TCO 260 | Biking For A Cause

260: Chelsea Jackson Roberts Pregnant, Matt Wilpers Engaged Plus Our Interview With Ryan Fields

TCO 260 | Biking For A Cause

 

  • John Mills joins us to discuss a new Guide-like competitor called Atlis.
  • Full Sail University’s Tech Lab is now powered by Echelon.
  • Dr. Jenn – Helping your kids have a healthy relationship with eating.
  • Chelsea Jackson Roberts is pregnant.
  • Matt Wilpers got engaged.
  • Jess King shows off her baby-bump for People Magazine.
  • Christine D’Ercole’s wedding is upon us.
  • Olivia Amato has make-up tips for when your working out.
  • Sam Yo recapped his L.A. trip on IG.
  • Angelo joins us to discuss
  • Barry McCarthy says selling a stake in Peloton is unlikely.
  • Is it time to stop using the phrase “pandemic stock?”
  • The Peloton app was having trouble with Apple Watches.
  • Precor/Peloton Commercial partners with Red Bull.
  • Peloton has a new SVP of Global Communications.
  • There are two new artist collaborations – Harry Styles and Norah Jones.
  • DJ Khaled is a Peloton member.
  • Rebecca Kennedy has a new standing core class.
  • There’s a new Peloton Apparel drop for Pride Month.
  • Birthdays – Jess King (5/29)

 

All this plus our interview with Ryan Fields!

Watch the episode here


 

Listen to the podcast here


 

Chelsea Jackson Roberts Pregnant, Matt Wilpers Engaged Plus Our Interview With Ryan Fields

You had your big Olive & June MANI masterclass. I like to think of it as a slumber party. It’s like girls are all hanging out, doing their nails. 

My nails are done.

It’s still sticking around.

Yeah, because Olive & June last a long time. That’s why I love them.

We didn’t even practice that.

It’s not an ad when you truly love them.

We have a screenshot of your slumber party.

This was at the very end. A bunch of people had already hung up, so you didn’t get everybody’s nails. Everybody showed the different colors they did at home. The lady in the upper left-hand corner, her name is Sarah. She was the one from Olive & June who was doing her nails. She used Larchmont, which was perfect because it was the same shade as the Peloton logo. That was on purpose. It’s not an ad, but if you wanted to get your own Olive & June, you can absolutely do that at OliveAndJune.com/tco. It’s 20% off, I do believe.

What else are we supposed to talk about here? You’re going to LA.

It’s a little sneaky jump off to LA. I’m going by myself. I can’t even remember the last time I traveled without you. That would have been five years ago. I’m going to LA and the You Get To Crew is doing a meetup. Karissa Bodnar, you might recognize that name. She is the owner and creator of Thrive Cosmetics. She put together a You Get To Crew meetup in LA. I am totally stoked about that. There are also a few other people that I’m getting to see. I’m very excited. Pictures will be coming.

We should also talk real quick while we’re doing some house cleaning stuff about the meetup we’re having in St. Louis. We still have tickets for that. If you want to go to the Yacht Rock concert. We should say that there has been a lineup change. Pablo Cruise has dropped off the bill. What that means is instead, we’ve replaced Pablo Cruise with two acts. Now you get The Babys. They had a lot of hits. You also get John Ford Coley from England Dan and John Ford Coley.

We’re going to do other fun things. If you want to come and you don’t want to go to the concert, let us know that too because we’ll have a separate list for those people. We would love to see you either way.

If you want more information about that, you can go to The Clip Out group and check events. It has all the stuff. We lost Pablo Cruise, but we swapped out a band with two and a half hits for two artists that have about 8 or 10 hits. We thickened it up. Now that we’ve done all that, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

John Mills is joining us and we’re going to be talking about competitor stuff. There’s this new device that connects to your TV. We got to talk about that. That’s not the Guide. It has nothing to do with Peloton. Echelon is up to something. We got to talk about that. There is a ton of instructor news, so many things we got to hit. Not to mention Peloton news. We got to talk about all that.

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 can find us. While you’re there. Be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. Maybe you leave a review if you would be so kind. You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Check out our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut, where you can watch all of these episodes. If you want to get all the articles and stuff we mentioned sent to you in one easy to use digest, sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com, which comes out weekly, typically on Sundays. You’ll have all the links in there for you so you don’t have to go hunting for them. There’s all that, let’s dig in. Shall we?

Let’s do it.

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

How is it going? What’s happening?

Let’s start with a couple of stories that you pointed out. The first is about a new device called Altis.

Altis is a company that’s based in Miami, Florida. One of the folks that are in my group happened to be watching their local news, and the local news was doing a story on this product by this company out of that area. It’s a company called Altis. I guess they’ve been creating this product for a couple of years. What was interesting about it is it sounds like the Guide. It’s a device that sits on your TV and it reflects your image on the screen next to instead of an instructor, it’s a computer-generated image of a person reflecting what you’re doing.

It allows you to monitor your form and it gives you form feedback. That’s the difference from the Guide. It is saying things that tell you, “Lift your arms and go deeper in that squat,” or what have you. It has the computer vision, the form feedback, and it’s doing the rep counting, and then it’s creating programs based on your level of progression. It tells you what you should be doing and what you should work on next. I sounded like a Guide with some extra bells and whistles.

By some, you mean a whole bunch.

By some, I mean a lot.

It’s interesting because when I see the pictures, it reminds me of the Kinect back in the day that was on the Xbox. They had all these fitness games that you could do when the Kinect first came out. The reason I say that it reminds me of that is because when you would do a move and you weren’t lined up correctly, it could see your joints and it would tell you, “Here’s where you’re off.” That’s why I’ve been saying for a long time now that a lot of these cameras, I feel like they’re reminiscent of Kinect.

I do think that Altis is taking it a step further and saying, “Based on what you’re doing, we can indicate what classes you should be taking.” I don’t feel like anybody has successfully done that with the camera feedback yet. I think that’s something different. It will be interesting to see, especially because this isn’t out widely yet. I feel like this is the worst time to be putting something like this out on the market.

It is such a crowded space.

That’s what I thought as well. It’s like a lot of these players had been working on products when it was a good time.

It takes years to develop a product like this. It’s not like they started that six months ago and they should have known better. At the time, they were like, “We’re going to break new ground,” and then it was like, “Crap.”

They were at it for a couple of years. They’re now at the point where they could start taking orders Right at this point when this space is all saturated. They’re trying to do something similar to another product that I can’t remember the name of. It was a guy that came into my Clubhouse. He was from Australia and they’ve got a whole new strength training product as well that they’re about to drop that they have been working on for years, but they’re trying to go B2B. This company, Altis, are trying to appeal to not the consumer but also to hotels. They want this in hotel rooms all over the place. They announced it at a Hyatt. Now, they’re trying to work a deal with Hyatt hotels.

I do think that’s smart. That is something that a lot of people when they’re traveling want to have access to.

It’s what we talked about before. More and more people don’t want to go to the gym, even if it’s the hotel gym in the same building. They’re getting used to working out at home, having an option baked into your hotel room.

That does beg the question if it’s in your hotel room, now you’ve got to store weights or something or figure out a way to do that. I’m not sure how that would work because I don’t know if you guys know this, but people are not known for being respectful whenever they go to hotel rooms. I’m just putting that out there.

I wonder if maybe the hotels do a thing where they bring weights to your room if you decide to use it, or you check them out with the driver’s license or something like that. I do feel like hotels are maybe trying to move towards phasing out their gyms. That’s a space that doesn’t generate revenue. If they can flip that square footage into something that generates revenue like a restaurant or a banquet room, having the ability to workout in your room could easily offset the investment of putting a device like this in a hotel room, especially in the more upscale hotels. They could even have where every room gets an Altis or a Guide, but then for $40 a night more, we put a Peloton in your room.

I remember one year, Erica and I were going to Homecoming. It may have been the last one we went to. I don’t remember, but we stayed at a hotel that Peloton suggested.

