think the people that are dismissive of it, that’s where they’re coming from. That seems like a hyper-specific thing to hone in on. Can’t we just do anything without it being hyper-focused on?

I get that but I will also say, if you read what they want, they just want them to take it out of the commercial. They’re not saying, “Boycott Peloton.” They’re not saying, “Burn your bikes.” They’re saying they want to get this on Peloton’s radar. Maybe they’ll go in and tweak this commercial so it’s not in there anymore. That doesn’t seem like a radical thing to ask. 

Why should they have to pay for it again? It’s not like they’re encouraging teenagers to smoke. It feels like it’s a lot to ask of a company. There are so many commercials. If we’re going to pick on every commercial that does something wrong, I need a list because I will start watching crap and I will tell you everything they all do wrong. I guess that’s my point. To me, this is more about getting attention because Peloton is click-worthy right now than it is about the actual problem. I don’t want people to misunderstand. I’m not saying you should go through a bunch of stuff in a crib. I’m not pro, “Endanger the baby,” this is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, why is it that it’s this commercial that we’re focused on?

I guess because what this organization has tasked itself with tackling is this particular issue. When they see a commercial that is doing the opposite of what they’re trying to get people to do, they’re going to want to draw attention to it. That doesn’t seem crazy to me.

If they find somebody in a commercial using blinds and they hang past near the crib, are they getting on those people too?

Presumably, yeah.

I’m not blaming you, I’m asking.

I’m sure if they pan the bedroom and there was a TV sitting on top of a dresser, somebody would be like, “Don’t do that.”  

Maybe you’re right. I will also say to your point, there have been a lot of people from the medical and CPS community that have spoken up and said, “It is a problem. You should not normalize it,” to your point. I don’t think that any of us are like, “You should normalize it.” I think we’re all like, “Really? Another thing that you would find fault with.” Just based on our tiny little indent in the world being, everybody has a comment or a thought about every single thing that is said. I feel like, “Where’s the line?”

I look at it through the prism of a few weeks back, we were mistaken about how deaf people like to be referred to. People brought that to our attention, and then we addressed it. Now, we know. I look at it as the same thing, they’re not suing Peloton. Like I said, they’re not calling for a boycott of the company. They’re saying, “Peloton, here’s something we don’t think you’re aware of or at least the company you hired to make this commercial isn’t aware of. Could you tweak it?”

Couldn’t they just send an email? Does it have to be a petition and a press release and all that?

I think we’ve seen how Peloton responds to straight email some times.  

That’s fair.

I don’t know that sending one email is going to get them any traction. We also don’t know that they haven’t already tried it.  

That’s a good point too.

I don’t know that sending one straight email is going to get that issue addressed. 

I have to say, I worry for people that just don’t have common sense to talk to their doctors and listen to what their doctors say. I genuinely have a lot of concern. I don’t watch TV to get advice about what to do with my kids and I don’t think anybody should. I hope everybody that is watching that commercial has enough common sense to talk to their doctor.

It’s been many years since I’ve had to deal with an infant. 

Just from when we were kids to when I had kids, I don’t know if it was like that for your boys, but they had to be flipped over a different way.

Honestly, I think it’s a cultural shift and it’s only going to get worse the older you get because they’re always finding new things like this. I remember there were things when the boys were infants where my mother was like, “Here, let’s cut up hotdogs or whatever,” and it would be like, “Mom, you can’t do that. What the hell is wrong with you?”

I totally remember my dad giving my daughter peanut butter when she was an infant. I was like, “What are you doing?” He’s like, “What are you talking about?”

I guarantee you, he’s saying the same thing that a lot of people right now are saying, “When I was a kid and I turned out fine,” and it’s because all the kids that didn’t turn out fine aren’t here to say, “I did not turn out fine.”  

Fair enough. Tom wins.

I never thought I’d be the sensitive one.

It just feels like they’re nitpicking. As a person who puts stuff out there in the world and it has people crap on it all the time. You don’t even pay attention to the hundred nice things that are said, you only hear the one that bitched at you.

If you’re not looking for it, it comes and goes so quickly in the commercial that you’re like, “It’s just a baby in a crib.”  

That’s why I’m like, “Who notices this shit?”

The people who have a foundation tasked with stopping it.   

I hope that they save babies.

Me too. We just got done talking about Bob Treemore. He’s back. He posted a tweet about the summer internship program at Peloton. They’re looking for interns. 

June 8, 2021 through August 13, 2021 in New York City, they’re looking for rising juniors and seniors. Get on it you all.

—

Joining us again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family, and child therapist and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four best-selling books and was a five-year national team member in rhythmic gymnastics and sports psychology for the USA Gymnastics. Our question this time out comes from Andrea Meyer and she wants to know how to set up a longer-term plan to achieve fitness goals rather than picking whatever workout sounds good that day and how to level up once you’ve gotten through the step of actually doing something every day. 

I love this. I am someone that even though I’ve been on the national team for five years. That was many decades ago.

