240: New Year Challenges from Robin Arzon, Ben Alldis, and Callie plus our interview with Keith Dyke

Last Updated: May 2, 2023By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: Community, fitness, Outdoor Rides, Peloton, Peloton Road Riders, weight loss

Dr. Jenn – Structuring your 2022 goals.

Bloomberg writes about Strava vs. Peloton when it comes to loyalty.
LG TVs offer the Peloton app and a visit to the doctor.
Angelo joins us to talk about low glycemic index eating plans.
The Today Show has 9 inspirational quotes from Peloton instructors.
Rad Lopez was on Good Day New York.
Shape Magazine talks to Camila Ramon.
Becs Gentry was on the Hurdle podcast.
InStyle talks to multiple Peloton instructors about how to stick to your resolutions.
Daniel McKenna has a new puppy.
Rebecca Kennedy and Andy Speer put together a special Spotify playlist.
The Evening Standard spotlights Peloton alternatives.
The latest artist series features The Doors.
Peloton wants you to try different instructors.
Callie Gullickson has a boot camp challenge.
Robin Arzon is doing a January strength stack.
Ben Alldis has a January challenge.
There’s a new apparel drop.
Past guest Zach Honig got engaged.
Birthdays – Adrian Williams (01/09), Hannah Frankson (01/11)

All this plus our interview with Keith Dyke!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

New Year Challenges from Robin Arzon, Ben Alldis, and Callie plus our interview with Keith Dyke

There’s a new bike called Capti and John Mills has questions.

You have a new job.

I am officially a MetPro coach.

You started taking on new clients. If you’ve been wondering if you should give it a shot, you could actually end up with Coach Clip Out Crystal.

It’s so cool and fun. I love it. I’m so excited, and then they are going to be starting the podcast. I’m going to have the three podcasts to record and I will be a coach. I’m so excited. This is the perfect job for me.

We should throw in there that you can go to MetPro.co/tco to check out more information, and maybe end up with Crystal so you can get to talk to her once a week.

If anybody out there has questions and you’re hesitant, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll go over everything with you. I’ve had some conversations with people and they have a lot of questions.

I’ve made it through the holidays without putting on 30 pounds unlike Christmas 2020.

We did some damage in 2020.

I needed an intervention that year.

You got one. It’s called MetPro.

Yes, I did. It worked and I made it through the holidays without doing any severe damage. Angelo is always amazed when he’s like, “How do you put on weight in such a short amount of time?” I’m like, “It is my superpower.”

He’s like, “Really? You did that in two days?” I always say, “Don’t make it a dare, Angelo.”

He’s like, “Did you just duct tape small Woodland creatures to your chest?” I’m like, “That’s just how hairy I am.” Thanks to MetPro, it comes off fast now, unlike before.

That doesn’t work for everybody though. Everybody’s different.

I was lucky in that regard. What pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have a visit from John Mills. He puts together this list every quarter of where all of the different competitors are in the connected fitness area from a social media perspective, gains and losses. We’re going to touch on that in a bit. We also have a visit from Dr. Jenn. She talks about structuring your 2022 goals. Also, Angelo is going to visit us. We’re going to talk about low-glycemic index eating plans. This is an important topic and it comes into play at MetPro. If anybody out there is curious, this is a great topic.

We’re going to talk about Strava. We’re going to talk about all of the instructors who have been to different places. There have been a ton of articles. Resolutions and interesting playlists are happening over on Spotify that they are mixing instructors. I thought that was fascinating. They’re doing some new things with artists collaborations that they don’t typically do. We have a past guest update and we’re going to talk about birthdays.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. I should point out that on Spotify, you can now rate podcasts. If you’ve been listening to us on Spotify, I know a lot of people have been gravitating to Spotify for podcasts lately, if you are one of them, you can now rate us over there. If you’d be so kind, they probably have some sort of magical algorithm that lets them know that we are beloved.

Except for those people that hate my laugh.

We have a new review. This is from REM20007. It says, “The outlet. If you don’t dare bring up the Peloton tread, bike or app to your family, if your friends had lost and never had an interest in your badges, they’re bursting to talk about the Peloton instructor who’s dating another, if you need to share your speculations about what Peloton might offer next, put this podcast on and indulge, and talking back to Tom and Crystal. It’ll be like group therapy and the rest of your friends will stop avoiding your calls. You might pick up a life-changing fitness tip or inspiration to genuinely nice people, plus Crystal’s infectious giggle will keep you coming back every week. They’ve put a ton of work into this and an impressive amount every week.” Thank you very much.

Thank you. That was a sweet review.

You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Sign up for the mailing list. You’ll get all the links and articles and things like that in a newsletter digest every week. Finally, if listening to us isn’t enough and you want to stare in my lipid pools of eyes, you can do that in HD at YouTube.com/TheClipOut.

Can I just point out that we have the perfect dog position sitting here? This dog is laying in the room and she’s curled up in her perfect position. If you want to watch us on YouTube, you can watch the puppy too.

There’s all that, let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

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Joining us once again from Run, Lift and Live, it’s John Mills. How is it going?

How is it going?

I love all the energy you’re bringing.

I used to feel bad because you have all this energy and then I’m over here being me. Now, if I were to suddenly have energy, people are like, he’s ripping off John Mills. This is my way of making sure that no one thinks I’m stealing your thing. No Grandpa Shark shirts for me.

Does that mean I can’t wear any hoodies and I can’t bring a red cap to any of these things?

I will let you wear hoodies but the cap is mine. We don’t share a cup anyway with COVID. I don’t feel like I can say the hoodies are only me though. No Monkees hoodie. How about that?

That would be offensive if I came in here with The Monkees hoodie.

Moving into Peloton stuff, you do this roughly quarterly.

It is not exactly quarterly. The last one was October 5th, 2021, and now it’s January 5th, 2022. It’s perfect timing.

You like to take a little peek at all the social media channels from the various connected fitness properties and see who has gained, who has lost, and who’s Echelon.

I know some of these companies are public and other ones aren’t so it’s tough. The ones that aren’t are not required to publish their numbers so you don’t know how well they’re doing in comparison to the public companies. I use this unscientific mechanism to see who’s making some moves in the connected fitness space.

What is happening to Beachbody?

What’s up with that? How come Beachbody went backwards? I don’t know what’s happening with that. SoulCycle goes backwards every quarter.

They go backwards in a lot of ways.

I wasn’t surprised about SoulCycle going backwards, but Beachbody did. Also, I have BODi Interactive on there. They came out in late 2021. I don’t know if Beachbody going backwards has to do with BODi Interactive and folks following them. I don’t know if that has an effect.

I feel like that’s unusual if it is because most people add to another one. They are not like, “I’m following this account now so I got to get rid of this other account.” They just add on another one because it’s not a big deal. That’s just my take on it.

I know Beachbody like to sell things over there. I wonder if maybe they got a little too pushy and people were like, “That’s enough of that.”

I think something like that is going on. For 3,000 people to say, “You know what? I don’t want to follow you anymore.” It seemed like a lot.

It does seem like a lot. I’m also fascinated. First of all, good job, Tonal. Good job, Peloton. They’re up 5%. 100,000 people are a lot of people.

What I loved about that is last quarter of 2021, they were up like 60,000 and now they’re up 100,000.