It was that one up the street because it had Peloton all over it. We stayed there too and it was branded Peloton when you walked in. Everything was Peloton all over it.

In our room, I don’t know what the device was, but there was some device in our room for getting a workout in. We had a screen and you were supposed to follow along, but I don’t remember what it was. I remember thinking when I saw it, I didn’t know the maker. I didn’t know who the company was. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to workout in my room. I would rather go down to the gym.” I didn’t even try it. It looked cool and pretty neat, but my mind was like, “The gym is down there and there Peloton is down there, so I would rather just go down there.”

I get that, especially if you’re at a Peloton event and there’s a Peloton down there.

If you would have been able to get a Peloton in your room, would that have changed anything?

That may have changed things. You’re right. It may have been specifically because I was a Peloton fan and I want to do Peloton content, and that content didn’t appeal to me. I remember thinking that the trainer looked generic and the work stuff they were doing look generic.

Obviously, in a lot of hotels, especially in a big city like New York or San Francisco, those rooms might not have the footprint to put Peloton in. We talked about a hotel that was doing it where they had set aside rooms with Peloton and you could rent for $25 an hour.

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You would stay in your room, but then they had these other rooms blocked off and then you would use it. It would be like a personal room for an hour, then it would get cleaned in between the next one. You would have your own space to work out, but it would be a room that’s just for you. I liked that.

It makes me wonder if gyms are starting to get phased out of hotels in favor of something like this. Especially when you figure that square footage in some hotels is going to be at such a premium. Giving up 3 or 4 hotel rooms to put in a restaurant or whatever that can generate revenue, unlike a gym. A gym is a perk and people might choose a hotel based on the quality of the gym.

It doesn’t bring in revenue in the same way.

Especially when they’re like, “We can bring it right to your room.” You’ve probably been doing it at home anyway.

We can charge you an additional fee.

Now, instead of the gym being this free thing you have access to, the gym “concept” is generating revenue, and what used to be the gym can also generate revenue.

You will always have some places that don’t do that, but I see that happening in more and more places based on this type of thing that we’re seeing. I think that’s going to be happening.

When I was looking at this thing, I’m thinking if this thing catches, it was like when Tempo Move came out. I don’t think the Guide was out yet. We were like, “Isn’t that like the Guide?” Then the Guide drops. Now, this thing dropped. To me, it shines a brighter light on the capabilities of the Guide. You start to start to wonder, when will those capabilities make it to the Guide?

Why aren’t they? When we were talking about this and I’m watching the B-roll and the news story play, my thought was, “Do you think these people want to sell these things or was this only built to be acquired? We’ve created this technology and we figured out how to do this, and you could buy us and be done and make us into what you’re already producing. We’ve already coded it.”

That’s a good point. Somebody in my group had a similar thing like, “I wonder if they’re going be acquired.” I thought the irony would be if iFIT acquires it.

Peloton might look at it and go, “These are the things we’re trying to do. We haven’t gotten there yet. Instead of spending all these labor hours to try to get there, we could just buy this and make it done.” On the flip side, if your iFIT and you feel like you should have a Guide equivalent, one check and you’re there. Also, you found a story about Full Sail University.

I’ve never heard of that.

I got to give you guys a statistic that May posted. She’s in the industry where she helps people get placed in colleges and things like that. She’s in the know about the university world. She quickly looked up some stats about Full Sail University. I don’t remember all of what she said. It’s down there in the comments of this particular article. What I do remember that stuck out to me was the graduation rate is 29%. I have never heard of that being a university.

She eventually removed it. I was challenging the context of that so she removed it, but good point. Echelon partners with them with the idea that Echelon is going to fund this lab, and then there will be this equipment. The students there can use that as part of their projects. They’re learning technology, and then Echelon benefits because they might get some innovative thoughts out of what these students are doing for free. That was the context. That idea is what I was posting. I thought that was pretty neat. They shell a little bit of money out. The university has some kids there that might give you some ideas.

On top of that, they might become vested in your company. Now you got young minds that in the future are sticking with Echelon and might get other people to come to Echelon because they started in that in college. I thought it was a pretty neat concept, then May brought up the fact that Crystal was talking about, “I don’t know how good is this university. Their graduation rate is so low. They’re not only in person, but they’re also online. It’s 50/50 online and in person.” There were these questions about their viability as a university.

That could be a tough metric to judge something by too because some schools aren’t designed to necessarily graduate students. I don’t mean that in a shitty way. Maybe you go there and take a continuing education course to get more advanced in your field or more knowledge in your field, but you’re not looking to get a degree from there. I don’t know if that sort of stuff gets factored into those numbers or how that works.

That’s where I was. I wasn’t quite sure how they factored in. I was like, ”I don’t know if we should be talking about graduation rate because what does that say, that a corporation shouldn’t support education facility because their graduation rate is low? Where are we going with this?”

It is an interesting debate in terms of the cart before the horse in terms of whether you should provide more resources to a school that has a low graduation rate to help the people that aren’t graduating, or is that low graduation rate indicative of a school that isn’t very good or a for-profit school and is churning people for the student loan money?

It’s a slippery slope to start getting into that dicey conversation. I tried to pull it back to just about the context.

II feel like it’s still a relevant statistic to at least consider given that there are so many universities out there that have a much higher percentage, whether they’re for-profit or not-for-profit. I find the concept interesting and still worth noting to me. I feel like that’s worth noting.

It may have played who would have accepted that partnership. I hear you there. I think that’s why she removed it because I started thinking that that’s a slippery slope. I don’t know if she started talking about that right now.

It’s a fascinating argument that was far removed from Peloton. I do find that concept interesting of when is that indicative of a bad school, and when is that indicative of a school that needs more resources.

Either way, I will give Echelon props for coming up with a unique way to come up with research. I don’t think you’re going to hear me say that very often.

I will say it’s not all that unique.

TCO 260 | Biking For A Cause

 

It’s different from what everybody else’s doing in connected fitness. They didn’t just follow what Peloton did or they didn’t just follow what the Mirror did. I’m giving them points for that, but the concept itself is not unique. I realize that.

That’s what I learned. When I posted it, I thought it was unique. I was like, “This is unique.” Then people came like, “No, Apple already does that.” They start to tell me about other people that do that. The question I was asking was, should Peloton do that? Should Peloton go collaborate with a university and build them a lab and have interns in classes at universities and help them with innovation for free?

Right now, the optics are so weird for them. Every time they do something that isn’t directly generating revenue, people scream bloody murder about it, “You laid off these people but you can do this. You laid off these but you can do that.” I get that but you also need to do what’s right for the company. It’s not like we’ll sit here and try to water until we can hire everybody back. That’s not how it works.

I can appreciate that because Peloton donated money to some organization. I don’t remember what it was, but my first investor thought was, “Why are you giving away money? You have no money.”

That was the week you weren’t able to be on the show. I had seen that you wrote that. I did bring that point up in our show because of that. I didn’t say it was just from you but in general. My point is I don’t think you were the only person asking that question. I think it is a fair question to be asking.

I asked the question and then I went, “That’s a good place to donate money.” What side of that I should be on?

You can be both, in my opinion. You’re not saying that you shouldn’t donate to good causes. You are saying, “If you guys are thinly capitalized, then why are you giving money away?” I think both are fair questions to ask. It all has to do with taxes and all kinds of crap.

It’s a different budgetary line item. It’s a whole corporate structure.

It’s weird. You just said that you’ve spent $700 and some odd million in a quarter. You then said, “We got a $750 million loan that nobody knew about. By the way, we have about $8 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand.” What does that mean? You would have been at zero. What is this telling me? “By the way, I just donated some money.” I was just using my layman John Mills home checkbook budgeting scenarios. I would have gone, “I can’t donate this month because I got no money. I just borrowed some. I can’t donate to the Fireman’s fund this month. I just borrowed from Western Union.”