You still did it. It counts.

I still did it, but I didn’t start out my adult fitness life at that level. Before Peloton, I was working out 2 or 3 times. I would take a class in a gym, a bootcamp kind of class. I’m now someone who works out an hour a day, seven days a week. I have an active rest day. It’s been something I built on and I built on very slowly. A lot of people who follow me on social media or have seen what good shape I’m in now, at this point in my life, will look at that and go, “I should work out seven days a week.”

You don’t go from zero to a hundred and I didn’t even plan to be where I am. What happened was I did exactly what this person is asking about is I built on it in small steps. I think that the key to having a long-term fitness program that works for you and growing is first of all, to have someone who is more knowledgeable about this stuff than you, who can help you come up with a plan. The beginning of this year, I sat down and met with someone via Zoom, of course in a pandemic, and made my plan for the next few months that I had made a plan for 2020 and with the help of a coach and I was loving my plan, but I started to feel like I’m just really burnt out. I’m getting on the bike and my legs are tired. I’m like, “Another 10-minute core and another 10-minute, I know this day I did that.” I needed to shake it out. I felt like I was mentally and even physically burnt out.

During the break, I did exactly what this person was saying. I was like, “I’m just going to do whatever workout I feel like. I’m going to keep it light and let my body rest. I’m going to get on track with my new fitness plan.” It’s really important to start at the level you’re at, not the level you aspire to be at. I think where most people make the biggest mistake is that they make their goals so high that they’re not in line with what they’re capable of. They end up getting injured. It’s unrealistic based on their schedule, their life, they have kids and they have a job, all of this sort of stuff. It’s very important to keep all those things in mind.

I’ve met with people before to come up with this where they’ve said like, “Go out to the park and go running.” I don’t have the time to drive to the park and go running even though I would love to put on my Peloton earphones and have Matty talking to me and doing some 80s tunes as I run. I don’t have time for that. It has to be something that fits your life, fits with your schedule, and fits with where you are in fitness. You want it to be challenging enough to help you grow, but not so challenging that you injure yourself, burn yourself out or you feel discouraged. It’s important to change it when you start to feel like it’s stale.

I also think that every day shouldn’t be the same. When you work with a coach, most coaches will tell you that you want to, most people do a leg day, an arm day or lower body and upper body, all that kind of stuff. You don’t want to be doing legs five days a week or doing the same workout over and over. You want to vary it up. One of the things about Peloton that’s so great is it’s easy to shake things up.

There are many different classes. I don’t know about you, Crystal, but I barely take the same class twice. There are maybe five classes I take repeatedly, like Robin’s Greatest Showman, any Billy Joel ride or run and there are a few abs classes, especially Olivia and Becs that I’ll take over and over again. You have many opportunities to have fresh classes and move different parts of yourself in different ways that it does keep it fresh, but coming up with a plan, ideally with someone who has a background in fitness and is knowledgeable and understands your fitness level and any injuries you have.

Thank you so much for all of that. Before we go, where can people find you?

They can find me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, all of those @DrJennMann. I generally post and include my InStyle Magazine Column and all that sort of stuff. I post on my Insta Stories all my Peloton workouts.

—

Cody was on the Today show. 

He was and he surprised them. I think it was over the weekend. He showed up and worked out with them, did a ride with them. He also showed them how to do a recipe for overnight oats. I think it was a meditation. He did that also.

How long was he on there for? That’s a lot.

I don’t know, it was a whole thing.

He did the weather forecast and he did a brief segment about a water skiing squirrel. 

No, but I’ll tell you, we got into a really interesting conversation about this on Clubhouse. You need to pop on the Clubhouse because we got deep into what this commercial meant, what the segment meant, what it could mean for Peloton long-term. I’m going to leave it at that, but it’s interesting.

The thing is with Clubhouse, they’re not recorded. They don’t live anywhere so you got to experience them in real time. It’s fleeting.  

Yes, but it was a fun conversation. Again, just another example of how Peloton keeps growing. I want to mention too that when Cody was on there, there is a lot of people putting two and two together and they believe that’s why so many of Cody’s classes were canceled in the last couple of weeks because then he had to quarantine after he went to do that segment. While we’re talking about classes being canceled, there’s been a lot of this happening lately, but several of Robin’s classes were canceled. Everyone is like, “What’s going on with the baby? Does this mean something?” I don’t know. I haven’t heard, but when I do, when I find out, I will be posting. It could be nothing. It literally could just be that she’s not going to be exercising anymore. It also could be, they were like, “You need to quarantine because XYZ,” or who knows so no need to panic. I don’t mean anything is wrong with the baby. It’s not what I meant. I actually meant, maybe she was having the baby early, things like that. We don’t know anything.

Maybe the morning sickness is getting to her or something, who knows? It could be something as mundane as that. Peloton got a mention on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, the popular NPR quiz show. 

I guess they quizzed the White House Press Secretary all about Peloton, saying what was going on with Biden and what his leaderboard name was.

