TCO 262 | Peloton Community

262: Another Shake-Up In The Peloton C-Suite Plus Our Interview With Susie Platt

Last Updated: June 10, 2022By Tags: , , , , ,

TCO 262 | