TCO 227 | Australia To New York

227: Cody, Covid, and Week #2 of DWTS plus our interview with Joey Ruggero

Last Updated: May 2, 2023By Tags: , , , , ,

TCO 227 | Australia To New York

 

John Mills joins us to discuss Cody Rigsby & Week #2 of DWTS.

There will be no live classes from October 10-12.

Last week’s Tread conversation had technical issues so they tried again on 9/30.

CNN writes about Peloton’s apparel launch.

The Daily Mail reports on the apparel launch in Australia.

Triathlete.com talks about how Peloton is focusing on diversity.

The Today Show profiles a woman who lost 100 lbs with her Peloton.

Digiday spotlights Dara Treseder.

Marketscale (with help from Crystal) reports on Peloton’s new focus on hotels.

The Tread is now live in Germany.

Christin D’Ercole’s remodeling efforts are in Architectural Digest.

Tunde spoke at Princeton

Angelo tackles intuitive eating vs. tracking your diet.

A visit from the Peloton Prophet has info on the Rower, the future of Tread+, Peloton Guide, and more!

Germany gets a new instructor – Tobias Heinze.

iFit is hoping for a Peloton-sized IPO.

We have yet another company trying to be the “next Peloton” – Wahoo.

Echelon is trying to beat a Peloton world record. (insert eye-roll emoji)

Kevin Hart invests in Hydrow.

Peloton partners up with 007.

The “You Get To” Crew and Thrive Causemetics donates to Breonna Taylor Memorial.

All this plus our interview with Joey Ruggero!

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here:

Cody, Covid, and Week #2 of DWTS plus our interview with Joey Ruggero

We should probably start by letting people know that we don’t have Dr. Jenn for this episode. Everything is fine. Read nothing into that, especially when we tell you the next thing. It’s that the schedule didn’t match up. We’re going to be talking with her after we record it, and then we will have her next episode. Fear not, she will be back.

What you do get on this episode is I know some people skip the Angelo segments, which I don’t think they should. They are enjoyable. They are not ads. He’s giving lots of nutritional advice and good info. We’ve had a lot of people ask, “MetPro wants you to track your diet, and Dr. Jenn says intuitive eating, so which is which?” We thought we’d have Angelo drill down with his take on tracking your food versus intuitive eating.

When we talked to Dr. Jenn, we will be able to do the same thing. We’ll be able to hopefully, have that as a topic next episode.

It’s like a Lincoln-Douglas debate except they are separate. It’ll be interesting to see. You might want to stick around for Angelo if you’re the sort that doesn’t want to do that. Maybe you will learn to love him like you love Dr. Jenn. Aside from that, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

Another Dancing With The Stars recap, new instructors at Peloton, a weekend of rest for Peloton classes. We have lots of competitor news, artists collaborations, and we have a visit from the Peloton Prophet. You are not going to want to miss this. This is something everyone wants to know. Trust me, you’ll want to listen.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you find a podcast, you should be able to find us. While you’re there follow us so you never miss an episode, and maybe leave us a review so people coming along after you, know that we’re worth a listen. We have a new review. This is from Enzo The Baker, which I believe is a Godfather reference.

He says, “I look forward to this show every week. Tom and Crystal bring the best of the news and gossip about Peloton and the Peloton community. I can’t possibly keep up with it. Also, I trust them to parse it for me and make sense of it all at the end of the week. I always end the show feeling more enthusiastic about Peloton workouts. All the reoccurring guests are good, especially the delightful John Mills. Their main interview is always interesting. Even if I don’t think I will be interested when it starts, I’ve always proven wrong in the end. Best of all is the chemistry between the married host. I love hearing them interact. Crystal, please never stop laughing at Tom’s dad jokes.” I don’t tell dad jokes. I am a dad. By virtue of definition, all of my brilliant comedy is technically a dad joke.

Some of your jokes could be considered dad jokes. Anyway, thank you for the wonderful review.

Thank you. You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Check out the YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut where you can watch these shows. You can see what a nerd shirt I’m wearing each week.

There’s a whole new host of them because you had to buy all new shirts.

I had to buy all new shirts so you won’t see repeats on shirts for quite a while.

In-home fitness is a huge market that gives so many people the convenience to improve their lives. Share on X

Can I just say if somebody out there thought that that’s weird to get all these shirts, and they probably got a bunch of people asking for Tom’s nerd shirts, and they’ve moved from 2XL to an XL, we didn’t get anybody.

They are clean. I wandered to a non-smoking home so they are safe. They are still available. You can also get all the links and everything sent to you in a weekly digest if you sign up for the newsletter theclipout.com. There’s all of that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

—

Joining us is John Mills. How’s it going?

What was going on? This episode is about to be off the chain.

I guess we should dig right into week-two of Dancing With The Stars. It’s all anybody’s talking about. They were rocked by a COVID, I don’t want to say scandal because it sounds like they did something wrong, but she was vaccinated. It was a break with his dance partner. There were lots of kerfuffle about will they or won’t perform at all?

Dancing With The Stars are so smart. They purposely did not release this information until the show. I was reading about it and they said earlier in the day, “We’re not going to tell anybody how we’re going to handle it until tonight on the show.” They were trying to drive drama which was very successful. Good Morning America posted it at one point, “He’s going to still dance tonight but it’s going to be with an alternate.” All of a sudden, “He’s not dancing.” Now he’s not performing at all. We were like, “What’s happening?” It was a roller coaster of emotions, plus I refuse to watch this whole thing. I have to say, what is up with that dress, Tyra Banks?

It looks like she has escaped from Jurassic Park.

I saw an article about the dress. When it was on, I didn’t even notice it. I was like, “When is Cody coming on?” Of course, they saved him towards the end. I agree with you. This was brilliant marketing of the show.

She had COVID, they didn’t make that up but they used it. They milked it for all its worth.

I posted in my group as it was happening. I was like, “Is this going to benefit Cody and Peloton? Are they going to spin this in a way that it creates some type of drama, but then gets more people to follow and fall in love with him and Cheryl and what they are doing?

I’ve never watched Dancing With The Stars, but I did watch American Idol for the first 5 or 6 seasons. Those sorts of stories can move the needle for people because these shows are about creating characters. If you’re not a Peloton person, Cody is an unknown commodity. I’m not saying that they did this purposefully, but seizing on these moments, people will start to generate somebody like, “That’s not fair that he didn’t get to do the real dance and get judged on the actual thing in the same way other people will.”

I didn’t realize scores were cumulative as you move throughout. If you have a bad week and still make it through, you carry that weight with you from week to week. I do think this could help. I’m also starting to see online a little bit of backlash against Jojo Siwa because I know Cody was a professional dancer, but she is a professional dancer still. That’s so much a part of what she does. There are a lot of people that are starting to be like, “This is unfair. Her scores are off the charts because she dances for a living.”

I agree with it. This might be my naivety or my inexperience with dance, even though I took that tap dance class for a season back in the sixth grade. I thought Cody killed that in practice. That was better than a whole bunch of the other ones that were done live.

This is my opinion. In the previous episode, Tom said that one thing Cody is going to have an advantage of is that he was a dancer. He knows how to take notes and improve. In the first week, the note for Cody was, “You need to loosen up. You’re too tight.” You could see that he had improved. If given a few more days and he was out there live, he would have killed it score-wise because he improved so much from a stiffness standpoint. There was more energy and there was more Cody coming through. I could see the Cody-ness still. I felt it in the first week, but I felt it more in the second week.

When I saw sixes, that didn’t jive to me, which then takes me back to Tom’s point about the story that is building here. They become an underdog because of this issue. I didn’t see sixes.