She claims to not know what his leaderboard name was.

You know that’s BS. They got that crap locked down.

We’ve got our first cover-up from the Biden administration. 

Joking, guys. How fun is this? If you do check out the link, it starts at 3 minutes and 19 seconds.

That makes it nice and easy for you to find, go straight to it. One of the comedians who is on the show, Yassir Lester, I believe, says that he also has a Peloton. There’s another Peloton celebrity sighting.

They’re everywhere now.

Shape magazine has an article about The Best Peloton Instructor to Match Your Workout Style. Didn’t someone else do this?

It was a couple of weeks ago and it wasn’t Shape. It was a different outlet, I think it was POPSUGAR. I think this is a different list. These look like different instructors than what I remember. I thought it was interesting that there was a wider variety of instructors, it gives a longer list. There were more instructors mentioned. Also, I asked people who their go-to instructors were in their opinion and people had lots to say, and people cracked me up who put fifteen different instructors. They were like, “For this and this and this,” but it’s true because you have different instructors for different moods. It’s a thing. I thought it was funny. It’s great but you need to check out the article just for grins.

Robin Arzon was on the podcast Think About It with Victoria Azarenka.

The interesting thing is that she just launched this podcast and she launched it with several episodes right out of the gate. Robin was number five.

It makes me feel better about our podcast because we launched with a Peloton instructor. We didn’t make them wait, we went right to it. Matt Wilpers.  

Doesn’t that seem like a million years ago?

It does and then they don’t have a fancy thing to share on this one but Sam Yo was interviewed by past guest, Jenny Hutt and Peloton owner on her SiriusXM show. 

I think that you can find those if you go look. There are a lot of people who have those stored, they got on Sirius. I think you can find that. I didn’t get to listen to it. I just saw that it occurred so I wanted to make sure we told people.

If you want to re-up your SiriusXM account, I only get about 75 emails a day. 

They hit hard.

They don’t stop.

It’s worse than quitting the gym when you want to quit Sirius.

The Super Bowl is upon us. That’s what it says in the paper. I wouldn’t know but that means lots of Super Bowl ads and there’s one for ScottsMiracle-Gro and Emma Lovewell pops up in there.

It’s quick, if you blink at the wrong time, you’re going to miss it.

She gets name-checked, not her last name but her first name.

There’s a lot of stars in it. If you’re looking for it, it’s about 20, 25 seconds in to the 45-second commercial. It is pretty funny. That’s all I watched the Super Bowl for. I don’t really care, but I will be taking Jenn Sherman’s last for this season. Last football, right?

Yeah. I don’t even watch it for the commercials anymore because they’re all on YouTube. 

I know. You don’t really need to, especially when they’re out before the game, “What’s the point?”

Thanks for saving me the time, YouTube. We came across this article. It was getting shared on the OPP and I thought it was interesting. When we see something cool pops up there, we do still read it so you don’t have to. Here we called something from there, it’s all about this mom who’s riding her Peloton bike for 24 hours straight for charity, I guess it’s already occurred.

Here’s the cool thing. We are going to be interviewing her. She’s going to be on the show. You’re going to get to hear all of her details.

All about her 24 hours on the bike.

She is quite the go-getter. You hear the story about how this all happened and how she made it happen.

How much money they raised.

This is not a small operation.

It is a small operation.

I mean like small dollar amount.

It’s not this huge United Way or the National Breast Cancer Foundation. 

It’s a grassroots kind of thing.

She’s done it out of her house, but they’ve raised over a million dollars in ten years they’ve been doing or whatever. It’s a fun interview that’ll be coming up. Watch this space. Speaking of the OPP, everyone’s been sharing this one from The Holderness Family. 

It has been shared about a billion times, The 5 Stages of Peloton. It is pretty funny though if you haven’t watched it, you can relate to it. She starts off with like, “That company,” back when that commercial came out in 2020 and then it’s her process through the quarantine and getting her own bike and how she reacts to it. I won’t spoil it for you because it’s a lot more fun to watch than me saying it, but check it out.

It’s everywhere on the internet. If you don’t want to go digging for it, you sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com and it will be included in the email. It will come to you and you won’t have to hunt for it.

—

Another week, another story about SoulCycle screwing up the bed. That seems to be their brand as of lately.

It has been a rough year for SoulCycle. I feel a little sorry for them. It’s just been piled on. It’s one of their instructors. This is not something SoulCycle actually did.

One of their instructors so it does reflect on them.  

It does especially because she used her status as an instructor. What she did is she used her status as an instructor to get a vaccine, way ahead of when she should. It wasn’t near her. She had to go an hour away on Staten Island.

It was Stacey Griffith.

They were looking for instructors K through 12, and then they did it like a lottery. She was like, “I teach SoulCycle so I’m an instructor.” After she got the vaccine, she then posted everywhere about it and how awesome she was and totally justified it. As this article says, “and All Hell Broke Loose,” because it did, it was bad. I think people were trolling SoulCycle hard over this. She apologized and she said from the bottom of her heart, she apologized for her actions and she realizes her mistake.