Don't pick intermittent fasting or weight watchers, thinking that will be the solution because they will work until you stop doing them. Share on X

It’s interesting because I keep seeing all these news reports, “Peloton, the searches are down.” This is an interesting metric because this shows that people aren’t as disinterested as you might think based on this. I don’t know what the true story is. Also, it’s interesting to see that they’re up 5% because that’s a big number. When you have almost two million followers, 96,000 is a lot. I love seeing these numbers. This is crazy. Good job, Tonal, at 18%.

Peloton is quarterly bumped, 96,000 is almost double Echelon’s total followers.

It is interesting. It’s so confusing. They are up 2,000 and that’s their 5% because their numbers are so low. BODi just started and they have almost as many followers as Echelon. That’s fascinating.

That’s telling a story. I don’t know the story but it’s telling some story. BODi just started and they are about to leapfrog Echelon and put them in last place. I don’t know what’s up with that. I liked the Tonal narrative there, 37,000 people in the quarter that started following Tonal is telling us something. To me, that’s pretty impressive. iFIT is pretty stable. Apple Fitness+ is jumping as well. I know they are still in the middle of the pack but they were up 19%.

That’s nothing to sneeze at. That’s definitely some good numbers there. It’s interesting you got to look at the percentage and the number. When you look at Peloton is up 5%, it sounds a lot lower than Apple Fitness but what I find interesting here is that Peloton is up 100,000 and Apple Fitness is only up 21,000. That’s a lot for Apple. That shows that Peloton is huge with their numbers. They are killing everybody else on here.

Peloton’s 5% bump versus Apple’s 20% bump in terms of raw numbers was five times as many people to get to their 5%. It’s interesting in terms of raw data.

I love that you added Hydro to this. Thank you for adding that. That’s good.

I should have added them before if I liked to continue to maintain these metrics because there’s no way to go back unless I post them. We’ll see what happens next quarter but now I wished I would have added them back in October so we had seen this disparity over the holidays.

It’s also interesting to see that NordicTrack was up at all. Aren’t they the ones that laid off all those people?

I thought the same thing. They were probably going to have some type of an impact but they have been pretty stable. They’ve got name recognition, iFIT and that NordicTrack brand. Because of that, they just maintain. Notice, they’re not up a whole lot. iFIT’s primary brand was up a little more. I see it that’s why they tend to have the same issues as the Beachbody or SoulCycle. They have name recognition and you see their commercials all the time. People tend to like many of their products. They don’t tend to have those types of issues.

It’s interesting. Thank you for doing that. It will be interesting to see what it looks like a few months from now. Also, while you’re here, we should talk about an interesting article that you found about a new bike called Capti.

I know that the company is Expresso.

I’ve used an Expresso bike way back in the day at the gym. It was awful like so bad. I hated it so much. The idea is cool because you’re riding this bike with everyone else and it’s interactive. It should be fun but the bike itself was so uncomfortable, awkward and heavy. I hated everything about it.

It’s good in theory but not in practice like communism or sex in the bathtub.

I wonder if they did the same bikes in Espresso. This company is called Expresso with the X. I wonder if they are different companies. I’m not sure they’re the same but they actually have multiple bikes too so it could be the same.

I don’t know that this bike is bad. I know the one I used many years ago was bad. I can’t say that this one is bad.

What makes this bike worth talking about?

There’s a component of it that was interesting to me. I’ll get to that in a second, but ultimately the bike has handlebars that you can unlock to where they then steer. It’s intended to be like you can have an outdoor experience. I don’t know if that’s cool or not but it can do that. It’s like a free mode for the handlebars. They are no longer locked. They can move. It also has the same free mode for the pedals. You’re either pedaling for power and if you’re not pedaling, your feet are still moving. You can stop pedaling. It will be like a free mode on an outdoor bike. On the screen, you’re still moving. You’re coasting. It has these features built into the bike because its intent was to build a connected fitness experience as well as an outdoor experience. They try to compete with those two areas of cycling. That’s one piece of it.

The piece of it that I was posting about was the fact that they are now or have been collaborating with Epic Games. They’re using their unreal engine as a part of how they’re building out these games on their platform. Games like Fortnite were built in that same context. They’re saying, “By using our bike, you don’t just have studio classes, you’ll have true games that are of a quality that you would get in current-day gaming.” That made me go, “I know Peloton is about to come out with Lanebreak, but should they have thought in the same terms of going to a true gaming company that has decades of experience?” They’re using their engines to build games that have graphics and detail to this level. That’s the question I posed in my mind.

I hear you saying like, “What does this do for Peloton’s Lanebreak?” It’s not so great comparatively.

I know that this is extreme, but I compared it to modern-day games and Pong. Are we building Pong while other companies are building Fortnite?

That’s a fair question because you would think they could do all sorts of fun things if they had something like this. You could be competing on screen against Matt Wilpers or something.

Wouldn’t that be cool? That would be neat.

It was just a concept. I don’t know if this bike is going to make much of a splash or not. It just dropped. It was that concept of the gaming component of it. They are thinking that they could use the gaming component of it to drive an outdoor experience, which is then getting to the hardware of the bike. They can use the steering, these handlebars that move, and free mode pedals to give you even more of a realistic experience.

I wouldn’t think it would take too much of a bite out of Peloton. That’s a hyper-specific niche market where if they have something that’s close enough, they’re probably fine. While it’s one thing to compare it to Pong, I almost wonder if it’s more like Candy Crush. You have all those games on your phone, which aren’t as intense or as something like Fortnite. It’s more for the casual game user. I don’t want to get sucked into something that complex. I don’t have time for that. While I’m sitting there watching TV, I’ll play Best Fiends. I still play it even though I’ve run out of levels on Best Fiends.

The other thing that I find interesting about this is one, I’m curious if you will add Capti to your social media list that you keep. Two, if it is its own like you have to buy a bike or you have to use their platform, how expensive is that compared to all the other alternatives out there. That’ll be interesting to see as well.

The bike is expensive. It’s $4,000. I don’t know about that.

That would be a fun video game.

I don’t know about the monthly but they do have a subscription plan and they have their own content, which always kills me with all of these platforms. I’ll be reading about it and I’m like, “That’s cool right there.” I’ll then go look at the content and I’ll be like, “That content is horrible.” I always do that. I will say the same thing every time.

Peloton excels in that area. We will keep our eyes on this one and see what happens.

Thank you for joining us, John. Until next time, where can everyone find you?

I’m going to follow Bill. They can find me on my Facebook page or group, Run, Lift and Live. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive. They can find me on TikTok Run, Lift and Live, or they can find me at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you.

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Joining us once again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and Sports Psychology consultant. She was a five-year national team member in Rhythmic Gymnastics and handled the Sports Psychology for USA Gymnastics. It’s Dr. Jenn. How’s it going?

It’s great to be here.

We appreciate your time. We’re hoping for some help because as we have entered into 2022, how should people go about setting up and structuring their fitness goals?

The number one biggest mistake I see is people doing too much too fast. If you are someone who has not been active and then suddenly you’re saying, “I’m going to workout an hour a day, seven days a week,” you are going to fail. I don’t mean to be a pessimist but you are far more likely to get injured based on all of the studies that I’ve read. You are more likely to hate what you’re doing. The key to creating achievable goals is to start small. I’d rather you go look at your goals and go, “That’s so easy. I can totally do that,” and have the opportunity to have success and build on success.