With shows like this, you have to start to factor in, as people drop off, where are their votes going to go? Now that Martin Kove, the Cobra Kai guy, is gone, where are his votes going to go? There are a lot of people that it can spread across, but as it gets winnowed down week to week, people start going, “I like this person now.” That will play a role as well. If this Jojo Siwa backlash takes hold, then that will start to benefit somebody because it means that people won’t be inclined to move to her if they feel like she is a ringer and it’s not fair.

That’s also true. I’m about to have a spoiler alert. If you have not watched it, that’s on you at this point. It’s a week later by the time you’re reading this. I cannot even be held responsible but spoiler, he was safe at the end of the show. He was immediately called out as safe. He was one of the first five couples. That speaks to what you were saying, John, about, “I didn’t see sixes.” That does speak to that. He immediately went to the safe crowd.

I thought they said that those are in no particular order.

They did but there were five that were called out immediately, then they drag out the rest. I’m saying, they knew from the get-go that he was one of them.

They tend to skim off those first five like the scores are high enough that there’s no way that they are getting kicked out this early. They don’t even pretend which is nice.

TCO 227 | Australia To New York

 

People have got to spread the news. You can only vote during the Central, East Coast time zone viewing. I think it was different in the first week. I don’t know, but the second week and going forward, you can only vote during that broadcast until the last couple performs. I say that because I had a whole lot of people confused. I waited until Cody danced to say, “Go vote.” People were like, “I missed it.” Vote early and often for Cody.

I got a question about the same thing. Is it random the order in which they are dancing?

I have no clue. I didn’t feel like it was at all. I felt like they left Cody at the end for drama and drama only. That was my interpretation.

I don’t think it’s random. There’s too much at stake for them to randomize anything on network television. They are putting thought into that. I find it hard to believe that that order is random.

Can we read into that then that both the weeks, Cody has been later in the sequence?

I’d like to see they know and they are adding to the drama.

Also, hasn’t Jojo Siwa been in the end later? She seems to be the biggest name competing. They both tend to go towards the later end of the show. I tend to think that means they think people are going to stick around for that.

It means that the votes are probably coming in pretty hot and heavy. The Peloton community shows up. I feel like the votes are coming in like crazy.

That’s what I was reading into it too. I just want to make sure that you guys thought the same thing. There must be a lot of people voting or they are getting some message. There are a lot of folks watching as it relates to Cody dancing.

It definitely seems that way.

I would absolutely agree with that. I have nothing to back that up, other than it’s network TV and they want to keep you on the hook as long as possible. That’s what they do. If you want more information about what all happened, Cheryl Burke was on the Pretty Messed Up Podcast telling what happened.

Cody was on there too, and Amanda Kloots. Check out that podcast.

I listened to a portion of it. Cody’s talking about when he was asked to be on the show and what he thought about the opportunity. That was interesting. If you haven’t listened to that, check that out. He then talks a little bit about learning about Cheryl’s COVID diagnosis and how that all played. It was interesting because it talks about where she asked him where he wants to take this opportunity like where does he expect to go.

What did he say?

I was expecting him to say something like we were talking about a couple of weeks ago, “I’m hoping this exposes me and takes me into this next layer of life.” I thought he was going to go into something deep but he didn’t. He was more like, “It’s a good opportunity. I’m taking it as it comes. It’s a good learning experience. Wherever it goes, it goes.”

Somebody has been prepping him. That’s a very good answer.

There are paths that are laid out for people from other outlets. If you’re on SNL, then you want to try and get a TV show or a movie deal. If you’re in WWE, there are pathways for those who have come before you. There is no one that has come before him in this regard. It is hard to say what’s next because no one’s done it before. Whatever he does next is what’s next.

That’s a very good point.

That makes sense.

It’s hard not to think that the deck is stacked to some degree because next week is Britney week.

We all know that Cody loves Britney. He is going to be dancing one way or another, but he is hoping that Cheryl is going to be able to dance with him. That’s probably a bit on the optimistic side since she’s supposed to quarantine for ten days.

Even if she was ready in time for the show, how are they going to practice?

Maybe they are trying to add more drama to it. I don’t know. That could be.

It doesn’t seem very realistic that she’ll be back for the next episode. He’ll probably bring in Britney as a guest partner.

I’m sure. I did read that Cheryl is going to be Zooming for all of the rehearsals if she can’t go to them. She will be watching and she will be critiquing the hell out of Cody in a loving way like in a mom way. She’s going to push him hard. That’s the plan. She’s like, “This is my thing. I’m good at this. She was very confident of her ability to whip him into shape for Britney weeks. That’s awesome.

They get extra the deeper they go into the show as well. Don’t they, the dance partners? I’m assuming in case they get to the playoffs.

In case you don’t know, Tom, John and I have never watched the show either.

We’ve all done a lot of reading on it. I didn’t know if it’s popped up on your radar at some point.

I read about Cody.

I read nothing else if they are getting paid week to week. An extra week on the show is extra money in their pocket, one would assume. She certainly has a vested interest in seeing him succeed.

I was having a conversation with Gina. She said that Cheryl Burke, at some point, and this is before the Cody thing came up, had declined to come back on Dancing With The Stars unless the dancer was good. This was way back when we were trying to figure out if he was even going to be on the show. There was all the kerfuffle and everybody was having discussions and multiple chats and everything. That was from Cheryl Burke. I think she’s excited about it too. It makes sense what you’re saying, Tom.

You don’t say that very often. I’ll make that my ringtone.

In that podcast we were talking about, Cheryl mentions how she feels like they are alike. I don’t know if they say this every time they have a partner. They talk like they really mesh, her and Cody.

They seem like they do. They seem genuinely excited to dance together. It seems real and it could be. Maybe she takes his classes and she thinks he’s awesome. Maybe he’s watched the show and thinks she’s awesome.

When you’re doing this, they spend a lot of time together. They are rehearsing all day long and there’s the physical aspect of it. I’m saying that’s not Cody’s jam, but there’s still intimacy to dancing like that even if it’s not a sexual one. I think there have been couples that have formed out of this. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here. I’m just saying, that’s the degree of relationships that form while they are rehearsing and spending all that time together. I don’t think it’s crazy that they have a bond. Even though it feels like it’s only been a week, for them, it’s been much longer or at least longer than it would seem to a viewer. I guess we just talk about Dancing With The Stars now. Is that what we do?

The Dancing With The Stars segment.

At least until Cody gets the boot for wins.

I think there’s going to be more of this. Hopefully, people are actually watching and caring. We’re not boring the crap out of them. I don’t think we are based on the metrics that we’re seeing out there. Thank you for joining us for a TV chat, John. Until next time, where can people find you?

I can’t go and tell my boys that all I do every week is the Dancing With The Stars segment.

Hopefully, not every conversation will need to be this long. There won’t be so much drama. He’ll dance and we’ll go, this is what happened, then we can talk about some other things.

They’ll just kill it. I can’t wait for the next show. I need Britney week to be something over the top, outrageous and outstanding. I’m expecting something big.

He’s going to wear fireworks. He’s going to set sparklers as he dances.

With giant snake.

No, that’ll be Tyra.

I need him in the Tyra Banks dress. I mean him coming down from the ceiling.

You never actually said where they could find you.

That’s right. I’m so into this Dancing With The Stars. They can find me on Facebook, in my group or page, Run, Lift & Live. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

—

Lots of people like to incorporate boxing or kickboxing into their workouts but have you ever thought about learning it from an actual fighter?

That is a great point. You can do that with FightCamp. FightCamp is made for beginners all the way up to experienced boxers who want to box from home. They don’t want to do shadow boxing. They want to do the real thing. FightCamp has several different paths that you can follow that are going to teach you the skills along the way, paired with workouts that are going to reinforce your new learnings.