Sorry, UNICEF. It’s not happening. Thank you so much for joining us and finding those articles. Those are always interesting.

Also, all of your fabulous commentary. It’s the best.

Until next time, where can people find you?

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.

Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and Sports Psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She has written four bestselling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide To Improving Your Communication, Connection and Intimacy. It’s Dr. Jenn. Welcome back.

It’s good to be back.

We’re so glad to have you. We have lots of Clip Out questions for you. People need help. Kristin Schuster wrote in because she has a twelve-year-old daughter who dances. She’s trying to encourage some healthy eating with her daughter. She feels like overall, her daughter does well, but the girls come to dance class with large Starbucks drinks that are loaded with calories, sugar and caffeine.

Although her daughter dances many hours a day, Kristin tries to come at it from the angle of, “You’re an athlete and you need to fill your body with good fuel.” Of course, she wants to eat what the other kids are eating. Her concern is they have a strong history of obesity in her family and she has a history of disordered eating. She wants her to grow up with good eating habits without making her daughter have a complex about it. How does she do this?

I love this question. I also love her awareness of her own anxiety and her own issues. As parents, that is one of the keys to us parenting well. I have a few pieces of advice. The first is to watch any diet talk. Diet talk is anything that is diet culture. It is talking about things in terms of good foods and bad foods. It’s talking about your body in negative ways. It’s talking about, “I’m so fat or I gained weight.” It’s all of that negative food and body talk that unfortunately, women tend to do amongst each other. Sometimes we think, “My kids aren’t hearing me,” but when they’re in the other room, you’re talking on the phone to your girlfriend, “I ate so much this weekend. I’ve probably gained 5 pounds. I hate the way I look.”

You’re basically teaching your daughter how to talk to herself. It’s important to be aware. If you are struggling with those issues, then you want to work with someone who is a therapist or a registered dietician who has an understanding of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is the next part of the answer to her question. You want to encourage your daughter to listen to her body and also look at how her body responds to different foods. I don’t believe in good foods and bad foods. As soon as we start doing that, we start feeling guilty about certain foods. What the studies have shown is that when you withhold certain foods from yourself or your child, when your child or you are then around those foods, you tend to lose control.

There’s a very different experience if you eat something that you’re like, “That made me feel sick. That gave me gas. I couldn’t get through my workout. I had stomach cramps,” and then you go, “I’m not going to eat that next time,” as opposed to, “That’s bad. That’s fattening.” That kind of thinking is what leads to eating disorders when we start labeling foods like that. What happens is that we start to say, “That’s bad. If I ate it, I must be bad,” especially for kids. A lot of the time, there’s a lot of that talk amongst each other, “I was so bad this weekend.” I see this on Instagram all the time, “I was bad.”

It drives me crazy because it’s very eating disorder thinking and it’s very diet culture thinking. What we want to do is to teach our kids to honor their bodies by listening to their bodies and asking their bodies what they want, by asking them how they felt after a certain meal. if your daughter wants to be having Starbucks with their friends, in my family, we talked a lot about grow foods when my kids were little. What foods would help them grow and be strong as opposed to good foods and bad foods?

What we want to do is talk about foods and nutrients that will help give you energy versus ones that are just fun foods. Not bad foods but fun foods that are fun to eat. Everybody likes to eat them and it’s good to eat them. We also want to make sure we give our bodies the food that they need to have fuel. It’s important for her to be exploring in her own therapy and her own anxieties about her weight and her daughter’s weight. Last but not least, there are a few books that I would recommend. I would recommend Intuitive Eating by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. I would also recommend Geneen Roth’s book, Breaking Free From Emotional Eating. Those are two of my absolute favorites.

That was a lot. I love how there were very actionable items in all of your advice. You always give great advice.

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Thank you. One other book I would recommend is How To Get Your Kids To Eat: But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter.

I love that you can rattle off the authors with the titles. That’s very impressive.

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

On social media, on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat @DrJennMann, and also every week at InStyle Magazine online. Hump Day With Dr. Jenn is my weekly column where I give relationship and sex advice.

Another week, another pregnant instructor.

That seems to be what we’re doing now. Let me just say, we have more coming. At least two. It’s coming very soon.

I don’t know what they put in the water over there but apparently, it’s semen.

Whatever it is, it’s very effective. Congratulations to Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts. She’s pregnant with her first child with her husband. They’re both super excited about it. Her husband’s name is Shane. Tom, you might remember that Dr. Roberts is always on with Jennifer Garner. They go on live. She told Jennifer Garner on one of the lives and it was a very sweet moment. It was in that article that you moved off of. If you scroll, you would be able to see the reaction. She started crying. It was sweet.

They clearly have to be orchestrating this because they have multiple instructors expecting simultaneously. I feel like there’s some sort of chat thread where it’s like, “How far along are you?”

I think their PR team is like, “You do this, you do this, then next week we’ll have it,” because it’s once a week. I would say in the next two weeks, we’re going to have at least one more, and then I would say in the next two weeks, we’ll have one more after that. It’s very exciting. Chelsea’s little baby bump could not be cuter. It’s adorable.

Watch this space and pretty soon, right when we’re done announcing the pregnancies we will start to announce births.

Here’s the interesting thing. What is going to happen when all of these women are out on maternity leave at the same time. Is anybody wondering about that?

They have like 75 instructors now.

They have 54, but I have a theory about this. My theory is one of the reasons that classes have been light is because they’re already filming classes for when they’re going to be gone. That’s what I think is happening. You have all these classes they’re trying to get built up and banked. That’s what I think we’re doing.

From one milestone to another Matt Wilpers has gotten engaged.

Jessica Li is his new fiance. He put this out on Instagram on Friday. It’s always harder to tell a proposal is coming than a baby for obvious reasons. it’s hard to speculate. We think there are other people that are getting engaged at Peloton, but I feel like even the guys are harder to tell than the women. You never know what’s going on. He’s been with her for three years. He has now made it official.

It’s funny because I know the take on Power Zone is that it’s not fun. It’s analytical. It’s super focused on numbers and data. It’s not super emotional or fun. I think you can see it summed up in the pull quote in this article from Matt Wilpers on his engagement, “I look forward to our future together.” That exudes romance.

I agree. That sums up. You could see him being very earnest, but also very serious.

I’m going to start signing all our anniversary cards that way, “I look forward to our future together.”

Congrats to Matt Wilpers and his fiance.

People Magazine is spotlighting Jess King as she does her first maternity shoot.

She showed off that baby bump in People Magazine.

Now the child’s college has been paid for.

TCO 260 | Biking For A Cause

 

People Magazine is good for that. All the instructors are going through major milestones this year so they’re all getting a payout. She’s sharing a lot. She has been very excited and apparently struggling with body image during this time, which I hope she’s able to give herself some grace about because first of all, she’s fine being “average size.”

That has to be a culture shock because you’re a fitness instructor and your whole job is your body. She spent her entire adult life basically sculpting her body through fitness. Now she can’t control what it’s going to do. She can to some degree, but to a lot of degrees, she can’t.

It’s like when you started exercising after having said for 50 years that you would never exercise. It’s a shift in who you are and your identity. I’m only comparing the two because it’s such a shift in her identity since her body is her identity and she uses it publicly being in fitness. That’s really a public look.

By virtue of definition, she’s on display in that regard, whether she wants to be or not.

The best to Jess King as well.

I need a new sweeper just for milestones. Christine D’Ercole’s wedding is just around the corner.

It’s on Saturday. She’s married on Saturday and she’ll be back on Monday. I’m glad she’s taking time off. To be fair, it’s a “See you Monday.” I’m actually not sure if this was from a few days ago. Was that Sunday when she’s saying that she would see us Monday?” I cannot tell if she meant that she was going to be gone, but she’s getting married. That’s the important thing. Congrats to Christine.

I think it’s safe to say that Christine has the means to do whatever she wants for her honeymoon. If she’s not taking one, it’s because she does not want to take it. PopSugar sat down with Olivia Amato with tips. For this, she had some high heel shoes that people were sharing because they’re very tall like platform ‘70s style.