A lot of the time people see my workouts since I post on my Insta Stories all my Peloton workouts. They’ll say, “I want to do what you’re doing,” but I built up to this. Besides the fact that I was an elite level rhythmic gymnast on the national team for five years, decades later, it took me a long time to work up to the level that I’m at. I started with much smaller. I start by walking before I was running. I started with walk runs. You have to work up to what your goals are. That’s a key issue. You want to make sure that you start small and that you build. I think one of the great things about Peloton is you can start to layer. For example, your cardio, 20-minute or even 10-minute workouts. Once you’re achieving that, raise the level, raise the time, start to add in the strength work, start to add in stretching, yoga, all that sort of stuff, and create a balance.

I always recommend that people work with someone who is knowledgeable about training. For example, someone like you, Crystal. You have a background in knowing how to create a healthy program. You have studied this. If you’re not working with Crystal, then work with some other personal trainer, working with an exercise physiologist, working with a friend who is studying this, or someone who’s knowledgeable. You don’t have to do it. If you’re working out on Peloton, you don’t need a trainer every day. What you do need is someone to help you to create a reasonable program and then build on it. Maybe you check in once every 4 to 6 months after creating a program.

A lot of the time, we are not the best judges of what we should be doing when it comes to our workout. Sometimes we are too ambitious. One of the studies that I read that is particularly fascinating to me, I did look at lifelong exercisers. What it found was that people who were lifelong exercisers exercise because they found that they felt great. After the exercise, they got endorphins while they were exercising. It felt good and they have positive associations. When you first start an exercise program, you will get none of that. It’s contrary. You can speak to this for sure. It’s difficult, painful and discouraging. You don’t get endorphins until you get to a higher level. A lot of the time, it isn’t the best.

What you want to do as you’re building up is, first of all, focus on the musical. Get classes based on music and instructors that you love, and other things that will excite you and keep you engaged. Try to break things up into smaller bits. If you find that doing a 30-minute walk is too much for you, but you want to hit 30 minutes, do a 10-minute walk, then do a 5-minute core, then go back and do a 20-minute walk. You can break things out as you build up. Don’t judge yourself and go, “I’m not doing it 30 minutes straight if I’m not running for 60 minutes straight.” Sometimes we have to break things up for our mental state because when we build up an exercise program most people think about the physical. It takes a while to build up physical strength and endurance. What most people don’t realize is it takes a while to build up emotional and psychological endurance.

I know for me, I’ve built up to a 60-minute run. I do 45 minutes on my long run. Once a month, I do 60 minutes right now. Mentally, that is hard for me. Forty-five minutes now is not a problem but that 60 minutes, I still find myself having to play mind games with myself. As might be endurance, I can do now. It’s the mental game where it’s more challenging for me. Be patient with your mental game and also ask yourself as you’re training, “Where am I struggling? Is it strength? Is it endurance? Is it mental or is it fatigue?” Make sure that you adjust accordingly, and also make sure that you include stretches or yoga or whatever you need to help you recover so that you can keep increasing your workout.

Those are such good advice.

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

I have a weekly column at InStyle magazine called Hump Day with Dr. Jenn. It’s all about sex and relationship advice. You can also find me on all of the social media @DrJennMann. I do post all of my Peloton workouts on my Insta Story.

Thank you.

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Bloomberg.com has an interesting article about Strava and how the pandemic has affected them, especially in relation to some of the things Peloton has been seeing.

I thought this was interesting for a few reasons. The gist of this article is that their revenue spiked by 68% in 2021. However, Bloomberg is not sure if they’re going to be able to keep it. Thus far, they have not had the fall off that Peloton is showing. They’re saying that it’s going to be fine. That’s what Strava’s thought process is. We’ll see because January 17th is the cutoff for new year’s resolutions.

That’s when the newbies bail. They seem to be theorizing that people got Strava during the pandemic for their Peloton. They’ve pivoted away from Peloton but they’ve still kept their Strava.

The interesting thing to me is when I first got my Peloton, I was all about Strava because that was one place where I could log everything. Since I got my Apple Watch and, and then I also workout on my Tonal, I don’t use Strava anymore. I still have it but I don’t have the expensive plan anymore. I’m not trying to track it in the same way. To me, I still have it but I don’t do anything with it anymore. It doesn’t aggregate the data in the way that I need it to since it doesn’t pull in Tonal in the way that I want it to. It shows that I did a workout but it doesn’t give me all of my stats the way I want it to.

I just find it interesting. It could be me not knowing how to hook everything up. Some things, you have to turn off. Some things you have to turn on when all the different apps are talking to each other. I’m probably not the only person that’s like, “I can get it on my Apple Watch. I’m good.” Unless you’re a person who’s a triathlete or something where you want to track your actual outdoor distances, I feel like that’s where Strava excel. I don’t feel like they excel with all of the indoor connected fitness. I don’t think that they’re going to continue to see new income coming in. They might see additional subscribers but I don’t think that people are going to subscribe to the most expensive plans with Strava. That’s my take on it and my experience.

TechRadar talks about LG TVs. The Peloton app is baked in LG TVs, but they’re also rolling out a plan. This isn’t necessarily Peloton related, but it was still interesting. You can pay a flat fee to talk to doctors and dentists virtually right through your TV.

They don’t offer Peloton right now. This is new and Peloton being in there is new too. That was why I included this. I did think it was interesting because, in the article, they discussed whether or not this will matter because LG TV can have more security around having private conversations with your doctor than some of the other options out there, and will it matter? I don’t know if it will or not but that’s interesting.

Based on the things people post on Facebook, I don’t think they care about their privacy. It’s like, “I’ll give away all my information as long as you tell me which Muppet I am.”

Stop posting that.

I’m like, “I’m Fozzie.”

For sure your Fozzie. There is no doubt.

I also think it’s interesting a virtual visit with a doctor. I get that like, “Doctor, my elbow hurts. Can you look at this rash?” or whatever, but your dentist?

I guess if it’s issues like you have questions, but they can’t get in there and look at your teeth. They can’t do that with the doctor either. It’s not like you can hold up your foot and be like, “My foot has been acting weird.”

You can hold your foot up a lot easier than you can say, “Look at my molars.”

There’s not so much diagnosis they can do. They can look. I saw a dermatologist virtually and they were very helpful. At the end of the day, it was like, “If you want to do something about that, you’re going to have to come into the office.” You can get a general direction, “That’s something you should talk about. That’s something you don’t care about.”

For a doctor, yes, but for dentists, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re going to have to have a pretty special camera. You’re going to have to have the cameras I got over there on PornHub. You can also go to the gynecologist now or a proctologist. I’m being an equal opportunity. We’ve all got one of those.

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Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro here to answer all of your nutrition questions to help you achieve your fitness goals.

Hey, guys.

Heather Steele wants to know what does MetPro think about low-glycemic index eating plans.

That is a great question, Heather. I can give you an answer that isn’t it depends. I actually remember pinning the chapter on low glycemic. In both MetPro books and the workbook that we have, we go over all of the different primary sciences that MetPro implements, being metabolic profiling. We use all of the relevant sciences to a greater or lesser degree. We evaluate different approaches based on their efficacy because we’ve had thousands and thousands of clients we’ve coached go through the process.