Here’s the real question. Is she going to get that second dose? What are you doing now, Stacey? It would be a waste so she has to. It’s a tricky situation and there’s been a lot, I don’t even want to say controversy necessarily with these other things, but there’s a whole group popping up called vaccine hunters. They’ll go around to places because a lot of times at the end of the day, there’s a certain number of doses in a vial and they’ll have leftover doses and they either have to administer them or throw them away. They’d rather them go to someone that isn’t prioritized than just pitch them. People set up camp and wait for them. On the one hand, you’re like, “If they’re just going to throw it away, might as well give it to somebody.” On the other hand, you do have this kind of odd thing of like, “Only certain people have the luxury of being able to camp outside the local CVS in the hopes that there are three extra doses.”

If you’re working two jobs and you have kids and they’re in school. You don’t have that luxury.

You don’t want it to go to waste, but it’s also a little frustrating that maybe the people that really need it the most can’t get off of work to wait like that. It’s a delicate balance. 

I saw dozens of stories of people responding to our post about it, that they knew people who had cancer or they had parents with cancer and they can’t get it, but she just waltzes in and gets it. It created a lot of derision.

Where I work, we’re vaccination location. We’re vaccinating people in the building. I get calls from people all the time with stories like that, and I’m like, “I don’t control it. It’s just going on in our facility.” They’re giving me the sob story and I’m like, “There’s nothing I can do.” It’s a tough time. I’ll be glad when that fully ramps up, the manufacturing of it. 

The distribution, also.

Focus on how you feel, not on how you look. Share on X

Apple Fitness+ is soon going to work on a lot more TVs.

As the people who sent this to me said, “They listen to you, they heard you.”

I’m pretty confident Apple is not listening to us because I’ve asked to be featured in a New & Noteworthy fifteen times and they haven’t. If you’re going to listen to us, Apple, this isn’t the part we wanted you to listen to. Listen to the part where you put us on the main page of items. 

It did crack me up though that they did this. You’re finally going to be able to cast two smart TVs, which is that’s how it should have been from day one. At least they’re fixing it. It didn’t take them three years to make it happen. Sorry, Peloton. You were a little sloppy on the Android users. While we’re talking about Apple, we had talked about how they were doing the collaboration with Dolly Parton, their first music one. For Black History Month, they announced the guy who wrote How to Be an Antiracist, that’s who they have and he’s reading to them. That’s kind of a big get. He’s a big deal. It’s got a big message and it’s a big month. I have to give Apple credit, that is a different kind of collaboration that I have seen other fitness do.

I am like, “How does that work in terms of a fitness class?” You’re right, it is different. They’re not just repurposing what they’ve seen Peloton do. That is different, even if it doesn’t work, they’re doing something different.

I have to applaud them for that.

Echelon keeps rolling out the stars, here’s Terrell Owens. 

This is courtesy of Run, Lift & Live, just to be clear. Thank you, John. I don’t really know who this is, but I know that people were giving him lots of grief. Whoever this is in the world, people are not impressed with him.

It’s sports thing. I know that.

I do know that but that’s as much as I know, which is it surprising that we don’t know really?

I commented when he posted that, I was like “Echelon’s trying to bring the heat,” but it’s more like they’re bringing the lukewarm. I think it’s funny that it’s in his driveway like, “You are not bringing that in my house.” I don’t know if this is truly a competitor, but I didn’t know where else to put it. Verizon is doing this. 

It’s just more of places that instructors are found because that’s really what this is about. There is an app which ironically is only on Google Play.

Now that you’ve got an Apple, it’s just the world taunting you.

It’s called Verizon AR Pro Interactive. It allows you to do a VR experience with all of these different athletes and one of them is Robin Arzon. One of the things that you can do with this app is you bring it up and you can pose a picture with that person. You can only do it on a 5G phone. You have to have 5G wideband on your Verizon phone and it has to be Google. It’s pretty selective.

That’s a lot of if-then statements. Denis was listed as doing a meditation and then it went away.

February 15th and all of the Denis’s Menaces went crazy. They were like, “Oh,” and then two seconds later, it was like, “No.”

Do you think it was a mistake, happened early, somebody typed in the wrong name?

I think it was a typo because Peloton makes a big deal when they add in new stuff for the instructors. Whenever Olivia added in the bike and the run, they made a big deal about that, and whenever Denis joined yoga, they made a big deal about that. That wasn’t just like, “They throw them on the schedule.” I think it was a typo, but people were ecstatic. Peloton, if you’re reading, everyone wants Denis to be a meditation instructor because they love his voice. Just telling you what they said.

Matty has a new challenge. 