It comes with all the gear you need to box at home, including a free-standing punching bag, boxing gloves, quick hand wraps, and their unique punch tracking sensors that challenge you to hit a minimum amount of punches each round and allow you to track your boxing and kickboxing journey so you can see all the progress that you’ll be making.

Peloton burns off stress and gives you focus and stability in life. Share on X

It’s also great for kids. It’s one of the only home workouts that are safe for kids to do, with no heavy weights and no spinning wheels. You can also learn from six highly qualified trainers that all have real fight experience ranging from a pro-MMA fighter and a mother of two, all the way to a kickboxing champion.

You can pay for your FightCamp over 24 months for less than the cost of a boxing gym and get it right away.

FightCamp offers free shipping with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just go to JoinFightCamp.com/clip.

—

Let’s start by saying calm down. There will be no live classes from October 10 to 12.

Peloton is taking a moment.

It’s because they are going out of business.

Do not start people up. There are some people that are upset at this pause and reflect. I personally feel like it’s good for Peloton for taking care of their employees. I know that it may not be for all employees, but I also know that the staff who’s in the studio works a lot of weekends. It does not hurt anybody to have a weekend off. Take the time and enjoy some scheduled encore classes or some on-demand classes that you haven’t had a chance to take.

There are plenty of them so read nothing into it.

Not at all, but I do want to say another thing that you guys can help with. It’s to spread the word because it’s fall. You know what happens in the fall for Peloton. They start changing up the schedule. I have seen some posts and people are starting to lose their minds because they don’t know. They are new to Peloton so we got to have the conversation. There are a lot of people that have not found this show that are new to Peloton so they don’t know. Spread the word for sure that this is normal. This happens every year. It’s all good.

There’s no cause for alarm. There was supposed to be a Tread conversation streamed online and it ran into some technical difficulties.

There are some ugly comments in the comment section. It was like a scowling OPP up in there. It was awful. If you are going to the tread event and you didn’t get to watch it because it didn’t happen. It’s happened by the time you read this, on Thursday, September 30th at 1:00 PM Eastern. I am looking forward to it because it’s going to be John Foley. It’s going to be Becs Gentry, Matty Maggiacomo, and Maureen Coiro who is a Peloton product team member. She’s also a fellow member. I’m looking forward to that. I thought I would mention for those of you out there that if you had signed up to go and you were not able to go last time, they sent out a link that you could order a free Peloton item. It was a free apparel item.

Speaking of free apparel items or apparel items, CNN had an article about Peloton says you can wear its new athleisure line to work. Just print this article out and show it around the office. If your boss calls you in and says, “Kevin, why are you wearing leggings?” You can say, “Peloton says I could.”

I thought that was a pretty catchy headline. It got my attention. I believe there’s a quote from Jill Foley in here as well. I know one of the articles I was looking at did, but I noticed that Peloton has been pushing this new line. They have been doing things like they had some of the instructors come on and show outfits with the line. I think that’s where they are coming from with this you can wear your athleisure wear to work. The instructors are showing how you can pair a tank top with a skirt and a shirt, and you can wear that to work. They had all these looks. One night, Kendall and Olivia did that. They were showing all different kinds of outfits that they put together from Peloton apparel and it was very cute. I love seeing Jill in an article. We haven’t seen her in an article in a while so it’s nice.

The Daily Mail also had an article about the Peloton apparel launching in Australia. I was going to say down under, but if I say apparel down under, it sounds like they are selling underwear.

It does sound like that but that’s not what’s happening here yet.

They think you’ll buy it. They’ll sell it to you.

You never know. I didn’t realize that Peloton’s line of clothing had not been available at all in Australia. This is new to Australia so that’s pretty cool. Also, I totally forgot to put this in the notes, Tom. This is on me, but while we’re talking about apparel, the apparel store added some breast cancer research fund awareness month items. They dropped them in there. Now we don’t get a big heads up when they happen anymore. That’s going to be new. They do that for some of the different holidays and fundraisers. This particular one is not available in Australia. Since we were talking about Australia, I wanted to mention that as well. I’m sure lots of people have already bought all that.

Triathlete.com has an article about how Peloton is powering change from the inside.

This is talking about how triathlons have a diversity problem. They’ve done a five-part mini-series. This is the second to last one. For that, they talked to the head of DEI at Peloton.

We talked about triathlons and running in general and inclusion issues. They were talking about what a good job Peloton does with it.

I don’t remember that at all. I thought this was a different article.

I think this is a different article but it’s part of the same series.

That sounds like they talk to a different person for each.

The other one, I don’t think they talked to anybody. They were in general saying that Peloton gets it right. The Today Show spotlighted Bridget Nieves from New York about how she lost 103 pounds in eleven months using her Peloton.

She lost the whole person in eleven months. That’s incredible. You can read this article and I talked to Bridget. She’s going to be on the show in a few weeks. It’ll be a little bit because we’ve got a bunch of great guests coming up but she will be on. That’s pretty cool and she looks incredible.

It’s quite a difference.

I guess 100 pounds will do that.

It will do that. Either direction, it will be a noticeable change.

Congrats to Bridget. That’s a huge accomplishment.

Digiday sat down with a Peloton CMO Dara Treseder talking about how she made community her selling point.

She has been everywhere. She’s big on the marketing thing. She knows how to market her own presence at Peloton and thereby Peloton.

She elevates both simultaneously.

This article is all about how she has used community to market herself. It works both ways and how Peloton was such a good fit because it was what she was already doing in her personal life. If you haven’t checked this out, definitely do so. You can do that by making sure you subscribed to the newsletter. All of the links will show up in your inbox every Sunday.

Dara would like that because that’s marketing what you just did. She’d be like, “Smooth, Crystal. Well done.” MarketScale had an article about how Peloton is incorporating hotels aggressively into its business strategy. They reached out to quite a Peloton expert.

That has to be a weird moment for you because the B-roll footage is of you sitting in the same place that you’re sitting right now.

It’s a little uncomfortable. I talked about hotels and Peloton and how they’ve been working on this strategy for a long time. It’s a refresh of it. You can hear all about it if you watch this video. You don’t need to hear me talk about it for another five minutes.

It’s funny how off-putting that is for you.

It’s awkward. Could you feel me cringing? Could you feel me backing away from the table?

I did. That’s why I left it up for so long. As I said, it was fun. I highly recommend it. The Tread is now live in Germany.

It sure is. It went live. This is great because they had put the Tread back on sale and they said it was going to be in Germany at a later date. Here it is.

Here we are, however you say that in German.

—

Architectural Digest is spotlighting Christine D’Ercole and the complete overhauling of her Dutch Colonial in Pennsylvania.

It gives an entire overview of the house and all the changes she’s made and it talks about her. You definitely want to check that out. It is a very cool and beautiful home.

It is a very pretty house.

Absolutely gorgeous. She’s shared a lot of this on Instagram. For those of you who don’t follow Christine, you should, because this is the kind of thing that you see.

What’s funny is it’s a very light week for instructors in the news. Normally we have fifteen articles and we’re like, “What do we get rid of?”

They were exhausted. They were everywhere.

I think Cody’s sucking up all the oxygen.

Speaking of Cody, I forgot to mention that a bunch of instructors were in LA. People thought that they were out there to cheer on Cody and then nothing else was said about it. I don’t know why they were out there if it was that, then that couldn’t happen. Anyway, that’s a side note.

Tunde spoke at Princeton.

She was there and she shared this on her Stories. She was doing a whole talk and it’s pretty cool. It was an evening with Tunde.

—

Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro here to answer your nutrition questions. Hello.

Thanks for having me back.

We are so glad to have you back. We decided to put you on the hot seat.

I love it. Nothing less from you two.

It’s going to be like WWE SmackDown between you and Dr. Jenn.

TCO 227 | Australia To New York

 

One of our listeners has asked a couple of times like she listens to the show. She hears you talk about the need for tracking and paying attention to how to hack your metabolism. On the other hand, we have Dr. Jenn on all the time and she’s talking about people with intuitive eating and how important that is. We’re not sure how to explain when to use which approach.

Those seem polar opposites. Are you two secret enemies?

No. They are not polar opposites. They are simply graduating at different points. It’s like the answer to everything that everyone ever asks me is it depends. What you’re talking about here is specificity versus values. What Dr. Jenn is talking about is values. Eat intuitively according to a good set of values. That is great. If you don’t have those good values, now we have a problem. Your intuition is like Tom. For every one of my clients, that is what we are graduating towards. We’re working toward that eventual end.

The journey for some people is simply learning a set of values combined with some science that’s going to apply to them. They are going to navigate being able to make the right choices intuitively and that is fabulous. There are some people that it simply comes down to, are you eating intuitively? If the answer is yes, then you’re good to go. If you find that you’re eating intuitively but haven’t gotten the results you want, we have to change something.

What tracking and logging do is it helps us to be strategic in what changes we make. This is probably something worth clarifying when I’m telling someone, “I need you to track. I need you to log. I need you to do this and that.” That’s a pain. That information is not necessarily for you. That’s information for me. That’s the data that I need to be able to give you the most effective feedback possible.

The more specific the data in those cases, the more specific the feedback, and then those actionable strategies may be short-term before we return to now an educated but intuitive lifestyle or they will be a little longer term, based on how grand your goals are and how much change we need to make.

Ultimately, my goal is to educate someone so that way, they can intuitively know when to ramp up in eating, when to scale back, when their body is going to be receptive to a cutting cycle, when their body’s going to be most receptive to a performance cycle, and how to effectively navigate between the two.

There is one thing that I will caution against. That is the concept of if you’re not hungry, don’t eat. That is correct but it can also cause damage. It depends on the circumstance. Where that’s correct is I’m not hungry so why should I go and add that extra snack or that extra junk food or those additional calories that I don’t need? In those cases is where that can be very applicable and you want to listen to your body.

On the opposite end of that is your body is not telling you when you need to speed your metabolism. What’s happening is your appetite is going down in response to eating less. If you’re at the point where I’m eating less but I’m not losing weight, if weight loss is your goal, then by default, what that leaves us is we have to speed your metabolism.

We have to now train it versus letting it train us. Doing so requires a little bit of specificity. that’s where knowing when and how to add things in can make a big difference. I’ve shared this before with our audience, somebody who is working directly with me, I’m going to have a need to snack in the afternoon every day and here’s the snack that they are going to eat. I have explained that eating that snack has nothing to do with the attributes or the composition of that snack in itself.

What I’m trying to do is actually get your body used to some framework where I can now change later to get predictable results. If what you’re doing intuitively is providing a good result, don’t change it. Don’t stop. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. My recommendation would be to the point where what you’re currently doing is no longer providing a result. We have to make a change. Let’s ensure that that change is the absolute most strategic.

That makes perfect sense. Also for those of us on MetPro, the idea is not that we’re on MetPro and need your help forever. The idea is that you get us to that education you were talking about and that we can then maintain on our own.

I will say that I’m never hungry. In fact, there are times when Crystal and I are like, “It’s time for snacks already?” I’m like, “This is working so I’ll do it, but I don’t want to eat right now.

This is a true story here in my gym when I used to have a physical location where I would train people. Every day, I would have somebody walk into the gym. We started this two decades ago, the before and after transformation, the athletic physiques. We have these pictures on the wall. Pretty soon we line the very top line of the wall all the way around the gym with these before and after pictures. Inevitably somebody would walk in every day and would look at those pictures and they would say, “Look at those athletic physiques. What are they eating?” My answer would be, “More than you.”

In the journey, they had times where they were cutting and we had to be restrictive. When you see those photos on the wall, that’s not a photo of somebody who’s that athletic because they are starving themselves. We have conditioned over time and with exercise their metabolism to run faster and faster. Do you know what’s the trick to looking super athletic? Being super athletic. We don’t get there like, “How did you become that NFL MVP? How did you become that world record holder of this or that?” “I ate less and less.”

Whenever you hear stories about those guys, it’s always about like, “I had four stacks of pancakes for breakfast.”

I must have the worst metabolism on the planet because if I eat one pancake, I gained 3 pounds. How did they get to that point?

You’ve learned that even with your metabolism, Crystals, as you get used more to it. This is one of those “buyer beware” because you’ve heard it said that you have to eat more to speed your metabolism. That’s where it gets tricky. That is a true statement but don’t try this at home folks because it’s easy to miss.

You also have to eat the right things too.

You can’t just eat a bunch of cookies and now your metabolism is faster.

That’s correct. It has to be the right amount. If you eat a bunch of cookies, your metabolism will acclimate to that but you’re not going to be happy about the 10 pounds you gain in the process. You’ll feel awful. How much more can you eat? Here’s the deal for everyone reading this, you can eat more without gaining weight. How much more? Some of you can eat a lot more. Some of you can only eat a bite more. That’s metabolic profiling. At MetPro what we’re doing is figuring out what that is. If it’s only literally two tablespoons of rice more than you can eat without gaining weight, that’s what we add. Now we got to wait for enough exercise to allow us to add another two tablespoons. I have other clients where in one shot, we’re adding 500 calories at a time and their metabolism mows it down. It absolutely demolishes it without a hiccup.

Thank you so much for clarifying all that because we get asked that a lot. We definitely appreciate that. Until next time, where can people find you and more information about MetPro, if they’d like to start that journey?

MetPro.co/tco.

—

Back to back visits from the Peloton Prophet.

I’m excited about this one.

She and/or him has been very busy.

I know we’ve been talking about products a lot. Things have changed. The Peloton Guide, that is the product that was known as Tiger. That’s the one that looks like a Kinect camera for Xbox. That one was supposed to come out in the fall of 2021. However, things have changed. It will now be January of 2022, probably. We then talked about the Rower and we had been thinking it was going to be in the first half of 2022. Scratch that because now it’s the fall of 2022. It makes sense with all the different things that are happening in the world from a supply chain standpoint. With everything that they’ve experienced with the recall, that’s not crazy.

I want to point out that there’s another product rumor, the Mag Resistance strength product. This one would be a Tonal-like device and we’re hearing that’s way off in 2023. People who’ve been saying, “Should I get a tonal?” there’s the timeline. Make your decisions. The other thing I want to point out is we have talked about many times what is happening with the Tread+? There have been times you’ve even wondered, are they going to bring it back? Tread+ is still alive and well. They are working on it. It takes time to redo this. They see all the comments out there. They are very much aware that people are starting to think that it’s never coming back and it’s coming back. It’s going to be fine. We now have a date on the pause button. That is in October.

It will be October when this comes out.

Then everyone can argue over that so happy October.

Here’s something new to argue about. That’s actually something old to argue about. At least now it’s here.

All of that is from the Prophet. Let’s see how right he or she is.

—

We have a new instructor in Germany.

It’s Tobias Heinze. He is the very first tread instructor in Germany. How cool is that? This is Germany ready for action now that the Tread went live. Now they get to move forward with their very first Tread instructor. He had his first premiere ride. The feedback that we’re getting from the community is that Peloton did not give people very much of a heads up on this one. There were not a lot of people on it. Peloton, we would love to have a little more heads up, especially for these instructors that are not only new, but it’s a new country. We want to make sure that we’re supporting them. It was on Wednesday, September 29th at 12:00 PM Eastern. I heard it was amazing.