There are some good sciences out there that we don’t use as much because of application and practicality. For example, doing zigzag techniques where you’re eating a different carbohydrate intake level on different days of the week. That is a protocol that we actually do implement at MetPro. It’s called micro zigzagging. What you’ll find is more often, we macro zigzag simply because we get better results out of it. Why? Because micro zigzags are very difficult to adhere to in the long run. Most people have a hard enough time prepping exact macronutrients for one meal plan, let alone having 2 or 3 meal plans in a given week.

We’ll pull that out and use it. Calorie control is a potent methodology for manipulating your metabolism. Carbohydrate is a potent method. One of the line items on all of these methodologies that we use is low-glycemic eating, and here is what we have found. By itself, it is not a particularly potent weight loss tool. What we have found is when combined with additional modalities, it enhances the benefits and the effectiveness.

For example, if you are using caloric restriction as a trigger, if you are using carbohydrate restriction as a trigger or so forth, and pair that with also making sure that the meals are moderate to low-glycemic, there is often an enhanced correlation. There’s definitely an improvement in sustainability because, with lower glycemic meals, you tend to be satiated longer. You tend not to have a bunch of spikes in your energy level and your blood sugar throughout the day. It’s more sustainable to come back and implement for a longer period of time.

At MetPro, with each of our meals, a lot of people look at the meal builder and they think, “This is a tool to pick any food I want.” That’s not what’s going on here. With MetPro, we give our clients a meal plan. This is a tool for them to exchange a particular protein, a particular carb or a particular fat for something they prefer, but there are definite guidelines. A lot of people say, “How come this cracker wasn’t on the list?” It’s because we didn’t want it there. That’s why.

Usually, people will ask about food that seems like it would make a lot of sense. What they don’t realize is its glycemic load. When somebody is on an intake level that they’re not on a high threshold intake level, we’ll manipulate the list of carbohydrates in particular that they have to choose from. It will not be radically. The staples are going to be there. I’ll give you a classic example. How come some clients say, “I have bananas on my list.”

The reason is that it’s a great carbohydrate, but it’s a very high-glycemic carbohydrate for a fruit. Depending on what phase we have you on, it may come and go from your meal plan or from a specific meal. That’s a testament to how we nod to glycemic loads. That’s also why a lot of people ask, “How come I have to have protein with every meal or often, I have fats instead of having it all at once?” It’s because when you combine protein and fat with a carbohydrate, even if the carbohydrate is higher glycemic, it slows down the digestion rate of the entire meal. Therefore making it overall lower glycemic, assuming the meal isn’t the size of Wisconsin.

It’s a great question. The glycemic index does impact your outcome. If you were to change nothing about your diet and alter the glycemic load of food, you may find you have a little more energy and a little bit more satiety out of your meal plan. By itself, it’s probably not going to trigger a significant amount of weight loss. It needs to be paired with an additional modality.

If people would like that sort of stuff tailored for them in their fitness goals, where can they can find you?

They can go to MetPro.co/tco. We’d love to talk to you.

Thank you.

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Alex Toussaint was visiting a school recently.

This is such a cool story. He went to the school and helped all of these young kids. He was inspiring them, telling them his story. He gave them a $500 shopping spree to Puma. Isn’t that cool? It’s at their flagship store. He did this before the holidays. I thought that was cool.

That’s very kind of him.

The program is called Men of Elmont.

The Today’s Show spotlighted nine Peloton instructors sharing their motivational quotes that inspire them.

I love this. There were so many good ones. My favorite is always, “You don’t have to. You get to,” by Jess Sims. That is on my wall over there. It is a privilege to be able to exercise because not everybody can. It’s important to remember that because one of the things that have always motivated me through my Peloton journey has been the people who get up and exercise despite the fact that they have some roadblock that doesn’t make it easy. I find that so inspiring. It takes my excuses away. I appreciate that. That’s my favorite.

I’m laughing because I think I’ve told this story before. It was a long time ago. When I was a camp counselor, I used to say that exact same thing to kids, but I would say it to mock them.

You have told that story before.

They’re like, “Do we got to go on this 5-mile hike?” I was like, “You don’t have to. You get to.”

She used to be a teacher for elementary school kids. There are nine of them. Tunde, “Your mind is your strongest muscle.” She’s got great muscles. “Less excuses, more adjustments,” from Alex Toussaint. “If you can’t get out of it, get into it,” by Denis Morton. I love that one too. “Never give up because great things take time,” by Adrian Williams. Also, take a mental lap. That’s my own personal favorite. Matt Wilpers, “Train smart, train hard, have fun.” “Drink as you pour,” Chelsea Jackson Roberts. I love that. “I’m a disciple of a better me,” Sam Yo. “They can knock you down but never let them knock you out,” by Kendall Toole. It’s a great way to start off the new year. All inspired.

Rad Lopez was on Good Day New York.

He was talking about Peloton. He taught the hosts of the show how to do some punches. He did a little boxing with them on the show. I thought that was fun. It’s crazy because I didn’t see this anywhere else. I only saw it on a few instructors stories and that was it. I guess because it was a local story probably.

Still, it’s New York.

I thought Peloton would have shown it somewhere, but I didn’t see them show it anywhere. Congrats to Rad. That’s awesome.

It’s nice to see as we segue into this next story. The newer instructors are getting some attention. Michelle K from Shape magazine writes about Camilla Ramon.

This article is so cool because it’s all about body positivity for the Latin community. I love that because Camilla talks about how she had a lot of issues with this growing up. She feels like it was specific to her heritage. Being able to talk about this was a big deal to her. It’s awesome and Michelle K is still killing it. Congrats to both of them.

Once you've left everything behind to move to another country, it's easy to do it again and again. Share on X

Becs Gentry was on the Hurdle podcast.

This was going back over 2021. She talked about 2021 and going through her marathon journey. I honestly could not tell if this was a replay of an earlier episode or if this was new information. Becs posted it so I got the impression that it was new content. For any of you out there who have listened to Becs on Hurdle, this may or may not be a new episode.

I’m not sure how to process this next article.

I know. I feel a little conflicted.

It’s from InStyle magazine, but it’s also by Michelle K.

It’s a similar take on things from the other article we were talking about, not Michelle K’s other article, but the article from the Today’s Show.

How to actually stick to your health and fitness resolutions from eight different Peloton trainers.

It’s talking about how they stick to their resolutions. They’ve got a lot of good tips in here. Some of the folks that you get to hear from are Marcel Dinkins, Hannah Corbin, Emma Lovewell, Rebecca Kennedy, Anna Greenberg, Ross Rayburn, Kirsten Ferguson, and Andy Speer. There are lots of different kinds of advice because they fall over several different disciplines. I definitely think you should check out this amazing article by Michelle K.

Speaking of Andy Speer, he and Rebecca Kennedy created their own little fancy pants Spotify playlist.

Do you remember a while back, we talked about how Peloton now has a spot on Spotify’s Workout Hub? This is one of the collaborations and I saw that another couple of instructors did this as well. Spotify is featuring pairings of different instructors. The first one I found was Rebecca and Andy, but there are other instructors that are teaming up and you can find all of them out on the Spotify Workout Hub where you find the other Peloton playlist. Also, Andy and Rebecca were both playing Whose Song Was It? on Instagram. That’s a fun guess of who added which song. Although by looking at these, I think I could pick them out.