They are almost as tall as she is. They’re like 5 to 6 inches tall, but she has a secret for walking in them and she shares it in PopSugar. I don’t know that secret. Honestly, I don’t care. I would never wear shoes like that.

Please don’t because I’m already short. Don’t add 6 inches to your height.

I would definitely fall over and die if I tried. No matter what her secret is, it’s not going to work for me.

You’ll spend the whole time holding on to me.

I would be like, “Walk right in front of me and let me hold onto your shoulders.” What would be the point of wearing them?

If you would like more tips, we have tips from Emma Lovewell on how to wear makeup while you sweat during a workout.

This has got to be a crazy thing for the women who wear makeup while they teach a class. It’s so much sweat. She talks about relying on primer, which I can definitely see why that is important because it fills everything in. The makeup sits on top of it and sticks to it. You would definitely need that. I can’t imagine all the layers because she talks about now you put on a liquid base, and then now there’s going to be waterproof mascara. All of these things make sense. It’s just a lot of liquid and a lot of layers you got to put on.

I have a boy question or at least to this because some boys are wearing makeup. Is this something anyone other than a fitness instructor would care about? Do women wear makeup when they’re working out if they’re not on display in the capacity of an instructor like this?

First of all, there are a whole lot of people that do selfies when they’re done working out. I think that there are people and people that go into the studio, I know that we have males do that in two years. When I was there, there were legit people putting on makeup so that when they got done with their class and they took their picture with their instructor, they look good. It’s totally a thing. However, the different tips that you’re getting here would still be great for anything. Let’s say you have an outdoor wedding and it’s super hot. I think it could be used for multiple things. It just happens to be her secret for the bike.

If it can withstand a workout, it can withstand a 90-degree outdoor wedding. Sam Yo went to LA and gave us a nice recap of his adventures on Instagram.

He went to LA and he was there for 72 hours. I’m not clear what he was doing but it looks like a lot of fun because there’s a step and repeat wall and I see Disney and Metta.

Also Procter & Gamble.

I don’t know what he was doing but it looks like he had a fabulous time. Are any of these people famous? Do we know?

Not to me but they might be. There are so many different ways to be famous these days.

Also, all of these people are young. Just because we don’t recognize them doesn’t mean a thing.

He had a good time in LA.

Not everybody wants to go and do certain events, but everybody, at one point in their life has been on a bike. Share on X

He definitely had a good time. I love whenever the instructors share their journeys.

Joining us once is Angelo from MetPro here to answer all of your nutrition questions.

Thank you for coming back despite your busy crazy week.

It has been a busy crazy week, but I am glad to be here.

I know that Margaret Folkman Robertson is going to be happy that you’re here because she is trying to figure out how to eat and when. Should it be before or after a workout. How does she get enough protein every day? It’s tricky without using a shake or supplement.

I’m doing it during the workout.

This is why we don’t let you answer questions.

Crystal is like, “That’s why the Tonal has been sticky.” There’s a worse option.

I’m going to change the topic. I’m going to tell you about Fran with cheeseburgers. Back in the day when we were doing CrossFit workouts, there was the dare that you had to do Fran, which is a named workout, and then eat a cheeseburger. If you get through it without hurling, then you apparently were manly, I guess. I don’t know what the thing is.

I feel sorry for your custodial staff. I picture your janitor over there going, “This is a great idea. Thanks a lot.”

Guess who the custodial staff was back in the day, Tom. You are looking at him. That’s the way it works. Margaret had a question, how to eat, when to eat, and how to get enough protein. I’m presuming she’s hitting her workouts and trying to position around that. Margaret, if you’ve listened to our segment, the answer is always it depends.

What will help the listeners is to tell us what your goal is. Is my primary goal performance, to increase or decrease my run time for a mile, or my marathon time, or to hit a PR on the Peloton, or to hit a PR on my Tonal, or whatever the case may be. My goal is to lose 10 pounds and I’ve already lost 15 and now I’m stuck. If we get a little bit more context, then I can be even more specific with my comments.

As general advice, when it comes to these topics, what you want to do is eat frequently without putting yourself in line for digestive upset. You’ve heard that you should eat before you exercise and have breakfast. If you’re about to exercise and it makes you nauseous or gives you an upset stomach, it’s not the end of the world if you eat right after. Try to get some fuel in you before, and then try to get a little bit of fuel in you after.

As a general rule, when somebody starts with us in MetPro, we make it simple because people say, “How many times a day should I eat? What time should I eat?” Everyone wakes up at a different time, goes to bed at a different time, and has a different schedule and lifestyle. What I want you to do is, generally speaking, try to eat breakfast within about an hour of waking up. Breakfast stands for break fast. You’ll notice that when you break fast, it forces your metabolism to turn on, which is why when you have a light breakfast, you are actually hungrier for lunch. Most people realize that. Most people say, “That is true. Why does that happen?” Because your metabolism is actually turning on.

If you have breakfast within about an hour of waking up, then figure out a reasonable and ideally consistent time you can have lunch and dinner, and then a snack in between. If there’s not enough time for a snack between breakfast and lunch, try to at least position a small snack between lunch and dinner. That snacking window is the priority. It is less convenient. Most people don’t stop what they’re doing at 3:00 for a snack. The amount of time that elapses between lunch and dinner is usually much greater than it is between breakfast and lunch.

An afternoon snack can have profound positive impacts on blood sugar stabilization, appetite control and routine. If you can just do one meal a day, believe it or not, pack an afternoon snack, breakfast and then an afternoon snack. As far as the protein for Margaret, there is nothing wrong with supplementary protein. That’s what it was designed for. It was designed for people who don’t have time to cook and elaborate high protein meals and eat throughout the day. The people that started using it were bodybuilders. They were trying to get more protein throughout the day and they needed a convenient way of doing it.

What happened is marketing has twisted it a little bit over the years to be, “The protein powders for weight loss.” No. Protein is to get extra protein. If you want weight loss, then when you eat, I want you to eat something as satiating as possible. I would actually rather you consume protein that’s going to fill you up. Protein powder is not going to do that. Where protein powders come in is if you’re not hungry, you’re short on time and you want to get an infusion of protein.

Plan to have consumable protein at lunch and dinner, and then if you want to supplement once or twice a day, I personally use a vegan protein powder. I think it works good for me, but there are lots of brands, lots of types of protein out there that are high in protein, low in carbs, and low in calories that work excellently for that. Hopefully, Margaret, that will help you reason a little bit and figure out when you want to position things and how to spread out your meals.

That was very helpful for Margaret.

Thank you so much for all that. If people would like this nutritional information tailored for them in their fitness journeys, where can they find you?

Come on over and talk to us at MetPro.co/tco. We’d love to visit.

Thank you.

The Financial Post is reporting that Peloton selling a stake in itself is unlikely.

Yes, because their cash position is pretty comfortable.

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This is coming from CEO Barry McCarthy, who told us that the monthly membership fee wouldn’t be going up.

He also said that they were thinly capitalized, but then they got their $750 billion loan.

They’re picking that up. They got a little capitalization Viagra. Now they’re good to go. If your capitalization lasts for more than four hours, consult your physician. What do they do if it lasts for more than four hours?

I don’t know. I wonder if they give you steroids or something because whenever I had a bad migraine, it lasted 48 hours. It was so bad that laying down hurt my head. I had to just sit there. They gave me steroids for it and they said that it reduces the inflammation. I don’t know if it’s considered inflammation.

My thought was they show you pictures of ugly people. Anyway, back to this.

Barry McCarthy, we talked about in the last episode that he was going to be on a speech. Actually, it’s not that we talked about it. To be fair, I saw it in John’s group, Run, Lift and Live. I said, “Dear God, somebody get Barry a muzzle.” That’s what it was because usually, it would be Jill Woodworth that had done the talk. She did it in 2021, but it was Barry now in 2022. He talked about some other things. There are a bunch of quotes in here from him.

“At the current price, you have to be a moron to sell equity unless there’s some spectacular increase in value.”

That’s definitely Barry.

I think he acknowledges that the share prices are so low. It’s like he’s giving it away. He does not expect it to stay at this price point and so he’s not going to sell now.

I agree. It’s just that it’s such a Barry thing to say, “Freaking morons.”

I know that on the one hand, people are like, “Get him someone to teach him.” On the other hand, there’s something to be said for transparency. You know where he stands.

These financial people who follow Peloton, I feel like there are two major groups of people who follow Peloton closely like we do. One, it’s the people like me that love Peloton. I watch every move they make and there’s a whole bunch of us out there like that, then there’s also a whole other group of people and they are the financial people. They’re all the businessy types. They love Barry. The people who are like me that love Peloton and who Peloton is, we’re not so sure about Barry, but then you have these financial people, they all love Barry. I don’t get it.

The financial people are not in love with the product. To them, that’s a selling point. They need somebody that’s going to make unbiased decisions that aren’t caught up in a “vision.” Vision is great as long as it’s working. They want someone that’s going to go and make hard choices and he doesn’t seem scared to do it. Now, we’ll see if they work.

He’s out there making them.

People talk about the vision of Walt Disney. There were a lot of years where Walt Disney, as an investment, crap the bed for a long time. For decades, that company was treading water because they were visionary and he was. As soon as that company made a nickel, he would pull out $0.10 and do something crazy like build a theme park.

It happened to pay off so now we look back at it and we’re like, “He’s so smart. He’s a genius.”

Even in the ’80s, it was still touch and go if Disney World was going to stay afloat. It took a long time for it to get solidified in a way that you’re like this thing is never going to go away because it’s that big. In some ways, he was a visionary. In some ways, he has succeeded in spite of himself, not because of it. It’s hard to disentangle sometimes.

At the end of the day, we’re all human, including Barry, including Walt Disney. There are some things that are positive and there are some things that are not. I thought this was an interesting article.

It’s not necessarily Peloton specific.

It mentions Peloton.

How can it not? The headline is It’s time to retire the phrase Pandemic Stock and here’s why. If you ask the average person the name pandemic stock, people are going to be like Netflix, Zoom, and Peloton.

They have a whole bunch of reasons why. It’s an interesting article. I thought it was interesting to bring up. Regardless of where you fall like you think you should or you think you shouldn’t, I think that it will. I know it’s hard to believe but in five years, we’re not going to think of it as a pandemic stock anymore. It will just be stocks. Assuming all those companies survive, they will all just be stocks. It will be a whole new set of circumstances and things by then. Everyone will have forgotten how we got there.

I agree. It will be just an interesting footnote. There were some issues with Apple Watches and the Peloton app.

Here’s the deal. This isn’t an issue. It’s done. Apple Watch Series 1 and 2, apparently, are considered defunct, obsolete, whatever you want to call it. It’s not from Peloton but from everyone and Apple. If you have a 1 or 2 and you use with Peloton, you can’t anymore. Now is the time to upgrade. Now, 3 appears to be on the bubble. Officially, it should in theory work because it should have the latest software updates from Apple.

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However, there are people that are reporting no issues and there are people reporting that it has come off their watch and there’s no way to get it back. Their watch is out of space to be able to put Peloton on there. That’s where we are. Regardless of if it’s working or it’s not, my suggestion to you is it’s time to upgrade because the days are numbered. If I were, I’d go straight to the 7 because you know how these things work. They’re going to come out with ten more. Go straight to the big ones.

Future-proof yourself. Precor and Red Bull have announced a partnership. Precor of course now being Peloton Commercial. Why does the headline say Precor when they said that they’re now Peloton Commercial?

I don’t know. That was one of the reasons I included this. I thought it was interesting. Maybe because from an SEO standpoint, people know Precor.

At other times, we’re saying people put Peloton in the headline because that drives clicks.

This is different because this is commercial and Peloton is not known for commercial yet. I don’t know. That’s just my guess. I have no idea. I’m guessing everything. It’s a new world. Going forward, we can’t go by what happened in the past with Peloton. It’s all based on new events. At any rate, there’s this partnership and they’re going to equip the new 3000 square-foot state of the art fitness facility at Technology Campus.

Red Bull Racing has invested in this Technology Campus in Milton Keynes. It’s going to be all state of the art high performance fitness and well-being, fully equipped. That’s pretty cool that Precor is going to be doing that. Regardless of why they’re calling it that, I think it’s good for Peloton. That sets a very good precedent since it’s the first major thing that has been announced since they started officially calling it Peloton Commercial.

Peloton has a new Senior Vice President of Global Communications.

I can’t remember his first name. The interesting thing about this is he does not report to Barry. He reports to Dara who’s also an SVP. That’s just weird.

You look like you have thoughts about that means something.

Because SVPs don’t report to other SVPs. In any other company that I’ve worked in, they both would report to Barry. Why is Dara not another level above the sky? It’s very weird.

We will watch the space.

We have two new Artists Series, both from people I’ve heard of. I don’t feel as old.

Harry Styles is young and very hip.

He’s so well known that even old people like me could not name a single Harry Styles song.

I thought I liked him, then I did one of the classes and I was not blown away. That’s okay because I don’t need to like all the music that we put out there. I was bummed because like you, Tom, I was excited. It was somebody I recognized and I was like, “I’m going to know the songs,” but I didn’t.

I know him from movies. He was in Dunkirk. I forget if he’s Warlock or something. He’s one of the new Marvel characters that they did a post-credit scene with.

I don’t know, but the next one is Norah Jones. Do you remember the early 2000s when Nora Jones was everywhere? She’s back and she’s got a new album and of course, it dropped. Can I do a complete segue on something I did not include but wanted to because I didn’t want to include the video because it was a story? Can I go off on him? A little tangent if you will.

Sure, it’s your show.

Here’s the interesting thing about this. DJ John Michael posted this long story and he was like, “I see what you guys post about all of these artists series. I would like to tell you how I feel about it.” He was going on and on about everybody has their favorites. Everybody has this and everybody has that. He was like, “Here’s the deal. You don’t just go to the store and you’re like, ‘I would like a Norah Jones artists series. Got it. Thanks. Bye.’ It doesn’t work like that. These collaborations, we work on for years. Just because it’s your favorite artist does not mean your favorite artists want to work with us.”

Even if they do, they’re going to time it to the release of a new record or book.

Sometimes the artists aren’t feeling it. Sometimes they’re feeling it, but they want to wait until a new record, new album or whatever. Sometimes they want to wait until they have a tour. Sometimes they want to wait until they have a book coming out. He’s like, “We have to do it based on what they want, not what we want. We hear you that you want these things and there are just some things that are out of our control.”

It’s funny because I deal with this where I work all the time. I book concerts, for people that don’t know. Other people in the building are like, “I don’t know why he doesn’t get Lady Gaga.” I’m like, “First off, our venue is too small for Lady Gaga so you don’t know what you’re talking about. Also, you don’t just go to the concert store and be like, ‘Let’s see, I’ll take a Lady Gaga. I’ll take a Taylor Swift.’ It does not work like that. It’s not like I don’t know that those artists are popular, but thanks for your input. Now, go back to your department.”

It’s so much harder than people think it is.,

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I feel you, DJ John Michael.

I thought that you would like hearing that because you like that behind the scenes type of stuff from a music standpoint. I also thought it was nice that he was like, “Here’s the deal.” He did it in his very DJ John Michael way.

We have a new Peloton member celebrity sighting. This one was sighted by Alex Toussaint and he shared it.

I apologize for the horrible image. I was trying to capture it because these stories go away before I get a chance. By the time we record it, they’re gone.

It’s DJ Khaled. He posted on his tread.

He was doing a class at his tread and he was actually doing a scenic class. He was doing the newest one with Mariana from Puerto Rico. How cool is that?