He does. In 2020, what he did for an entire month, he had a whole core challenge. He went back through a bunch of his core classes and made a challenge for everybody. This 2021, it’s called the Encore 28 and it’s going to be the second version. He posted the first seven this week. These are totally doable. We’re talking no more than twenty minutes a day of core. It’s a lot of fun. He made this little sCOREcard so you can put on IG as you are on Instagram. As you take them, you can put your little Xs on it and you can see where your classes are. He’s been making sure to post those in his story so you can also get featured in his stories if you’re doing this. I want to make sure that everybody knows that it is no longer Matty’s body party over on Facebook. For some reason, he wanted to change the name, I think he just felt like, “New year, new us.” It is no longer Matty’s body party. It is now Matty’s Magic Makers. As in, how do you spell magic like Maggiacomo? Brand new name, brand new year.

—

Joining us is Cyndy Leonard. How is it going?

It’s going great. How about you?

We’re good. I always enjoy the end of the day whenever I get to do fun stuff instead of work. I’m sure you’re the same way.

Yes, that’s for sure.

How did you originally find Peloton and what timeframe was it?

My fiancé is always sending me very expensive things. He’s like, “What about this and all this?” I’m always like, “No.” It was around the end of 2019, he sent me the Peloton and I’m like, “Whatever.” I started looking into it and I was like, “This thing is cool. I want one for my birthday,” just kidding around. Come my birthday, there it is in the room. I was like, “You got a Peloton. Now, I’m forced to workout every day because you spend all this money on this bike. I can’t let it collect dust. I have to exercise.” He brought it to my attention, the commercials and it’s all over. I started to get an interest to that. He surprised me and I was like, “I have Peloton. I can go on it.”

Was he already your fiancé when he got you the Peloton or is it like an engagement Peloton?

He was already my fiancé. We’ve been together for many years. It’s a super long engagement. We’ll get married eventually.

That would have been a good gift. I have to say instead of a ring, an engagement Peloton is not a bad thing.

That is definitely not a bad thing. I would have preferred the Peloton.

To any men out there, this is complete bullcrap. Nothing they’re saying is true. If you show up with the engagement Peloton, you’re going to go home with a Peloton and single.

There are certain women that would prefer a Peloton there, Tom.

I’m with Cyndy on this one. That makes sense because I saw your post on the OPP and you talked about a year’s worth of progress. Do you mind sharing the basic contents of that post were and what inspired you to post that?

I had a lot of success in my year at Peloton, but it’s the year that is leading up to it that pushed me to post. This was what the post said. In 2016, I had my daughter and then three months later, I lost my dad. He had a lung disease. It came to the end of it. That was tough. Having a newborn on top of dealing with that, I was like, “This is tough.” That was a struggle. In 2018, I had my son two months early, and then my mom died three months later.

After the birth of both my children, three months later, I lost both parents. That was a struggle. In 2017, in between this, I lost my grandma who was very close to my family. I’m like, “Come on, life, why are you doing this to me?” I spent 2019 feeling sorry for myself. I’m like, “Life, you keep handing me all this crap. This is bullcrap. How much do you think I can handle?” At that point, I was 26 years. Towards the end of 2019, I didn’t lose any of the baby weight.

I was disgusted with myself. I played softball my whole life. I was used to being in shape. I was in shape when I got pregnant with my daughter. Towards the end of 2019, I was the heaviest I was. I was sitting at almost 200 pounds and I’m like, “This is not who I am.” My fiancé sensed that I needed something. That’s when I got the Peloton and I was like, “Let’s see what this thing is.” I started going on it and then I fell in love with it. Being consistent on that because I drink my water, but I’m not the best eater. If I want the candy bar, I’m eating that candy bar. Life is too short not to eat the candy bar.

I’m like, “I am going to ride this thing five days a week.” I loved it. I started doing it more and I started incorporating strength. I’m like, “This thing is great.” I have my own motivational speaker on the other side telling me I could do it on the days where I’m like, “I can’t be here.” They’re like, “Yes, you can.” I’m like, “Yes, I can.” That helped. All 2020, I dedicated to the Peloton my self-improvement. I had to dig myself out of this hole that I didn’t want to be in anymore. It’s time to move on. I spent a whole year feeling sorry for myself. I can’t spend another minute of my life doing that.

I did and that helped me. I started gaining confidence in myself. I dropped 50 pounds. I got into meditation with the self-awareness, taking a minute for my mental state. I’m a ninth-grade English teacher so with all my school babies and my real baby, it was nice to have those moments for myself. I started to enjoy it because that was my only time I dedicate to me. I was like, “I need this. Everybody needs this time.” After one year, I’m down 50 pounds. I am definitely in the best shape of my life, physically and mentally, despite any hardship.

You’re beaming. You look so happy. That’s quite an accomplishment. It’s healthy to take time to grieve and I can understand why you needed that time. It’s also healthy that you recognized, “I want to do something different now.” That’s pretty great.

I agree. You’re beaming and you spend all day with ninth-graders.

I would not be beaming at the end of that day.

They’re funny. They’re so cute. They’re the youngest class I’ve ever taught. I had seniors my whole career and they’re like, “Can you teach freshmen?” I’m like, “Freshmen? They’re babies. Do you want me to teach freshmen?” I did that and I love them.