Finally, Daniel McKenna got a puppy.

It’s adorable. His name is Dougal. What a great Irish name.

The quickest way to win the internet is to post a picture of a puppy.

He posted so many pictures of this puppy. I am in love with this puppy. I’m in love with most puppies so it’s not shocking, but this puppy is so cute.

—

The other day I’m on the Tonal and you decide to workout to the new Taylor Swift class. I’m listening to a podcast trying to finish up and I can’t hear a word of it. I was like, “Why is this so loud?” At first, I thought it was because it was Taylor Swift, but then it turns out it was because you were using your new Sonos Roam.

It’s effective. Who knew it could fill up the space like that. If you guys haven’t seen it, the Roam is only about 6 inches long. It’s like a cylinder. It’s small but the sound that comes out of it is amazing. You can literally take it anywhere. That’s why they call it the Roam. Keep in mind that we like to use it in the house. I like to use it with exercise equipment so it follows me down to the basement. It’s cool because I can hook it up to whatever exercise equipment I am using at that moment, whether it’s the Peloton, the bike, the tread, or the Tonal.

You can use it with their app, your Apple Airplay. You can use it with your voice, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant. You don’t have to get a whole new system or get used to a new system if you don’t want to.

It’s so easy to set up and they have their own radio stations. You don’t have to go and sign up for a whole another thing. They have ready-made radio stations that you can listen to. It is great if you want to take it out of the house with you. It perfectly connects to your WiFi network and the rest of your Sonos system if you have one. It automatically pairs to your phone with Bluetooth when you’re on the go. It’s a seamless experience. If you would like to learn more about it, go to Sonos.com to learn more.

—

The Evening Standard, which you were in if you can’t recall, had an interesting article about an overview of things that they’re saying might be Peloton killers.

That’s what they were saying but it’s trends for 2022. Some of these are absolutely fascinating. I’m curious to see if any of these are still around in 2023. Apparently climbing walls are going to be a big deal at least in the UK. Micro gyms were included in this list. Micro gyms if you don’t know are when you go to a little tiny gym and it’s just you and maybe a trainer and you check in for an hour. Think of it like Uber but for a gym. Another interesting thing is used fitness wear. I feel like Peloton has already got that on lockdown.

If not, there is a company called Good Fit. They have an activewear site you can go and get 60% off of the second hand but like new activewear, including Lululemon, Girlfriend Collective, Nike and Sweaty Betty. It says many of them even still have their tags on. That’s an interesting one. There’s also a team that all of their clothes are made out of bamboo fibers. In theory, you can wear them for up to a week without washing them because they’re so effective at absorbing moisture and there’s no odor. I’m just saying that’s what they say.

There’s this assault fitness thing. This is the thing that they’re saying is going to be a Peloton killer. It’s an interactive assault bike workout, and you can track your stats. I’m not sure why that would kill Peloton because Peloton already does that.

I read the paragraph three times trying to figure out what’s so magical about it.

I don’t know. What I did think was cool was this skiing VR game. You put this controller in your shoe and you pretend to ski. It tells you how well you do on some of the world’s hardest courses. I was pretty fascinated by that. It looks fun. There’s a core workout. This core thing is interesting because it’s weighted hula hooping and it’s supposedly going to catch on big time.

Hula hooping was very big in the ‘50s for the kids.

Also for smart recovery, you can have an ice bath at home. All you got to do is spend $2,000 on your own high-tech ice bath at home. How cool is that?

Could you just dump some ice in your bath?

This allows you to check your temperature and make it very specific, and get a personalized ice bath based on your needs.

Also, I could dump some ice in my bath and have $1,995 more. That’s assuming I bought ice at the store and didn’t use homemade ice. You can make ice at your house. You know that, right?

I’m telling you what’s out there. It’ll be interesting to see in 2022, which of these is still around. I thought it was an interesting little collection.

My guess is not an iced bath because it also sounds horrible.

I know that you’re not a fan. I get it.

The only time you should ever be in an ice bath is someone is trying to sell your kidney on the black market.

A lot of people do ice baths in hyperbaric chambers and stuff to get recovered faster. It’s a thing.

—

I love the classic rock but this sounds like the worst artists collaboration of all time.

The interesting thing is that it’s not a traditional artist collaboration. What they did is a Santa Monica scenic ride.

I officially retract my statement because first off, The Doors are the worst. I love classic rock but The Doors is low-grade high school level poetry set to mediocre keyboards.

It was angsty grunge before angsty grunge was a thing.

I know they’re legendary. I even met two of them. I met the other two because the first one died before I was born. It’s not my fault. I was like a class to The Doors sounds awful but maybe meditation.

The interesting thing is that this is the 50th anniversary of LA Woman, the entire album. You can listen to the album while you do the scenic ride in Santa Monica. I do think it’s an interesting take on an artist collaboration. It’s something they haven’t done. That’s why I wanted to highlight it.

We should talk about it whether I like it or not. If we waited for things I liked, we’d never talk about anything on the show. I also think it’s a great way to get people to sample scenic. I do think that’s a fitting way to work in The Doors because their music is so low key. It doesn’t seem like it would jive very well with what Peloton does. Do you know who plays bass in The Doors? Nobody. There is no base in The Doors. Don’t let that scare you. Let that free you.

—

Peloton is challenging you to sample a new instructor. Get out of your rut.

They posted a graphic that has a picture of all of the instructors. There’s a whole crap ton of them now. A lot of people are not taking this as, “I will take a new instructor today.” They are taking it one step further. It’s funny because we’re such type A’s in the Peloton world. They weren’t like, “I’ll take a new instructor today.” They were like, “I see this as a challenge to take all the instructors by the end of the year.” That is what they did. Now, this is a new challenge to take all of the instructors by the end of the year. Everyone sees your challenge, Peloton, and raises you because it is the Peloton community and that’s what we do.

I feel like this image is what Zoom calls look like during the pandemic. Either that or it’s like if The Duggars and The Brady Bunch merge.

Except most of these people were not on a call at the same time because that’s too many instructors and their time is too valuable.

Not even Peloton can afford them all at once. If that’s not enough of a challenge for you, Robin Arzon has a strength stack just waiting.

Every month, one of the instructors curate the new strength stack for a month and in 2022, it is Robin. I will be curious to hear how this goes for people because we all know Robin can be a little tough.

Also, Callie has a bootcamp challenge for you.

The challenge is to take four bootcamps that she prescribes. There’s a 30-minute bike bootcamp. Actually, they are all bike bootcamps. Two of them are already determined. One from January 4th, one from January 11th, and then she’s got other dates to be determined. That’s the goal, take all of them. I didn’t include a picture of it but Ben Alldis has another challenge. He has been mixing strength and bike classes. If you are looking for a different challenge, that is another one to hit up as well.

Finally in this segment, there was a new apparel drop and you were underwhelmed.

It was a few pieces, and the colors were okay but it didn’t appeal to me. Honestly, I’m in a Beyond Yoga place right now. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with Peloton or it’s just me, but right now I’m in a Beyond Yoga place.

—

Past guest Zach Honig is The Points Guy.

I think he’s no longer at The Points Guy.

That’s what we had him on here. It would probably be because of that. He got engaged. Judging by the picture he still has points.