Rebecca Kennedy has a new set of strength classes, standing core.

It’s all core classes but the idea is you don’t have to get on the floor. A lot of classes include planks or sit-ups or crunches, and things like that. None of that is in this class. She has all of these different things that you do and the different moves like crunches, but you might do side crunches instead of laying on your back and touching your toes back and forth. It’s 15, 20-minute classes, all standing core. This is good for people who have limited mobility. This is awesome. I’m very glad to see it. Thank you so much for making sure this happens, Rebecca. We appreciate it.

Also, there is a new Peloton apparel drop, this time to support Pride Month. I saw people making fun of the fact that they feature hoodies just in time for June.

The entire collection was two hoodies and a pair of socks. They called it a launch. This is so weird. I get that there are a lot of things going on. I get it, Peloton. You guys got some other irons in the fire. I totally get it. I’m okay with the fact that there are only three items, but here’s the deal. Here’s what might help your PR department to tell us that it’s going to be three items. In 2021, there were 18,000. When you go from 18,000 to 3, everyone bitches, and then you guys hyped it up. You were like, “It’s coming. There’s an apparel collection on the 25th.” We got all excited, and then it was three things. A pair of socks came and they can’t even see that they were rainbow-coloured. They’re in your shoes.

Somebody said that the part that’s rainbow-colored is the tip of the sock. As soon as you put on shoes, you can’t even see it.

There are a lot of people that don’t even like these hoodies. I actually like the black one, but people said it gave them Tony the Tiger vibes. A lot of tiger jokes came out of that. I saw a picture of Benny Adami. This is the best Pride wearing of the Pride clothes. He had the sweatshirt on and he cut off the sleeves. He took it a step further. He had on very adorable short shorts, and then he took the sleeves and made them into legwarmers. It looked amazing. It really worked. I was like, “That is creative.” You almost got me to buy that, Benny Adami, but I’m never wearing legwarmers so it doesn’t matter.

You don’t know how to make them.

No, I don’t. I would have to be like, “Could you tell me in English please?” If you make it a tutorial in German, I still can’t do it because I don’t know how to speak German, but it’s still very cool. Anyway, I like the drop. Just let us know that there are only going be three items. If we have a heads up, we don’t get all pissy. That’s what we do. We get pissy.

Finally, we have one birthday, Jess King on May 29th.

She’s having a big week, babies and birthdays. It’s all happening.

Happy birthday to Jess King.

Joining us is Dr. Ryan Fields.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for being here. It sounds like, under normal circumstances, this would be expensive.

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He’s got the copay, Tom.

The copay is not bad if it’s part of health maintenance. There’s no copay, so we could spin it that way.

If we talk about fitness, is it health maintenance? Can we skew it that way?

It should be. Some insurance companies can give you a discount or something for joining a home gym.

When did you become involved in the Peloton community? When did you get your Peloton?

I got ours when we were on that cusp right before the pandemic because we had a little space for a homeless gym and started getting into it. I have always been a big runner. I did not see myself as a biker, let alone an indoor biker ever. I do not like true spinning classes. I like the Peloton. I like the individual part of it to some degree and some of the longer workouts.

A lot of people will say, “I don’t like spin class, so I don’t like Peloton.” You’re saying that you don’t like the traditional spin class but you like Peloton. What’s different for you?

Although I do like the competitive side of the Peloton like I see where I’m on the leaderboard, I don’t necessarily like it in a big room of sweaty people. Initially, I connected all things spinning with someone screaming at me in my spandex and having to be in a hot room, and not the actual workout part of it.

If you have always been a big runner, how did you get involved with Pedal the Cause?

That’s what got me into it. I came and started working back at Siteman Cancer Center many years ago and Pedal the Cause was their big fundraiser. I got involved in it, started a team, and started working towards it. In the beginning, when you are on the short end of these 12-mile rides, I was doing it on a mountain bike that I got when I was thirteen for my bar mitzvah. I probably weight about as much as I did. I was in reasonable shape so I could ride 12 miles on it, but I got up. When I hit that 35-mile course still on that bike on one of these September days that felt more like July, I’m like, “This is it. I got to get a real bike.”

It was a specialized Rockhopper, but it was made out of steel. It was an old one but it held for a long time then. I have a 10 and 13-year-old. This was back when we were getting bikes for the kids, you had to keep up with them and then I got into it. As Jay Indovino, the old head of Pedal the Cause, used to say, “You always need one more bike than you have,” then I got into spending too much money on these pieces of equipment.

Are you familiar with the Peloton Road Riders group?

I’m not.

You would fit in well there because their motto is, “Let us help you spend money.” They always have like, “The correct amount of bikes is X plus one.” They always show their new bikes off even though they have a garage full of them, and all of them are amazing bikes. You would fit in well there. Just another group to consider joining. You would have fun over there.

My wife is a big fitness person too. She got into it. One of us is on at different parts of the day. Fortunately, our schedules don’t overlap so much, but we get good use out of it.

You guys are constantly using the Peloton between the two of you then.

She’s got into this Hardcore On The Floor. She does a lot of that and then she got my son who’s thirteen into doing this Tunede Arm Challenge. My son was like, “I could do that with 3-pound weights forever.” Five minutes into it, he’s like, “I can’t move my arm.” The next day he’s asking us to open jars of peanut butter for him.

For people who may not be familiar, what exactly is Pedal the Cause?

It is a bike ride, not a race, although some people are pretty competitive with it. “A world without cancer” is their tagline. The goal is to raise funds that go to support research and education, and the overall mission of the Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis. The main thing that Pedal does in an incredible way is dollar for dollar. Every dollar that gets raised gets directed right back into the hands of the researchers at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Siteman Cancer Center that needed it.

The real overarching theme is that if you want to get a grant-funded, and that usually means through the Federal government, you need to have a lot of data and information to support the NIH. The government, in general, are not a venture capital firm. They like safe investments and things that are going to succeed. It takes a lot of upfront results to get the grant off the ground. Those upfront results cost a lot of money and take a lot of effort to get them off the ground.

Pedal the Cause is for seed money to take great ideas, and give them the venture capital they need to get them off the ground. Their proof is in the pudding in the sense of they’re a 9-to-1 investment. Every dollar that they’ve generated is generating another $9 in Federal grant money. They’re doing a good job picking and funding good projects.

The other exciting thing about Pedal the Cause is if you think about most of these ideas like if I write a grant to the Federal government, it’s got about an 8% or 9% chance of getting funded because there are a lot of good ideas. Pedal the Cause takes these ideas and gets them in front of the real big-dollar grants and gets some going.

You’re the grant before the grant.

It’s literally like venture capital. It is the seed money that gets it on the radar and gets it to the level where it can succeed. Although I don’t think of myself as old, I’m older in the sense of mid-career, but when I was starting out many years ago, this was the kind of money that helps young investigators get people who are finishing school. They are full of bright ideas, finishing fellowship, and get this money off the ground, or take someone in the mid part of their career who’s got a new idea, a new angle, and they want to run with it and get some going in that way.

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If somebody knows nothing about how this works, does it help them at this point not just from the money? Does the Federal government maybe take a better look at the projects that you funnel their way because of your track record?

Yeah. One of the biggest things is what it means to be a comprehensive cancer center, which Siteman, Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson are. There are about 30 of them around the country. To be a truly comprehensive cancer center means that National Cancer Institute and NIH have recognized you like that because of your results and the research money you generate. Part of it is how you interact with and serve your community, and vice versa, how your community support you as a cancer center.

Having something like Pedal the Cause, which is our signature event, goes a long way toward achieving and maintaining that status because it shows an investment in the community. The cancer center and the community work in ways that we function as a group to serve our catchment area. There are a lot of cancer centers around the country, but they’re geographically distributed such that they serve the whole country. That’s part of the mission. It goes a long way towards that. We pick projects that affect our catchment area in a major way. There are certain things that affect our population more than New York or California.