I’m curious. If you’re an English teacher, are you teaching the same five books for the rest of your life? Does it ever change?

The beauty of it was I did have seniors, and then I had 11th and 10th-grade. I switched it up then. Now, with the freshmen, I have a whole new group of books, but I’m pretty sure if I continue to teach freshmen, it’s going to be them reading The Joy Luck Club now for the rest of my life.

Is that the new book they teach at school?

We spent the majority of this quarter doing a research paper. They were dealing with a lot of nonfiction articles. Now, we’re tackling The Joy Luck Club every quarter. I haven’t told them that yet. If they get this at some point, they get a little preview of what’s ahead.

What kind of fitness changes have you made? Do you only work out on the bike? You said you were adding in strength. Do you have a routine where it’s like, “This many days I do the bike. This many days I do strength,” or is it like whatever you feel that day when you wake up?

At first, it was mostly cycling, and then I was tapping on that ten-minute arms and toning at the end. I’m like, “This isn’t enough. Let’s dabble into it more.” Now, I do at least two days of strength and then three days of cycling. I’ll separate them. I’m still trying to figure out the best schedule. For now, I’ll stick to the two days strength, three days cycling but I’m thinking of starting to do a little bit of both each day. I’m still messing around with how I’m going to schedule it.

Based on my experience, you never find a perfect thing because every time you get into a rhythm, you’re like, “I should change it up again.”

The Peloton would do a challenge like, “Try Pilates.” I’m like, “I can do Pilates.” Now, I’m in pain. That’s what I like too. They challenge you to go outside your comfort zone. I’m big with the challenges. I always want. Now everybody in my family has got one after I have. They don’t stop talking about it. My sister, my cousin, and my two best friends, all have Peloton. We’ll challenge each other and work out together. I’m like, “Did you get the gold yet for this month because I did.” It’s nice to stay on top of each other and motivate each other too.

Hopefully, you’ve got some great referral codes and therefore, got some swag for yourself.

That’s the only way I get the swag, when I get the referral codes.

I can’t imagine if he’s willing to buy you a Peloton for your birthday that there’s going to be problems buying stuff at the boutique. Call me crazy.

He bought me stuff for Christmas. I have one on right now, the whole Coffee. Peloton. Wine. Repeat.  He’ll buy it for me. I look at it and I’m like, “I can’t buy this for myself,” but then he gives me.

What do you think about Peloton that keeps pulling you back in? What do you think is keeping you there?

There’s an instructor for every mood that you’re in. I know who I’m going to take when I want to be goofy, I’m going to take Cody. If I need to be inspired, I’m taking Robin. If I need that push and motivation like Ally Love. She’s like, “Yes or yes.” I remember when I used to try to go to the gym and run, I never stuck to anything this long. When you’re running on the treadmill, you’re staring at the wall, and it’s boring, you just stop, versus when you have the instructor there, and they’re pushing you to try harder, it’s always something different because of all the classes. You’re not doing that same thing over and over again. It’s the instructors and then the variety that comes with having a Peloton.

I would agree with that. Those are both good points. I took a 45-minute 80s run with Matty. I’m crabby because it was 5:00 AM and I didn’t want to be there. As soon as I get on the tread, it opens with, “This is going to be good music, whatever mood you’re in, it’s going to be better by the end of it.” Halfway through, he was like, “I lied. Halfway through, you’re going to be in a better mood,” and I was. I was smiling.

It’s beautiful. I’ll sit there and then they say things. They’ll speak to your soul. I’m like, “I could go ride at your bike. Let’s do it,” and then I go harder.

Do you have an instructor of choice?

I have the top four because I can’t decide. You can’t do that to me. Robin is incredible and who she is as a person. Now she’s pregnant, still being a boss. Robin, Ally, Tunde, and Cody are my top four.

That’s a good solid quadruple of instructors.

Let’s make an arrangement, put them in order.

What does your profile say? If you were to look at your end of the year, who did you take the most?

It was Robin because I have a lot of those days where I don’t feel like being there at 5:00 AM as you were saying. I know she’s the one that’s going to be like, “Let’s go. You can do this.” I usually go to her and Tunde too. I’ve been getting into Tunde because she too talks about her own personal battles that she had in her life. I’m like, “Look at this girl. She’s gone through so much. She can show up every day and she looks incredible.” She inspires me to keep pushing regardless of what you go through. She’s killing it and she’s been through a lot.

We were lucky enough to get to interview her. I was asking her about how she stays motivated to always eat well whenever you don’t want to. As you said, life is too short not to have the chocolate bar. She said that it’s all about how you feel. Focusing on how you feel and not focusing on how you look. I thought that was a smart way to look at it. It’s always stuck with me ever since we talked to her. I love that.