He’s still doing lots of travel and congratulations to Zach. I think that’s so cool.

—

We have two birthdays. Adrian Williams was born on January 9th, and Hannah Frankson was born on January 11th.

Happy birthday to them both. How exciting.

—

Joining us via the magic of ZoomTube is Keith Dyke. Keith, how’s it going?

I’m very well. Thank you.

When did you find Peloton originally? You’ve been a member of the community for a very long time.

I found Peloton from day one on Kickstarter, but I wrestled with the, “Should I or shouldn’t I? Will I or won’t I?” I didn’t look back. My first ride was on the 10th of September 2016. That’s the official date. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but I did my 900th ride. I know people, “I’ve done 3,000 in a year.” I’m like, “I do 200 a year.” That’s a lot.

You also ride outdoors and take longer rides. You’re not one to do the shorter rides. Maybe you are now, but you haven’t always.

I like to do 90-minute rides. I like to stack two 60-minute always together. I have a Tread Plus, so it’s easy to jump on that instead. I have an indoor swimming pool, and I do that as well, but I love to get outside and do a 4 or 5-hour ride at some chance.

Nine hundred is amazing. That’s what I say. Congratulations. That’s awesome.

It’s not your only exercise metric, and you know how Americans hate the metric system.

We still use those models, but the metric is fine.

The quickest way to get Americans on the metric system was making weed legal. That’s all that was about.

Have you always been into fitness and sports, or was this something more recent for you?

I’ve always been into some form of sports, albeit more socially. Coming from the UK, I’ve ridden London to Land’s End, which is about 400 miles for 3 times. I always used to play soccer. I would call it football, but people would get confused again. I took up triathlons years ago because I said I would run a marathon before it was 40. I got to 39, and that was never going to happen.

Somebody introduced me to triathlons and said, “This will be easier. I did not understand the logic either but believe me, a sprint triathlon is a lot easier than a marathon.” Unfortunately, a sprint triathlon leads to Olympic triathlon, which leads to Ironman. I stopped because an Ironman involves a marathon, which I’m never going to do.

You’re like, “You tried to trick me.” Americans know what football is now because of Ted Lasso.

The interesting thing there is Ted Lasso plays in Richmond FC, but the ground is Crystal Palace’s ground, which is my team.

That’s a fictional team. Have they made up a team?

I’m sure there is a Richmond FC somewhere because every pub has a team, but there is no Richmond FC in the league.

You told us you have the Tread Plus. Do you have the Bike Plus too? Is that what you said?

Yes. I sold one of my friends the bike, expecting the next day to be delivered the Bike Plus, but I got an email that said, “There will be a bit of a delay.” Luckily, I have seven bikes that I can take outside on the road, a Tread Plus, and a swimming pool. It didn’t mean too much except to be a bit annoyed.

That’s what you point to if somebody tries to give you trouble about “only 900 rides.” You could be like, “I would be at 4,000 if they hadn’t delayed the delivery of my Bike Plus.” Lay all the blame at the door of Peloton.

You have seven outdoor bikes. Do you have a separate garage for your bikes? How is this even happening?

We have a three-car garage, and the kids have to put their cars outside.

Are they all hanging or on racks?

One of them is a tandem, so it’s slightly higher up. The other one is an ElliptiGO. There is a bit of stretching of the needle there as far as bikes are concerned, but they have two wheels and have pedals. They’re all hanging from the wall. It’s almost like selecting clothes in the morning.

How often does the tandem get chosen?

It does not very much. I have some friends that come over from the UK, and we blast around their neighborhood. I’ve tried to get my wife to ride on it. I bought her shoes for Peloton a few years ago. They’re not still in the wrapper because my daughter is the same shoe size, but my wife is the home of the family.

Everybody got one.

Was the tandem bike hard to ride? It’s like putting your faith that the other person is not going to tip you over.

That’s what I’m worried about. I would wipe out. How are you doing that without wiping out?

It’s easier to pedal faster, but you don’t. As long as you’ve got somebody who can ride on the back, it’s not a problem. The guy on the back is supposed to focus on pushing and doesn’t care about the guy in the front that goes, “I’m going to give you everything.” The guy in the front changes gears and sees. I generally find that I’m the guy on the front.

Are we still talking about bikes?

This happened the last time we talked to somebody on a tandem bike.

I’m like, “Do we have Dan Savage on again?” It’s not a normal bike. It’s a cis-gendered bike.

You are also the admin of the Peloton Road Riders group. There’s probably more than one admin. Tell everybody what that group is because there’s a lot of people that have never heard of that amazing group.

We started in November of 2016. It’s an incredibly supportive group for riding outside. Most people had a Peloton, and some have not but kept riding outside. We hook up with all other people and riders. There are 6,000 of us. Generally, we’re cookers. We joined other people’s races and rides. There’s a bunch of rides called Farm to Fork Fondo, which is generally over on the Northeastern coast. We do those rides quite often, and the Hincapie Gran Fondo, which George and Kathy run. We’ve joined those for the last couple of years.

In fact, a couple of our riders are ambassadors for George. We get good books on that. Honestly, this is such a great camaraderie because we’re all focused not just on Peloton but road riding as well, with the fact that we joined all together. I’m sure you know as well, having been on some of the other Facebooks and your own Facebook as well. The community is immense and huge from a social attraction point of view. I know that grandparents, parents, and even I will talk about, “When I was growing up, the community was everything.” We haven’t lost that. We just went virtual, and you need to join it.

I love the Road Riders group because you are all very supportive. Also, if anybody out there ever wants to buy a road bike, you are great about spending other people’s money. That’s a bit of an inside joke. I need to spend my money, and you come over to the Road Riders group and say, “What should I buy?” In all seriousness, always great advice over there about getting a road bike. For people who might be in the Peloton community and never considered that they might want to road bike, they should know about this group, and you are able to help with that. You’ve had so many great get-togethers over the years because some of the instructors have joined you at times.

Originally, we started with Matt. Matt used to come out with a few rides with us. Our first road rider invasion at the mothership, as we used to call it, we rode around Central Park 5 or 6 times and ended up at the studio for his 90-minute ride, which shows a couple of things. When we first started, there were not many of us either to be able to fit in the studio, but that was fantastic, and we followed on from that.

Christine, over the last few years, has joined us on quite a few rides. Even when she can’t join, she rides at the end and supports the finish. We’ve got quite support there. I haven’t dropped a couple of notes to John Foley that he should sponsor a ride that we can put together, but he’s never answered me. I don’t know why. Maybe this is the time.

You would think that the Peloton PR team would be all over that. Peloton PR, if you’re reading, this is your chance. Celebrate the Road Riders group, support them, get out there and make it an awesome Peloton event. That would be so cool, especially because indoor events are going to be hard for however long that’s going to be a thing. It would be cool to have a Peloton outdoor event that everybody could join from everywhere. That would be cool.

Even us for riders, we have our own kit, as you know. Let’s celebrate your jacket for year five. Getting to the events, we always wear orange. It’s always some form of orange. Seeing the wash of orange that is being worn is quite incredible to get to the start even when you were cycling up to somebody else and going, “These are Road Riders. I came here to say hello.”

You instantly know. It’s like, “Those are my people.” You can see them easily because of the designs and everything because it is orange. It’s amazing.