—

NordicTrack, the parent company of iFit is gearing up for their IPO and they are valuing their company in Peloton territory.

$6.7 billion, indeed.

I will sit here and make side-eye at that. Good luck to you, I supposed. We have yet another company entering the bike at home space. Wahoo launches SYSTM. It’s a training platform. Do you use your own bike like Zwift?

I don’t know. I probably should have read it.

It’s behind the paywall, so there’s that. The picture shows a guy on what appears to be a road bike.

Wahoo has a lot of training platforms that you do on your own bike. I think that it’s a training bike. I think it’s another way to use your training bike at home, not using a bike like Peloton.

Like a stationary bike.

Exactly. We’ll see how that catches on.

We talked in the previous episode about a fitness startup Hydrow getting some money from celebs like Lizzo and Justin Timberlake. This one says that they’re also getting money from Kevin Hart. Have we talked about Kevin Hart?

I don’t think that we have at all. Another part of this article that I thought was interesting is they talk about music which the other article didn’t talk about. They are saying, “We’re interested to see what Hydrow is going to do for music beyond just raising money from the artists.” That’s great that you’re raising money for music artists, but what are you going to do now? That’ll be interesting too.

I also thought it was interesting that Kevin Hart actually has a title. They have him as the Creative Director. That sounds a little bit more hands-on than just writing a check.

Things are heating up. That’s for sure.

Hopefully, you saved a little energy from your side-eye for iFit’s IPO for this one. Echelon or at least someone in the Echelon world is wanting to break the world record currently held by Peloton for the most amount of people on a spin class.

They have a big idea here that they want to go after Peloton’s world record. The record is at 23,000 simultaneous riders, which we all know because we were part of it. There are 27,000 people on the official Echelon page.

They are hoping to get 85% compliance for a single ride. That’s cute.

—

This is not technically an artists series but close enough for our purposes. Peloton is partnering up with James Bond.

It looks like Ben Alldis is going to be doing one of the classes. It’s going to be in time for the 25th 007 film, No Time To Die. There’s going to be a strength ride and full-body.

Peloton, not politics. When you quickly get caught up in the political discourse, just bring it back to Peloton. Share on X

Not to be outdone, Echelon is partnering up with Dr. No.

I liked the marketing on this one with the little James Bond circle thing happening in the background. I thought that was cool.

That means that Ben in Leanne got to go to the world premiere.

They did and this was in London at the Royal Albert Hall. It was Leanne’s birthday. They were all gussied up in their finery. He was in a tux and she was in a gorgeous pink gown. They got to celebrate her birthday like none other. That’s a pretty special over the top birthday right there. Benjamin Alldis had an IG live with Daniel Craig’s personal trainer, Simon Waterson that took place on September 29th. It’s still out there. Make sure you go check that out.

—

The You Get To Crew did something pretty awesome.

You guys may not be aware of this. The owner or the person who made Thrive Causemetics is Karissa Bodnar. She rides all the time on her Peloton. She loves Peloton and she’s a member of the You Get To Crew. She’s a huge fan of Jess Sims. You Get Two Crew has been working on raising money for an amazing opportunity and that is the Breonna Taylor scholarship. There’s a foundation that is getting created and Thrive Causemetics took the money that came from You Get Two Crew. They matched it and bumped it up to an even $10,000 on behalf of the You Get To Crew.

In addition to that, Thrive Causemetics donated another $100,000 for the foundation. It’s the Breonna Taylor Memorial Endowment. We’re so proud of the You Get To Crew for being part of that. It’s a cool thing that they did. They did that on behalf of Jess Sims birthday because you can’t give to the instructors anymore. They are not allowed to give gifts anymore. It is for the best, I agree with you, but they wanted to do something. I thought this was so cool that I definitely wanted to share.

That’s a wonderful solution.

—

Joining us in this episode all the way from Australia is Joey Ruggero. Joey, how’s it going?

Nice to speak with you.

Good to have you here. I know I need to get to all the Peloton stuff but I’m curious, how hard is that to get used to? You lived in Australia, then you lived in America, and now you’re back in Australia. Do I have that right?

You’re exactly right. In 2020, I moved back to Australia. Before that, for the last eleven or so years, I was living in New York. You never get used to it because it’s on the other side of the world, particularly when you’re going and coming back. When you come back it takes a week for the body to adjust and it completely scrambles you. You get used to it. It’s easier being on the US side.

Why is that?

It’s because Australia is waking up at the end of your day, whereas here, you wake up and the US has been awake all day. If you’re doing business or your friends, you wake up to a deluge of emails, issues and problems. That can be hard to tolerate when you’re still scratching the sleep out of your eyes in the morning.

Americans are hard to tolerate when you’re well-rested.

I have refrained from commenting on that.

You did laugh readily. Let the record indicate.

It is a long way between the two countries, particularly the East Coast.

Is that an eighteen-hour flight or something crazy like that?

All up flying time is about 19, 20 hours. With layovers, you typically budget a 24-hour journey.

I’ve never gone on a trip that long. The longest I’ve ever flown was when I flew to Hawaii when I was a kid.

It is nothing compared to that.

For someone who’s never taken that long of a trip, are the coach seats any bigger on a flight that long?

No. They are not. They’re definitely not bigger.

I didn’t know if the planes are bigger because it’s taking more people at the same time, so maybe the seats they give you a few more centimeters. Is that what you guys do down there?

It depends on which airline you’re flying and what product they’re bringing forward in coach. If you’ve got an airline that is a long-haul flying airline, and the national airline here is Qantas, so there’s only long-haul. It takes nine hours to get anywhere meaningful. It is probably bigger in economy on the Qantas than what you’re going to have flying from Missouri to New York on Delta or JetBlue. It’s bigger when you compare it to something like Spirit. Don’t get any illusions. You’re not living in a little spacious area.

You’re not lying flat.

If you are flying business typically on long-haul like that, it is a lot of flatbeds. Long-haul is an excellent time to catch up on some sleep because you’re up there already. You’re in bed with nowhere to go.

Nothing else to do.

You’ve got red wine on tap and some snacks.

We did that one time where we had those seats. We happened to have extra points and we had to burn through them so it was first class.

That was amazing.

It is difficult to go backwards in life.

I was like, “I should have never done it.”

You don’t want to know what’s going on at the front of the plane. I’m happy in coach.

It was one of the planes where we also noticed when you board they have the underclass. They make a right. They don’t even walk through first class anymore. It’s like if you’re going first class, it’s to the left.

They’ll tease you like, “This is what you could have but you don’t, so you go through there.”

“Everyone up here has a personal masseur. You get your own frozen custard machine.”

It was like a spaceship up there.

That long flight when I think about my Peloton story, I think about wanting to go to homecoming. I was literally living on the same street as Peloton and now I’m on the other side of the world.

It’s hard to go further away than you did. Let’s jump into that. How did you originally find Peloton?

It’s funny because I was always a Spin rider. I probably would spin 3 or 4 times a week with the 45-minute classes at Equinox. I was big on the in-person experience and group fitness. While I got exposed to Peloton before they exploded in the pandemic, I never thought that it was something that I would vibe with. I already knew about it in the abstract. I used to walk past the store on the same street that I lived on. I think back and remember walking past the store and I used to look at the store. I’d imagine like the kids who used to look at the Willy Wonka factory, looking beyond those gates. I’m like, “I wonder what they’re doing in there? They must be doing something crazy.”

I knew that there was a studio in there but not really. Finally, the owner of our building put a Peloton bike in the gym in our building in New York so that was the first time that I saw one but I already had the spin shoes for Equinox and it wasn’t compatible. They didn’t have the clip in. They changed it to the cages. We are always leading technology business in New York. We use machine vision and Peloton started to poach a lot of our engineering talent. I got to know them pretty well and I lived quite near Hudson Yards where they’re building the new studio, and right by the new corporate office.

I was getting all of these messages about Peloton in my daily life. I didn’t even get connected to it until I left New York and came back to Australia. I missed the Equinox experience and the spinning. A friend of mine who had moved back from London and had a Peloton brought his back and was getting people hooked on them. He was buying them in the UK and shipping them over here and giving them to us. I was like, “You have to get me one. I need to get on a bike.” As all of your readers will know, once you’re on and hooked, the rest is history.

You’re all in.

I look back on the times of going to Equinox at 6:00 AM in the cold and having to book the classes, and being up at 5:00 AM because the classes booked out in a second as soon as they came online. I can’t even imagine going back to that. I was probably 6 or 7-day in-person in the gym in New York. I look at them and think, “If I can be converted to in-home fitness, this is a huge market where so many people can be converted and have the benefit of convenience to help improve their lives.”

It is astonishing to me that you moved across the world when you were right next to Peloton and then you got a Peloton.

It’s insane.

In my head, I was like, “You would only move back to Australia because they were finally doing Peloton.” You’re like, “Fine. I’ll go back.”

We were pretty keen for them to launch here. They launched here quicker than I thought they would. We always knew that it was on the roadmap for them in terms of their international expansion. I thought that with the supply issues that they were having and some of the backlogs that they were still working through in some of their key markets, they might push that back. It was a surprise when we woke up to the news that they had pulled the trigger on launching here.

Don’t let it go to your head. It’s just alphabetical.

I always think about after World War II that a lot of migrants who fled Europe, the list that they gave people must have been alphabetical because everyone ended up in America, Australia and Argentina. There’s no mass migration to anything that doesn’t start with an A.

Technically, we should be at the bottom. They should have listed it as the United States. It’s funny because on the drop-down menus when you have to select your country, it’s the ones at the top. It’s such a cultural bias because it’ll be the United States and it’ll be Argentina and Australia. I have noticed that some of them have stopped doing that. You’ve got to scroll all the way down.

They started putting them on the bottom. I’m always like, “It’s on the U, hang on,” and scroll. I’m curious though. I feel like moving across the world seems such a daunting task and now you’ve done it twice. What made you decide to move to America in the first place and what took you back to Australia?

TCO 227 | Australia To New York

 

Years ago, because I’m in technology and a lot of the technology in the industry is bolstered by the venture capital scene and private investment. Many years ago, there wasn’t a big scene for that here in Australia. The technology that we had deployed at one of our core target markets was retail malls. If you’re going to attack the retail mall market, there is no better place to be than the US. Access to that engineering talent and also access to funding were all of the kind of things that took us over there professionally. Personally, I’d lived outside of Australia one other time when I had studied for a year in Italy.

By the learning and the development that came from having that experience, I wanted to have that experience again, and also on the professional side. That’s what originally took me over there and I got so used to living in the city. We didn’t have any plans. When I say we, it’s me and my wife, Sarah, who’s also a Peloton user. We didn’t have any plans to move back to Australia but life tends to intervene sometimes.

The birth of our first son, which we had in New York, coincided pretty much with the breakout of COVID. We had banked on having our family flying in to help, get to know him, and spend time with us. Automatically, all of that went off the table. We had lived in New York for ten years. In that whole time, we did not have one close friend that had a child. We had no exposure to what it was like and none of that ecosystem that you need when you first have a child.

Going back to the start of COVID in New York City, you remember what it was like. We didn’t have what we have now in terms of light at the end of the tunnel in terms of vaccines. Also, a better understanding of COVID, a better understanding of how COVID interacts with children in the risks, and also both professionally, we’d been in the city for a long time and it was time to make a change. Given that the world was shutting down, going back to Australia and being with our family and friends was the obvious choice. It’s still difficult.

It’s way easier to make them move away from home than it is to return from home because when you move away from home, everything’s new. Everything’s a new cultural experience. Everything stimulating. You’re growing. You come back after ten years, you’re a little bit of a different person, everything will look the same but it’s different. You’ve got to adjust to a little bit of that. We’ve made the transition pretty smooth. Having the Peloton has helped significantly.

I bet because it burns off stress.

It gives you something to focus on and gives you a little bit of stability. A little bit of rudder in life.

I was thinking what this means is to put this in perspective for people. Not only was there a nineteen-hour flight but there was a nineteen-hour flight with a newborn during the pandemic. That is a lot.

It’s because we love to punish ourselves, the quickest way to go is typically through your flight from New York to LA, you do your layover in LA, and you fly from LA to Sydney. I used to do a lot of business in the Middle East so I got used to flying through the Middle East. It adds about four hours to the journey. When I said it was 24-hour flight time, it’s probably 28 to 31 hours going that way, which is what we did on the way home.

Also, you had no one to help you guys.

We did not. I’ll tell you one saving grace during that period because this was at the end of August 2020.

That was a scary time.

It was the height of the pandemic in many ways. The flights were so empty that the staff to passenger ratio was so high that we were lucky though that they were accommodating, caring, and they were our help system on the way home. I don’t know if you know but one of the strategies that Australia has in dealing with the pandemic is that anybody that comes into the country, citizen or not, has to go into a mandatory fourteen-day hotel quarantine. They take you from the airport, straight into a hotel room. You don’t leave that hotel room. You don’t do not cross the threshold of that hotel door for fourteen days.

What about supplies like diapers for the baby and stuff like that? What do you do?

That speaks to the advantages of having a family and friends network. We never had to leverage the hotel quarantine system to get those things because our family was able to give us those things. You can order groceries and get them delivered. You can order food online and get it delivered. They also supply meals, so it’s not as bad as it sounds but it is still a little bit testing. I didn’t have Peloton in there.

Fourteen days, could you open windows or anything? In so many hotels, you can’t.

When you have children, they give you something like a service department. It’s a hotel room but it has a little terrace that’s enclosed but with an opening for fresh air. That was good because a lot of people that come in as a single person or as a two-person couple, they go into hotel rooms that don’t have any balconies. There are some rooms that you can’t even open the windows. That would be tough for fourteen days.

That would be tough.

I have a little bit of a motto, which is, “Peloton Not Politics,” because sometimes when you delve into it you can quickly get caught up in the political discourse and you’ve got to bring it back to Peloton. That’s helped to keep our case numbers low but it is a difficult thing for people to go through.

That would be a lot. I get it why they’re making that choice. I would consider myself next level lazy, but two weeks in a room without leaving is a lot.

It’s something about the, “You can’t leave,” that makes it instantly, “What?”

The walls are closing on you.

I felt that way on a cruise ship the first time we went on a cruise. I was like, “I can’t get off the boat.”

You can but you can’t get back on.

That was three days before we even saw another country. That was hard for me. Fourteen days would take some mental prep work to be prepared for that.

We got through it.

That’s great. When you guys moved back and you got the Peloton, was your wife instantly like, “Get that bike,” as soon as she heard that this underground railroad of bikes was coming in.

We left at the end of August. I probably got the Peloton at the end of October but we didn’t have our own place because we had to send all our furniture home from New York. At the best of times, that takes 12 to 16 weeks to sail all the way here. Add in the delays at the port with COVID, unloading and all that stuff.

I’m surprised it’s worth it to keep your furniture.

You would think you would sell it and buy all new stuff.

It’s on the boundary of making financial sense but we have some pieces that we had collected that are special to us and irreplaceable. This is getting into a whole other topic but we both have so many clothes that there’s no airline in the world that we would have been able to get those back. We could have filled multiple jets with the clothes that we have.

We’ve got clothes horses here.