What would that be?

There are a couple of interesting ones. Number one, Missouri has the absolute lowest cigarette packs in the country. Cigarettes are cheaper in Missouri than in any other state. Because of that, more people smoked and there are more smoking-associated cancers like lung cancer. Ways to address lung cancer are a big deal in our area, whether that’s public health efforts to make awareness or to get advertisements for smoking out of kids’ faces, and things like that. Lung cancer is a big initiative here.

There’s a part of Missouri that sticks into Arkansas, the Bootheel. That area has some of the highest rates of early-onset of colorectal cancer in the country and we don’t understand why. Studying that is a huge mission of our cancer center, both at the public health level and the genetic and genomic level. Those were a couple of examples of things that we emphasize here.

I would have never guessed something like that. I would have thought the lowest cigarette tax would be in a state like Virginia that grows tobacco.

We grow tobacco in Missouri.

There are a lot of businesses and distribution areas because we’re in the middle of the country that fed into it but I don’t fully appreciate or understand the why’s, but it’s one of those facts.

They can get crazy with all the reasoning.

Going back to the existence of Pedal the Cause. I never would have thought that affect the optics of your organization on the other end of the equation. I thought it was a fundraising tool and that’s the beginning and end of it.

It started as a bunch of motivated people sitting around the campfire as it were at the bike course. Bill Koman who started it realized the need for it, and the fact that this seed money was important that it catalyzed research. He got together with a bunch of other people and sprung out of their idea. It started as less than 100 people into what it is now. It has become a model. It’s been copied at other cancer centers. It’s been an unbelievable success. People like Terry and others who have been involved in it from the beginning are deeply invested in its success.

I don’t think I ever fully appreciated the fact that Pedal the Cause is not necessarily nationwide. I thought it was something that every state has. I didn’t realize it started in Missouri.

There’s another Pedal the Cause because Bill Koman is in San Diego and has a relationship there. There’s the second Pedal the Cause. There were some other versions of it, some bigger, some smaller, around the country because people have realized how successful it can be. There’s one in Ohio State called Pelotonia that does an incredible job. It’s a great model because as Jay Indovino used to say, “Not everybody can run. Not everybody wants to go and do certain events but everybody has been on a bike at one point in their life.”

Even if they’re not in biking shape now, they could spend or want to volunteer. It’s such an easy way to do and for a lot of different people to participate, and patients too. I don’t know the exact number, but a lot of the teams are patient-based. A lot of the riders, more than half, are either cancer survivors, cancer fighters or families that are honoring loved ones. It’s an incredible celebration.

It’s cool to be out there. 2021 was the first year I was there. I know it was very small and scaled back because of the pandemic. I’m excited to see what it’s going to look like in 2022. For people that don’t know, it’s September 24, 2022. They have many different courses that you can do. They have courses that range on the smaller end from 15 miles all the way up to 100 miles. You can get involved at any level you want to. That’s awesome. It’s difficult to decide what kind of distance I want to do. They have the spins for people that want to ride the spin bike.

There are gravel options now. Saturdays are our gravel-based courses as part of the Katy Trail and some other areas like that. Sundays are mostly all the road rides. As you said, the shortest is 10 or 15 miles all the way up to the century. The century has got a lot of nice hills up by six flags area in Babler Park. It’s a great course. They do an incredible job with Chesterfield, Wildwood and all these areas with good support from the police departments.

How long has this been going on?

I can’t remember the exact first year. It was before I got here, but it’s been many years. It used to be downtown. I went around there. They outgrew that partly for parking. Sometimes there would be other sporting events that would throw them off and play-off games.

What’s more St. Louis than leaving downtown for Chesterfield.

It’s a local tradition.

They could make it true urban flight. They started downtown and right out toward.

On the Peloton side of things, what kind of classes do you take? Do you ever get into Power Zone? Do you stick with the same instructor?

I’m a big Power Zone fan. I like it because you could individualize your workouts. I’ve always been a big Matt Wilpers fan. My friends or even my wife think I’m nuts, but I like the hour and a half ones, especially in the winter because I’m a lot more of a fair-weather bike rider. I don’t like it when it gets too cold out. I’m off through the winter doing those and for the longer ones, I like to workout. I have mine in a room where there’s a TV behind, so I’ll be watching a basketball game or doing some other thing. I’m not focused the whole time because when they’re like, “Zone 3 is for 12 minutes,” I got to zone out on something.

You can’t do that when you’re outside. What do you do when you’re outside?

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I’ve at least got some good scenery. I’m a Matt Wilpers fan and I need the Power Zone one. I find myself drawn to those.

You’re an oncologist. What kind of oncology do you practice?

I’m a surgical oncologist. I specialize in upper gastrointestinal cancers, pancreas and stomach cancer, and tumors that have spread to the liver, which colon cancer and other GI cancers often do. I also take care of a lot of melanoma and skin cancer. Whether it’s me or my two red-headed blue-eyed kids, I have sunblock all the time. I figured if I show up to work with a sunburn it’s like showing up as a lung cancer doctor smoking cigarettes or something. That doesn’t look too good.

You’d get called to the carpet real quick, “How can we trust this guy?”

My life is about 50% seeing patients in the operating room, the other half is doing research and working on the education side with our surgery residency program, fellowship program, and medical students. It’s a nice mix of everything. It’s fun and different every day.

You don’t hear a lot of doctors that get to be involved in the research side and practice medicine in the field. I bet that’s exciting. What a great mix.

There’s definitely a very collegial team science and team clinical aspect to oncology in general, but watch you in-site. It’s that Midwest vibe. It’s a fun place to work. It’s not cutthroat competitive. It is a lot of fun and there are great people here.

You wouldn’t want it to be cutthroat because everybody has got scalpels.

That’s dangerous.

When you were first considering this as a career field, were you always like, “I could cut a guy open,” or does that something that you got to work your way up? Even if I had the mindset to be a doctor, I’d be like, “I don’t know that I trust myself enough to cut a guy open.” When did that enter into your head of like, “I can not only cut him open but then I could sew him back up.” If all, I could probably do the cutting open. That part’s probably simple. It’s the stuff that comes after.

This will be a pop culture test. It was either going to be like Doogie Howser on one side or Dexter on the other side. That was always about the skillset. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do when I was in college, in the sense that I was a Chemistry major and a Political Science major. I was like, “Those are a little different.” I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to go into until I got about halfway through college. My mom who’s doing fine was diagnosed with early breast cancer. We got interested in the science side of it.

I started working in a research lab where a lot of the people in the lab were surgery residents. They were taking a couple of years off to do research. This was at the University of Michigan. They offered to take me into the operating room. I was captivated and enthralled. That was hook line and sinker off in that direction. I liked what they did in terms of how they helped people. At the same time, I saw the challenges in the sense of they would operate on a lot of people whose cancer would come back. I’m trying to better understand that I liked the research side too.

That is the perfect position for you then to be able to do both because that’s what got you, both sides of that.

My youngest son. He’s junior. He’s thinking about college and your story is a perfect example of what I always tell him, which is not to be an oncologist because you don’t want that kid cutting on you. That would be the problem. He’d be like, “Where did I put the thread?” I always tell him, “Have a goal or have an aspiration but be prepared to pivot. There are many jobs out there that you don’t even know to exist. Go after your dreams but also realize that you might find something along the way that you like better, don’t define that as losing or not achieving your thing if something else pulls you down a different path.”

A good liberal arts education for most kids is probably the best thing that they can stumble into because they find themselves. Especially in this day and age, how many eighteen-year-olds know what they want to do? Even if they do, just because they haven’t been exposed to the thing that might be perfect for them. Now, it’s very popular for people to defer “Gap Year.” It may not be that they change careers but they figure out a lot about themselves and life that makes them a little more successful in whatever they go into.

I’m curious when you joined Peloton shortly before the pandemic, have you been exposed to the classes that have a bunch of people in the studio? Do you have an opinion about the riders in the studio versus the rider out of the studio? This is a very Peloton generational thing.