It’s great when you do those road rides where you also deer hunt from the bike. It’s extra safe.

It’s the rifle over the shoulder is a bit of a problem, just don’t fall off.

After the first couple, you get the hang of it.

Tell us all about that.

Anything I love more than riding my bike is hunting.

I was thinking that you couldn’t give people that advice if you’ve never done that thing. You’ve had five kits. For everyone reading, he flashed up a graphic of all kits. I have two of those. When does the next design come out?

The next is in 2026. I’ve been on the design committee all five years. Every year, we put out something in about October and November and say, “Do you want to spend some more money, or should we design a new kit?” Almost uniformly, every year has been, “Let’s spend money.” You know how long it takes to put a podcast together. It takes a good month of arguing and cajoling to get an agreement. We have a design committee. There are only five of us, but still arguing and cajoling. We decided that wasn’t going to be a new kit until the tenth anniversary. That might be a surprise to a lot of people reading. I might get a lot of hate mail.

We know all about that. We get hate mail too. That’s five years, so that means you plan on having a Peloton. Peloton still being in business, everyone still being in the group on Facebook, and you’re still going to be admining. Five years is a long time to commit to all that.

Maybe I’ll be ousted, “Do you remember the great kit debate where Keith was no longer seen anymore?” Have you said that all five of these kits are still available? It’s not that we’re closing shop and saying, “If you haven’t joined the clan, you’re not in.” Nobody said that. There are only so many things you can do with orange. This is probably enough. Having said that, if there is a great demand, I’m sure we can come out of retirement and produce a new one, but I’ll give you that whether you know them or not. I’ll give you this two. One is for the 2021 kit, and for some reason, all the rest gets shifted to vintage.

Charge $10 more for the vintage. They will be like, “They must be worth more.”

At the very start, we thought about charging an extra $1 for every item and putting that towards good causes or whatever. It became such a nightmare that what we charge is cost. We got good discounts on the designs we use.

For people who have never put money aside for raising money for causes, it’s so complex in the way that all of the hurdles you have to clear and all the things you have to consider. It can be very difficult. I get that.

I’ll tell you what, just buy it. The cost is fine. When we have a charity event, you can contribute to that.

You’re not originally from the US. You didn’t have a straight line from the UK to the US. There’s a bit of a story there. You have a journey.

It started way back in 1989. I didn’t fly for the first time until 1989, which puts me at the tender age of 21. Whilst that probably sounds quite old being in London, I got to go to lots of places in Europe via ferries because there was no tunnel at that time. My first flight was a sixteen-hour flight to the Maldives for a scuba diving trip. That was quickly followed by six months sailing around Central America with 29 other Canadian crew members as we were on a Sail and Life Training Society ship, which pretty much was to sail, get to know each other, say hello, and work things through.

Subsequent to that, I’ve been on many trips. I’ve been to Africa and all around Asia. Those two trips themselves introduced me to so many cultures and civilizations that helped me in my work ethic. It’s always trying to understand other people and their problems and not just going, “Why don’t you understand me?” In 2000, I was offered a job for the company I was already working for in New York. Going back a few years from there, I used to work for Morgan Stanley.

At the time, we had a few people over from the US and UK that were working on the project, over the project, and leading the project that I was on. My girlfriend at the time said, “To let you know, if ever you are offered a job abroad and you turn it down, I will break both your legs.” A couple of things. One is that she hadn’t been on the two trips previously, so I didn’t have collected that ethic of understanding other people’s ideas. Four years later, she did become my wife, so I got over the threat. We came over in 2001.

We’re on a two-year contract and stayed until 2003 when the company that I was working for Deutsche Bank, in both instances, said that, “We have a good job for you in Germany. We need you to integrate some ideas in a bank business that we bought.” I went to Germany for three years. I did that work, and I’m like, “We should go back to the UK.” I’m still preparing to leave there, and my boss found me out again and said, “You need to come back to the US and sort some other stuff.” We came back and have been here since. I’d like to tell people what Brexit did before it was infamous and fashionable.

Seeing them calling you to sort things out, I thought like, “Fixing things Americans screw up.” Talk about job security. You were safe as a kitten. Do they call them kittens over there? We call them like Wembley rats. It sounds like something the British would say, Wembley rats.

You’ve been living here ever since. I realized that since everybody speaks the same language that it’s not as much of a shift. It would be hard from a cultural perspective to leave everything behind you’re used to, move from home to their country, you don’t have people you know and can rely on in the same way. That’s tough.

Once you’ve done it once, it’s easy to do it again and again. We had the kids in our first instance in New York. They were born in Manhattan. We dragged them off to Germany and back here. The first couple of times they were asked what their nationality was, they didn’t know. They were like, “Are we German? You’re English. Are we English?” To be honest, that’s funny, but if I was at their mind, it’s like, “Wherever you feel comfortable.” I used to say they have a great opportunity because they have European and US passports. The European one got a lot smaller.

Tell us about the Peloton Rider Cup. When does that happen? Tell us all the good stuff about that.

The Peloton Rider Cup was something I participated in, but I got fairly bored in it quickly because I kept reaching out saying, “Do you need me to help? What do we need to do?” I was the only rider that joined, not because everybody else turned it down, it’s because I was the only one that knew about it. Vernon Dias is a great guy who set up the event. He runs a website called Barkle.io, which is used to help people run challenges together. For anybody that doesn’t know that, check that out on Facebook as well. Peloton riders use it. There’s the UK Bulldogs and UK Lionesses.

There are few Facebook groups that already use that to run things like Power Zone rides. They put them together, so they didn’t have to worry about recording their stance. If you come along, he’s got things like doing the Paris challenge. He’s got the five rides up the volcano in Hawaii that Christine did. He put those all together so you can compete against other people doing them at the same time.

The point of the Rider Cup was when he said, “We’ve got enough people in Europe, the UK, and the US. Let’s have an event.” When I got to hear about it, the US men’s team was not quite 50 people. I said, “I’m a dual national. I became a citizen in 2018. I’ll ride for the US.” He said, “That’s great.” At the time, they were still in the heat for the US women, European women, and European men to get to the 50 people of each of those that were going to go on a ride. I was like, “This has got big quickly.”

Strangely, one of the downside changes as a result of the pause button was that we had to do a live ride. It was supposed to be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and Vernon’s daughter was due to be born around that date. He decided to move it up a week of that. It became the 21st, but it was good for the US side because there was a lack of turkey being pedaled at that time.

Vernon should change the name of it to the Turkey Vern.

It’s going to be an annual event, or at least that’s the plan.

He chose Christine’s climb ride on the Sunday before Thanksgiving as the rider because I had been acquainted with Christine. I dropped her a note and said, “There’s going to be 200 people on your ride that may or may not be following your prompts.” We had a little bit of an exchange, and she assigned a ride for the race, gave everybody shout-outs, and encouraged people on. It turned out to be the Dirty Dozen climb, which is a race around not necessarily the highest, but worst climbs in Pittsburgh.

It was a bit grueling, and you could follow the metrics. You didn’t have to go, “I’m going to go out for an hour, and we’ll see where we are.” I was like, “Let’s do these climbs, and we’ll end up where we are.” It could be a long story short. The US won by two points. It was pretty close. I spoke to Vernon that afternoon, and he said that the next event is going because there were a few complaints about, “I’m a Canadian. How can I not be on the US team? I’m from Azerbaijan, who do I ride for?”