The bike arrived before we had our own place. Luckily, I got the bike at the same time as one of my best friends. He was like, “Keep your bike at my place. We’ll ride together. When you get your own place, we’ll move it there.” I was going to his place. She didn’t get the exposure to the daily convenience of having it. She wasn’t as big a spinner as I was. Now that we’ve got our home and she’s using it frequently, she often says to me, “That is the best purchase that we’ve ever made.”

You were like, “I would maybe pick the wedding ring but the Peloton was nice, too. Thanks, honey.”

He’s like, “I didn’t think of that then but I’m using it now.”

“If she says it again, I’ve got it locked and loaded.” It’s probably important to stay in shape because I’m assuming you guys were completely naked because you’re waiting for your clothes to show up.

We had ponchos.

When Peloton launched, was it exciting to people that live in Australia or was it like, “Another product. No big deal.”

For us and people who were already in the Peloton community, it was nice because we had somebody other than ourselves proselytizing about Peloton. What I love about this conversation is it’s an hour to talk guilt-free about Peloton. I feel like what CrossFit was in early 2010. I’ve become one of those people where I’m like, “You should download the app or you should consider getting a Peloton.” It was buzzy. One of the things that they did with launching here is that Peloton Australia got to a place on the water and decked it all out with Peloton bikes and invited all the journalists to come and ride.

There was a little bit of a pop with press coverage. A lot of the press coverage was slanted towards something that I’m used to, but Australians aren’t typically used to, which is the intensity of the American instructors. If you’re not into fitness or you haven’t been exposed to that American way of getting excited and firing up, and you’re a journalist, that can be something a little bit difficult to digest. Some of that was reading through the press coverage at the time. To corroborate that, people that I know that I’ve gotten the bike here definitely skewed towards the British instructors.

Is that a cultural thing?

It is. You may find it as well if you have taken any of their classes that it’s a little bit more low-key, which is a little bit more in the Australian style. It’s a little bit more chill. Australia is a fit country so people are into their fitness. People are active. People are sports-obsessed as you can probably tell. We always do so much better in the Olympics than we should as a 26-million-person country.

People that are excited about launching, but it’ll be interesting to see how it penetrates a fit and active country because remember, one of the things that we have to our advantage here, which you don’t necessarily have, particularly in North America is we have a mild climate. There’s not a time of year where you can’t cycle outside or run outside. It’ll be interesting to see the cut-through that it gets looking at it from that perspective.

Let’s talk about the American instructors being intense and the British instructors being a little bit more relaxed.

I’m used to that because I never had a group fitness experience that wasn’t in the US.

You’re like, “This is how it is.”

In fact, I skewed probably in the other direction on the majority of the content that I consume. I’m probably skewed for life.

America has a tendency to skew things up.

That was a topical comment, Tom.

It’s evergreen.

Peloton, not politics.

The Australian vibe and accent will play pretty well with international audiences. Share on X

We’ll just leave it there. Do you ride with other people though? You have your friend that had the bike and before you got there or he had a bike around the same time. Do you guys ride together? How do you pick an instructor then? Do you let him pick?

Our bikes were right next to each other and we were both newbies to the Peloton experience. We were exploring it together. Luckily, we vibe the same instructors. I can’t believe this but that friend of mine, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve become close when he was living in New York working for a period as well. I go over there first, and over the ten years, he came for about a 3 to 4-year stretch. He also lived on the same street as Peloton.

He lived closer to the 23rd Street Studio than I do. He’s on the same block and he also didn’t experience Peloton until he got back here. He also had that American flavor to his fitness experience. We were both skewing in the American side and now we’d ride together a lot. A lot of our friends in the US have Pelotons, but because of the time zones, it typically doesn’t line up for us to ride together. We’re riding with friends here. The vast majority of people here in Australia have the underground railway bike or have gotten their bikes since Peloton launched here.

Does Australia have a bunch of bike lanes and things like that where people can ride safely outside?

There are a lot of bike lanes. There are also lots of parks here.

If it’s that beautiful, it makes sense because you can go all the time.

There are lots of rides. I haven’t ridden on the freeways but when I’m out there, I see a lot of actual cyclists. I’m not an outside rider. I’ve never ridden outside. I like clothes and those clothes don’t vibe with me. I’m not going to wear a highlighted green in public.

What if you’ve got superpowers would you wear them?

He’s like, “I might make an exception.” I can tell he’s thinking about it.

Now that you have your choices and you can do either Australian instructors or American instructors, where are you landing?

In the whole platform, there’s only one Australian instructor and she’s a yoga instructor. She’s based in New York.

She is still in New York.

The whole speculation is that they will open a studio here eventually. The Australian vibe and the accent would probably play pretty well with international audiences. If we’re speculating as to, whether they’ll open a studio up here, my bet would say that they would.

I’m curious why you think that because they’ve opened up in other countries so far, and the only other studio they’ve done is in London. What makes you think that that’s what they’ll do?

The time zone, while there is some good crossover, once they build enough of a user base here, it will make sense to have a little bit more live ride availability and a little bit more of that cultural thing. It also conserves their other markets pretty well. I get the feeling that that will be a good play because it’s something quite different from their current studio offerings. It’s in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a completely different time zone and I do think that the Australian persona will play well for the global community.

That makes sense. I will be curious to see how that plays out.

So am I because I don’t want to take a 24-hour flight to ride in the studio.

I do not blame you. I hope we can get back to the studio at some point. I feel at this point, we were close and the stupid Delta variant ruined everything.

I heard you guys speculating about it on an episode and I’m completely where you are. They’re not going to risk it.

To me, it doesn’t make sense. It’s all downside, no upside. Not when they can broadcast and they have been and it’s been fine.

A lot of the classes that I’ve taken were in that period where there’s COVID. A lot of the new classes, the studio is empty. I’ve taken a few classes where there’s a live studio experience going on in the background. As someone that made the transition to having that experience to the empty studio, what’s that been like for you, Crystal?

I don’t hate it. It’s not a really negative vibe for me. It’s not at all. If I had my pick, I’d rather have the people in the studio because they bring in additional energy. To me, it’s like watching a comedian in a room with no one laughing. That’s what it’s like. The best thing I can compare it to from the classes that I miss the energy the most, there are two of them. One is Jenn Sherman’s Sunday Rides because everybody would party all weekend and there was always a big group from all over the country in the studio on Sundays. There was always this big celebration and Jenn knew everybody’s name. She would call every out and it felt like you were there. The other thing I miss is the live DJ Rides because that energy on a Friday after work was like having happy hour without the beer.

That would have been great.

You can’t get the same energy. They tried their hearts out and I know there are people that say that they prefer it that way. I’ve heard lots of people who are new to Peloton say that. They don’t want all the distracting people in the background.

The friend whose bike I had at his place, he’s one of those people. He prefers the empty studio and none of the distractions.

I understand that but if you’ve ever got a chance to take a ride in the studio, you would change your mind because it’s a special experience. Being able to be home and every time you’re at home watching people in the studio, it takes you back to that moment. It’s a special thing.

Hopefully, I’ll get to take a class in the studio soon. It sounds like it’s definitely worth the 24-hour flight.

Absolutely, it is. It’s legit. You need to do that when the studio opens. Tom’s like, “I’ll just be in the room.”

“I’ll be in the hotel room.”

He’s nice. He waits in the studio lobby. Sometimes he’ll walk next door and get a little snack.

Now they’re in a different place.

They have more snacks in Hudson Yards than they did at the old.

There are a lot of places to buy snacks in New York City. I’m going to be okay.

I’m pretty sure.

What is your leaderboard name?

It’s terrible that it’s still this because the friend that was running the underground railway set it up for me. He used my first name and my last name and I never ever change it, so it’s JoeRuggero, which is so boring.