That’s another reason why I keep coming back because I feel so much better. A lot of that is because of this bike. Why would I stop going on it when it makes me feel so much better. I get off the ride and I feel incredible. At work, we have group meetings in the morning and the one topic that’s always brought up is, “Cyndy, how many miles did you ride this morning?” It’s like, “Fifteen and it’s only 7:00. How about you?” I’m feeling like a boss.

 

With COVID, you’re riding your Peloton to work every day.

What about the community, which is your favorite Peloton group?

I’m a part of many of them on Facebook. I’m in all of them. I do love the Love Squad but I do love the Robin’s Wolf Pack too. There’s Peloton Mom. The hashtag that I’m a part of that I love too. It’s nice to come with other moms together and it’s like, “We’re taking this time for us. These kids take all our time. This is our time.”

How old are your kids right now? You said 2016 and 2018. That’s a lot of time.

They are crazy. My four-year-old goes to school. That’s good. I’m working but I still have the two-year-old here during the day.

You do need that time to yourself.

It works wonders. That’s for sure.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard in a parent-teacher conference?

I don’t know if I have one, to be honest.

It can be something the parent told you the kids said.

I did have a parent once tell me their child was missing because she couldn’t poop. That might have been it. I heard her daughter had chronic constipation. These are high school kids. She can’t poop. As a teacher, I was like, “I’m so sorry.” I had no idea what to say to that.

She’ll be all caught up in a reading. She’s sitting there all day waiting for it to come.

Hopefully, there was not any underlying condition.

She ended up coming back fine. I think she figured it out.

Did she look lighter, thinner? Did she slim down?

She seemed in better spirits. I feel like she handled that, which is nice.

Have you gotten to meet anybody from the community yet? 2020 being as crazy as it was, it’s not like you could go out in the wild. I know you have your family that’s part of Peloton but how about meeting people that you’ve talked to online.

I haven’t yet with that. After that post, I got a bunch of different followers and people reaching out for advice with their own personal stories, which I appreciate. There are battles that they were fighting. I’m able to talk to them and tell them, “This isn’t the end of the world. They might feel like it. It does get better and you do push through.” It’s been nice to talk to these other Peloton owners about their own stories and hearing that. Sometimes, when I’m going through things or when people are going through things, they feel like they’re on an island all by themselves, “No one else has ever experienced this.” Everybody goes through stuff and you’ve got to get through it. It’s nice to be having these conversations and trying to help people get through whatever they’re going through at this point in time.

That’s a great thing. I am curious since it was on the OPP, did you get any crabby responses to your amazing post?

I did not. I read every comment. I didn’t respond because it will be there for three days. I appreciated all the love and I added that to the post after. I read everybody’s stories and talk to the ones that were struggling. I didn’t have any negative comments on that post which I was shocked because I have been following posts on there and I could see people get pretty critical on people’s posts and what they’re saying. I was expecting it, but I did not get any negative comments on there. That I could appreciate.

I will say that I’ve seen in the past that even though it can be a trash heap in there, when somebody posts something super positive, in my experience, it stayed positive. People will continue to give lots of encouragement and love, as you said, so I’m glad. You had a ton of interaction on that post. That was 17,000 likes or something crazy like that.

That blew my mind. I did not anticipate that. One of my best friend who also has a bike, he’s on there and he was like, “Watch, you’re going to get 10,000 because this was at 7,000.” I’m like, “No way.” It surpassed 10,000. He’s like, “Are you looking at this?” I’m like, “It’s crazy.” I did not expect that to blow up the way it did.

I can’t even imagine what your notifications must look like.

They were also crazy.

I know what Crystal’s can look like when we post something that gets 400 or 500. To scale that order of magnitude is crazy.

It was wild. I read every single comment because I appreciated all of the love and support, and people were sharing their stories, I appreciated that too. I didn’t respond to all of them. I did read everything.

Thank you for doing that. I’m sure those people appreciated that you took the time to reach back out. What is your leaderboard name and how did you come up with it?

I ended up changing it. Originally, I was CLeonard04. The more I got into it, I want something more fun. I change it to CynBeCycling. I was like, “This so much better.” Even though the English teacher in me is like, “I shouldn’t be using be,” but it’s fun.

Pretend that it’s a fictional character and Be is your middle name, and then pretend it’s a character from The Joy Luck Club. Do kids still use CliffNotes? Is that still a thing?

Yes, SparkNotes, that’s definitely a thing. They think when they copy the direct summary from the internet that we have no idea that that exact thing is word for word on SparkNotes.

When I was a kid, it was CliffNotes. What is SparkNotes? Is that a website?

SparkNotes is a website and it breaks down the summary of every chapter. It tells you all about the characters. You can even take a quiz on the book if you want. It’s got everything on there.

That’s funny because now they don’t even have to buy the thing.

We had to put our hard-earned cash on the table to cheat.

Usually, we were handing books out and the kids are like, “I don’t want this.” Now that we’re virtual, we’re forced to read our book online, they’re all like, “Can I have the hard copy? I want the book.” I’m like, “I am so glad you are appreciating the book now. The pages and the smell and you want to open it.”