It’s going to be a world cup, and it’s going to be a country against country starting in February 2021. If you want to be part of that, check out Barkle.io and on Facebook. I’ll try to promote it as much as I can around some of the other teams as well. It was a lot of fun. I got my PR to get one of the training rides and on the main rail. I got PRs on both of those. If that’s your thing, look it up.

She’s great about doing stuff like that. She jumps in. That’s awesome. You’ve also had a big year with your weight loss journey. Why don’t you share about that? I want to know what worked and what didn’t.

I was going to pick another graphic, but it’s a picture of me being fat.

It’s okay with us if you want to share.

I did send it to you so you can post it if you want, but it’s been there on my page. My weight loss journey has been the one where I’ve been dedicated to losing weight for a couple of years. It was hundreds of miles outside, on the Peloton, and God knows how many miles in the swimming pool and treadmill working out. It never did anything. To me, it’s three phases that come true.

One is you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, but everybody thinks they can. I spent six years thinking I could. The second is everything works, and nothing works if you’re looking for a quick fix. Anything you do will be a quick fix if you’ve got your mindset to that, but as soon as you feel, that weight will come back. The last one, which has become my mantra for the last year, is don’t worry about your diet, worry about your diet. Don’t get onto a diet. Don’t think, “I’ll pick a few in that.” Don’t pick intermittent fasting, thinking that will be the solution. Don’t pick weight watchers and think it will be the solution because they will work until you stop doing them. Pick something that will become your diet. You eat what your lifestyle is.

Make it a noun, not a verb.

Make it the way you live. I do intermittent fasting, which pretty much means I stopped eating sometime between 8:00 and 10:00, and I started eating again sometime between 12:00 and 4:00. Sometimes, I get up and go over breakfast. I know what that does and what that impacts. Occasionally, I’ll go out for a few beers with the boys. That doesn’t help either, but it also doesn’t make me a dull boy. You might disagree.

You have to have a lifestyle.

I’ve lost 45 pounds from last Thanksgiving to this Thanksgiving. I still want to lose some more. It’s now a case of finding a slightly different tweak to however many calories I’m eating in a day or something that I can support because I’m sure if I go for two weeks, it will work, and I’ll find myself back at 260 pounds and be depressed.

You don’t want to do that. The thing about that is that there are only so many levers there, like Angelo is always saying for a MetPro segment, “There are only so many levers. If you pull all the lovers and reduce how much you’re eating, there’s nowhere to go from there.” You’re eating as little as you can. Your metabolism is slowed down, so you’ve got to start increasing how much you eat a little bit at a time and do it all over again.

I love Peloton and running outside. The biggest difference to me has been introducing weight training. I must get your leaderboard name on Tonal.

It’s real easy. It’s Tom O’Keefe.

Mine’s strangely enough as same as it is on Peloton, but it’s not to the detriment of Peloton. Peloton is great for cardio. The community on Peloton is better because of its longevity. The community on Tonal is fantastic, too, especially the original Tonal page as opposed to the OPP, but let’s not get into that debate.

I don’t think it’s a debate.

It would be a debate if we posted it on the OPP.

We would get eviscerated there.

They would scream at us, telling us how wonderful they were.

The weight training does make a difference because you’re gaining lean muscle mass, so that’s going to make your frame smaller in addition to losing weight. Everything goes together. Tom has always said that whenever he’s lost weight through this process with Tonal, he has found that it has changed his shape. If he was that same weight five years ago, he would look heavier than he does now because of Tonal.

I’m constantly losing inches. To the extent, I’m trying not to go down that rabbit hole because I’m going to tell Tom to say something. Every couple of months, my wife is going to measure my neck. I’ve lost 33 inches in 2 years, which to me is huge. I bought some 36-inch waist jeans, which generally might sound a bit big, but I was wearing 42s.

I’m 180 now, and I’ve been 190 before, but I never could wear the size large in a t-shirt. I still had to wear an XL. I was moving to large when I was 190 this time. It changes your physical makeup.

Even by walking, I noticed that my shoulders were not tight to me. It’s fantastic.

Do you have a preferred instructor?

I generally stick to the Power Zone instructors for that structure. That’s Matt, Christine, Olivia, and Ben. That doesn’t mean that I don’t find Hainsby and Jess King great. I started doing Alex some rides as well, which I quite enjoyed, which is not my type of music at all, but I enjoyed the rides. There’s right out there for everybody. They have also introduced so many new instructors. On the Tread Plus, it’s Becs and Rebecca that I go there, and then Matt, whenever I want to be beaten up.

You can't out-exercise a bad diet. Share on X

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

This is an interesting moment because there’s advice for people who are entering road riding, and there’s a device for people for entering Peloton.

You can go road riding if you want. That’s okay.

The Peloton is the easy one. Don’t worry about the OPP. Find a tribe, but don’t do that on day one. Find out what you like first rather than joining a tribe and then do what they like. Get a ride with everybody more than once if you want, or cross off if you don’t like it, and just have fun. For the road ride, there’s a couple of things. If you don’t have a bike and yet you’re looking to buy one, find a local bike store. In fact, find more than one. Go in there and have a chat with the people. Don’t even buy a bike the first time you go in, and don’t buy the first bike you ride. You might end up buying the first bike you bought, like going shopping with my wife, she’ll buy the first pair of shoes she tries on, but not for another hour and a half.

Each bike store is obviously aligned to a manufacturer. Just because you like the one that’s in the first store, you’re not going to have the bikes of another manufacturer. That second manufacturer might be better for you with regards to the fit and the posts. Get to know your local bike store because there will be a lot of information as much as the road riders.

Join us. Even if you don’t ride outside yet, we’ll accept you. I can say that because it’s me that will be accepting you. You’ll get in, and you can ask as many questions as you like. We are supportive. Since I’ve been in the admin office, someone from Power Zone requested to join, and I have been there as the admin. We have kicked three people out for not agreeing with us. They were abusive. Everybody else has been friendly and accommodating.

It’s good that you keep it tight.

Check out local roads that you can ride as roadways. We’re always posting our own rides, “That is what we’re going to do on Sunday. This one is what we’re going to do next Tuesday.” You can ride with us, but also you can ride with anybody. If you join a good bike store, they will probably have local rides. They will have rides where the groups go A, B, C, and D, and you just join whichever one you think you’re going to be good with. They’ll have a group ride that will go as fast as they can, and if you can’t keep up, you’re dropped off the back, and they blow it down. They have no-drop rides, so whoever’s at the back is the pace of the group.

That’s the ride for me. I’m a little slower.

It’s for everybody. That’s why they do that. Thank you so much for joining us. Before we let you go, I’ll remind everybody where they can find you in all the various places.

I do Facebook as Keith Dyke. I’m on Instagram with @KDD23, but that’s sporadic. I keep trying to do more because my kids keep hassling me about it. There are so many things you can have in gadgets. We have certain bikes, and all the gadgets are out there.

That’s your limit. Your rule is one bike for each social media platform that you utilize. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it.

—

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 you Peloton great Shawn Woodbridge. She tells us amazing Peloton stories and includes her donating her kidney. It is quite a wild ride. It’s a great story. Make sure to stick around the next episode.

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 on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Wherever you get your podcasts from, be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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