You’re going to have to do some Aussie name.

I’m going to change it up.

Joey is an Aussie name.

I feel like you need some kangaroos.

Maybe that’s what it could be. Maybe Ozzy Joey or Joey From Oz or Joey From Ponderosa.

I don’t get Ponderosa. Is that a thing in Australia?

No. It’s from that movie. Tom, you should know. It’s Little Joey From Ponderosa.

You stumped Tom in a movie. Holy cow, I didn’t know that was possible.

Ponderosa is an American Western show here.

I don’t know where I got that reference from. Ponderosa is a TV series. Was there a Joey in there?

There might be. I never watched it but there might have been.

People used to call me Joey from Ponderosa so now I got to research what the reference is there.

There was a bad steak house called Ponderosa.

I didn’t get that leaderboard name but I approve of the others.

Don’t worry. Watch this space I am going to change. It’s too pedestrian.

You don’t hear that a lot. I like that.

Do you have a preferred instructor?

I talked to him. On the bike, and this might sound a little bit funny but Matt Wilpers is probably my favorite bike instructor because I like to learn, and he educates you so much through the ride. I take quite a lot of the longer rides, the 60s, 75s, and the 90s. Anyone that can hold my attention for more than 90 seconds and 19 minutes deserves a lot of credit. He makes it go by so quickly.

The funny thing is I was talking to some of the other people here who their favorite instructor was. Matt Wilpers is my favorite but as you guys often say, “Peloton meets you wherever you are.” Matt is my favorite instructor every day of the week on the bike, but other days of the week, different moods, different instructors. I love Olivia. She is so hard. I think she’s a cyborg. She is not human.

Did you said she’s hard as in her classes are hard, or did you say she’s hot?

I said she was hard. She is very pretty though.

Your wife might be listening.

I already told her that Olivia was hot.

I wanted to clarify for the audience. I wasn’t trying to put you on the spot.

Off the bike, it’s definitely Jess Sims and Adrian. She’s amazing. A lot of the things that she says crossover into the rest of your life. Those little mantras are so good that you find yourself saying them in your day-to-day life. I love the, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” That is true. That’s my favorite. Also the, “You can do hard things because you’re doing them right now.”

I like the, “You don’t have to. You get to.” I like that one a lot. That one is plastered on my wall right next to the bike.

I used to say that when I was a camp counselor.

You were a camp counselor?

Yes, but I would say that to kids when they were complaining about things or when they were like, “I don’t want to use the outhouse.” I’m like, “You don’t have to, you get to.” It’s weird how you take on different forms. I would only use it to mock people.

Tom’s very effective at reframing things for people.

Do you have any advice for people just entering the world of Peloton?

TCO 227 | Australia To New York

 

I have a couple of things that I would say. If you weren’t into speeding or cycling before you get the bike, I definitely recommend people do take the beginner course because it’s also a good way of exposing you to all the different instructors and seeing what you like before you fall into a pigeon-hole of the 2 to 4 instructors that you take all the time. Stick with it until you get bitten because if you don’t, there is such an amazing experience in such a community that comes out of it, just the benefits. You got to stick with it. They will get bitten quickly.

One thing that is a little bit abstract is to make sure your seat positioning is correct because good habits start early. One thing that I did is I took a video of myself on the bike. I set up my phone on a tripod and took a photo and video of myself on the bike. That’s one thing that you don’t get with the home experience. You don’t have the live intervention of a professional. I took a video of myself and I took it to somebody and showed it to them.

I said, “Look at my form. Look at my seat height. I want to make sure I’m doing things right. Can you give me some advice?” He gave me a couple of changes that probably increased my output by 10% overnight. You don’t need to go to a professional. Go to your local bike store if you need to buy something and show it to them.

I will add that now that you have Peloton stores there, your Peloton showrooms can help you with that as well.

That’s the thing. We didn’t get to talk about the store because they’re opening two stores here in Sydney and one in Melbourne, which is the second-largest city. We’re in lockdown here so we’re under a Shelter in Place Order. That happened pretty much right at the end of June 2021. I want to say the start of July 2021. Their stores were meant to open in July so the stores never got to open.

I didn’t realize that.

They’re having a little bit of the same experience here in the Australian market, as they did at the start of the pandemic in the US because for the longest time, up to this point we had COVID under control. The Delta variant has been sitting in the community and there’s a little bit of an outbreak. We haven’t got as much of the vaccine rollout done as maybe in North America.

We’re in an exposure point now we’re sheltering in place. Now Peloton wait times are probably elongating a little bit and the stores never got to open. There are two stores opening here, one is in Short Hills Mall because it’s so part of the Peloton founding story. It’s the equivalent of the Short Hills Mall here. We don’t use the term downtown, we use the term CBD, which is the Central Business District, which is where all of the Wall Street and stuff here. There’s a store there as well.

There’s a strip there where you have retail and a lot of the conceptual retail. As an example, Tesla has a store there. They’re in good company there with Peloton and Tesla. They didn’t get to open the stores, which I’m dying for them to open. I want to go in there, get some of the apparel because apart from ordering it online and getting it shipped from the US, you can’t get the apparel here. Now, they’ve opened an apparel store online here.

Let me tell you one other thing you can get from the showroom when it opens. Hopefully, they shipped them over there. If not, ask. They give you a little pin that says 100 Rides whenever you reach 100 rides. They look at your profile to make sure you’ve hit your 100 rides and they’ll give you a pin.

It’d be good to go in there because they’ve launched the apparel store online but it’s a narrow selection. It’s all of the stuff that you didn’t buy, they sent out here. It’s like, “Here are all the things that Crystal doesn’t want. Send them to Australia.”

That theory doesn’t hold because there isn’t anything she doesn’t want.

That’s not true. In the last two releases, I didn’t buy anything. That’s true for every country as it rolls out. I know Canada still doesn’t have the same selection that the US store does. Not everything that they sell goes online. Not everything goes into stores either. Let’s say there are fifteen items that go on sale, maybe ten items make it into the store. I’m using low numbers to give an example. Maybe only eight of those make it to Canada and maybe only seven make it to Germany. I don’t know how they split it up but that’s something to that degree. I know that’s frustrating.

It would make sense for them to match their inventory allocation with demand. If the demand picks up we’ll get more of the selection.

You know there are shipping companies that will help with that, right? You know that and you can do that?

Yes.

I have to make sure you know.

Those are little tips for you.

I had to remember. I had to use them to get my Century T-shirt. They only ship the Century T-shirt to a US address because I’m registered there.

Peloton meets you wherever you are. Share on X

You’ve got your own little tricks.

He’s crafty.

You’ve got to make it work when you’re on the other side of the world.

Peloton hacks.

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?

I’m on Instagram as what my leaderboard name might have been which is @JoeyRuggers. I cut back all of my social media. I deactivated Facebook and I heard one of your episodes about some of the Facebook groups and some of them are raising money. Now I’m going to get back on Facebook to join the groups. Thanks, guys. It took me over fifteen years to quit.

Zuckerburg paid us handsomely to get you to do that.

I can tell that you guys are with him.

I’m wearing my dress hoodie. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day.

Thank you for making all the time zones work. We appreciate it. I know it’s not easy to do. Thank you so much.

It’s great chatting with you, guys.

You too. It’s been a lot of fun.

See you out there in the community and hopefully, in person some time for a live ride in New York.

That would be amazing.

Stay in touch about it.

Have a good one.

See you, guys.

—

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

We are going to talk to a wonderful Peloton member, Yaneyra Pellascini. She’s amazing and you definitely want to stick around for this interview. There’s going to be lots of laughs and lots of inspiration. You definitely want to be there.

Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the Bike and 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. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

 

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