I feel guilty I’m a big Kindle reader.

I used to be that. I want the real book. Now, I love it because we’ll read at night. We can turn off the lights. If one of us wants to stay up for an extra twenty minutes reading, it’s white text on a black background, it doesn’t kick off that much light.

We’re both book hoarders. We found out very quickly that it’s so much easier to have it on Kindle instead of stacks of books everywhere.

I love Kindle too. I’m getting into Audible for the reason that it’s the author that narrate that. I feel I appreciate listening to the story the way they want you to hear it. I love that. They change voices, being certain characters, and it makes it so much more alive on how you’re supposed to read it and how they wanted you to hear it. I’m getting into Audible too.

I always feel weird about audiobooks. I’ve got nothing against them but part of me feels a little bit like I cheated and I didn’t read the book. Technically, I didn’t read the book but the information is still being crammed in my head.

Here’s my thing. I tune out, I get distracted and I missed the whole last chapter.

If you have Audible and you have Kindle on your phone, you can have the narrations go with the book. As you follow along on the Kindle and it’s reading it too. You can highlight as it’s going. You can follow along in the book as you’re listening to it.

I wouldn’t do it while I’m driving. I can’t read the book while I’m driving. I remember when people first started doing narrative podcasts and the internet was treating it as this groundbreaking thing. I’m like, “Congratulations, you’ve invented old time radio.” It’s like, “I write a story then we’ll act it out, but it will be on a podcast.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” That’s how the Guiding Light started.

I feel like we’ve made a lot of old-timey references and I’m suddenly feeling very old on this episode.

Back to Peloton stuff, do you have any advice for people who are just entering the world of Peloton?

I would say show up even on the days you don’t want to. Being consistent with showing up is going to get you results. I was telling my sister this and my best friends when they first got it. I’m like, “You need to do measurement.” A lot of the times, I did Robin’s Tabata Program and wouldn’t lose anything, but then I did my measurements. It was down to 20-some inches. If you do the measurements, you’ll see because you’re tightening up. You’re building muscles so you might not lose the weight right away. If you are taking measurements, you can see you are making progress. You won’t get discouraged. I was telling my sister and my cousin that too.

That is good advice.

Even then if you can see changes, a lot of times, they’re so incremental that you’re like, “Am I just kidding myself or is it real?”

You missed it because it happens slowly over time that’s not that much even though over a long time, it is that much.

There have been months where the scale hasn’t budged for me. I’d like for it to move but I’m going to keep showing up. The next month, I would drop to 5 or 6 and I’m like, “Here it is.” It’s continuously showing up especially on the days you don’t want to.

What did your fiancé get you for your birthday the next year?

He sent it to you at the end of 2019.

That was 2019 so the 2020 birthday, I got it.

What did he get you this 2021?

January 10th is my birthday. He got me a moisturizer. I’ve been wanting all this skincare stuff. He spoiled me for Christmas. He got me a MacBook. He was a big holiday person. He loves to celebrate them so much. My whole house, I had a Christmas village up and everything decorated. That’s him. That is so not me. I can’t take any credit for my house glowing like this through the neighborhood. He got me the MacBook and then he also got me a new straightener too for my birthday and then the skincare, which was nice.

He pays attention. He’s a good gift giver.

He’s great except for he was only on the Peloton for two months and then quit. He did quit but he’s in the gym. He’s like, “I like to go lift.”

I was going to say he sounds like me. He’s a good gift giver and he doesn’t ride the bike, but then you started talking about him going to the gym, and then the analogy fell apart.

Don’t get me wrong. He took a couple of months off between quitting the Peloton and going back to the gym but he’s back.

For a couple of months, you were very similar, Tom.

Thank you so much for joining us. Before we let you go, where can people find you on social media if you would like to be found?

Facebook, it’s just my name, Cynthia Leonard or Cyndy Leonard. You can find me on Instagram and this is annoying. I made this name a long time ago and I’m not sure how to change it. It’s @CeeLennny. I thought it was cute when I made it. Now, I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t even know if you could edit it.

I think you can but I could be wrong. Thank you again for doing this. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I always take the opportunity to talk about my Peloton. It’s annoying to friends and family but they get over it.

You’re in the right place. This is a safe space for Peloton talking.

—

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

A treat is what we have. We are going to be talking to Tori from Peloton Closet. If you guys have not been following her on Instagram, you will be after this because it’s a fascinating account that she has. It is already almost double in size since we talked to her. What she does is she finds instructors clothing. If you say, “I really love that bra,” she will tell you where to find it.

That’s fascinating. She’s like some sort of clothing savant. 

We’ll let her explain to you how she does that and what inspired it. It’s a really fun conversation though.

Until then, where can people find you? 

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

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online, Facebook.com/theclipout. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Wherever you’re getting your podcast from, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. One more task for you before we go, don’t forget we’re on YouTube, YouTube.com/theclipout. While you’re there, subscribe to that as well and then everything will be okay. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, keep pedaling and running. 

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