When I started out, I don’t do a lot of live rides. I’ve probably done ten in total. I’m always on the recorded ones for whatever reason. Even the older ones that I do where there are people in the studio and I think about it a couple of times like, “That’s right,” because there is a professional cyclist who did a bunch of episodes.

It’s Christian Vande Velde.

I still like doing those a lot because they’re fun rides. When I’m doing them, I’m like, “Look at all the people in the background.” For the first time in two years, my wife and I were back in New York City. We were like, “We should stop by the Peloton studio and see if there’s somebody in the window or we see somebody walking in.” I don’t love it either way. I only think about it briefly but It will be nice when they get back into it. I’ve always wondered if they were going to branch out into other cities like opening a Peloton studio in St. Louis.

If they were going to do another one in the US, it would probably be on the West Coast. They have fought that for years. People have been begging for that and they have always said no. We shall see how things go because there’s a new CEO, but I can guarantee you that it will not be here. I’m curious, you went by the studio. Does that mean that if you had been there when the studio was open, would you have gone in and taken a live class?

I probably would have, especially if my wife wanted to do it. Were like, “Let’s do it for the heck of it.” It would have been fun. That’s for sure.

For us Midwesterners, it’s like a tourist thing. That’s fun.

People love to make their journeys there.

We were there as well. I was shocked to see that they had bodyguards outside now.

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They are celebrities.

There were security guards at the door. That never used to be a thing. Now there are security guards walking them to their car. It’s an interesting time. What an evolution.

There are some things on Peloton. My wife and I bought it and I said, “I’m going to use this as a bike.” I have been shocked. I had never done it before. I got into yoga. I do a lot of the yogas, especially after a long day in the operating room or if you had a personal trainer or anybody who had anything to do with posture or whatever, and they saw the way we stand for long periods of time. They will be like, “You probably need the adjustment or chiropractor.”

I would think you are tight too.

You got to hold everything and the stress.

You are tight and cramped. I am not a flexible person by nature. I’ve never been a stretcher in the sense of like, “I’m going to warm up, stretch and then go for a run.” It will just open the door and go, and then not probably do what I should have been doing afterward. I’ve gotten to appreciate doing yoga. I don’t think I would ever do yoga in a group because I probably looked so ridiculous. I don’t mind doing it with the door closed in my office at the end of the day or at home with the door closed too.

Do you have a favored yoga instructor that you go to?

I like Aditi Shah because there’s a good mix of the beginner and intermediate ones. She doesn’t make you feel guilty about not being able to do some of the parts. I tend to like those yoga flow classes. I’ve fallen into a lot of those.

My go-to for yoga when I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing is Chelsea because she has this tone to her voice where she’s like, “It’s okay.”

I realize you can’t even bend over half as far as I’m bending, but concentrating on doing it feels good until it starts to not feel good.

Do you have any advice for people that are just getting a Peloton?

Try a little bit of everything. I like a lot of the intro courses and things like that, basically the how-tos. I was riding a road bike before, so I had a sense of some of it. I liked the Power Zone courses because I think whether you are 85 years old just getting onto a Peloton or 10 or 20 years old or you’re an Olympic cyclist, you can do a Power Zone ride with the same metric for yourself. I liked those. People seem intimidated by them a little bit. I got to pick this fitness test and then, “What in the world do I do?” It’s a lot simpler than that. It’s like the other things, if you do the intro thing, you’re like, “I get it.”

People are also scared of those 60 and 90-minute classes you were talking about. You have to realize that there has been an evolution with the platform because back in the day, whenever they started, almost all of their rides were 45 minutes across the board. There were no warm-up classes or cool-down classes, then people start asking for longer classes, so they got the 60 and then 90. At the same time, Peloton saw from their data that people enjoyed shorter classes, so then they started having all these 20 and 30-minute classes.

You have these two groups of people that are like, “I want longer,” which is more what you’re saying from fitness, you like to do your Power Zone. You have that kind of thought process, but then, on the other hand, you have all these people who are like, “I only have twenty minutes to get a good workout in today,” or whatever their lifestyle is. They’re very at odds with each other. That’s why people are scared of it. It’s the unknown. They have never tried the other side or whatever their side is.

I have a group of high school friends. We all stay in touch. There are probably about twelve of us, and eight of those are at Pelotons. Of the eight, four of them just do it for the music. They love the music. They like particular instructors there. It doesn’t matter if it’s 20 or 60 minutes, they’re doing that one on that day because of the music. A couple of my friends did Jenn Sherman’s pre-football ride. They’re on every Sunday morning before football. They elicit what she has to say about the games. She wears a Jets Jersey. A couple of my friends were always making fun of her about that.

Those are some of the surprisingly hard rides to do too because she goes all out. She has halftime in the middle. Those are some of the roughest rides I’ve ever done there. They’re intense.

I do like some of the variety. I like some of the HIIT on those rides. I like doing some of those Tabata rides. As you said, not to fall off your bike exhausted. The other things I like are the Power Zone, Power Zone Max, and Power Zone Endurance. You can get a little bit of all that.

That’s the best way to do it. That’s a good variety.

I have a Rower. I’ve always wondered if they’ll ever get into their next thing.

It’s dropping on May 13, 2022. It should be announced on Homecoming. You should be able to hear all the details about that very soon.

What they’re getting into probably and what we’re talking about is a good variety of things you can do on the Peloton on or off the bike, on or off the treadmill, the yoga stuff. It’s a good way to stay interested.

Thank you so much for joining us. Before we let you go, let everybody know where they can find you, if you would like to be found, and how they can help Pedal the Cause. Somewhere between 96% to 99% of our readers aren’t in St. Louis, so maybe a way for them to help, if they’re not local.

The cool thing about Pedal that Cause is there are all these teams and most of the teams are people that are going to be riding or participating here in St. Louis. A lot of the team members are working with friends, family and networks around the country to help raise awareness and money. Everybody would say, “The best thing you could do is to come here, ride and join my team. The second best thing you could do is support the team and our ride by, writing a check or helping us out in that way.”

I think an equally important thing is to be involved in something that you’re passionate about that’s going to help people in your neck of the woods, whether that’s your local cancer center or your local community organization. Especially on the cancer side, there are so many ways to help people, whether it’s contributing to research, helping with awareness and education, or whether it’s trying to support people who may need a little extra assistance getting to and from doctor visits and things like that. We’ve had people start some incredible things in their neck of the woods.

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Crystal, since you’ll be participating, they can help with that.

I’m on a Terry Griggs team. It’s powered by Hope and people can join. I’ll be posting my link to let people know how they can fundraise and I’ll be out there doing one of the rides. We’ll see if I do the 50 miles. That’s what I have in my head. It’s April 2022. We’ll see how I feel about that as we get closer to September 2022.

I’ve worked closely with a family here that started a nonprofit to raise both money for research, but also awareness for melanoma. It’s called Our Mark On Melanoma or Our MOM. It’s a group of eight siblings whose mom passed away of melanoma and they’ve been very involved. That’s the team that I am a captain and it has been an honor to work with them. They do everything from trying to teach kids about the horrible side of tanning beds and skin cancer risk in more teenage years, and then trying to raise money for research.

That’s wonderful that they do that. Thank you for being so involved. Thank you for taking the time to do this and teach us so much about what you do every day, and how the whole process works. We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. I look forward to hopefully, seeing you at Pedal and being involved. It’s great to connect.

Thank you.

I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until next week, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter and anywhere on the Peloton leaderboard @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. If you’ve made it this far, maybe leave us a review. You must really like us. This is very deep into the show. Thank you for being here. You should go leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Also, don’t forget, you can find us on YouTube at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

 

Important Links

 

About Dr. Ryan Fields

TCO 260 | Biking For A CauseProfessor of Surgery, Chief of the Section of Surgical Oncology, Division of General Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine

 

 

 

 

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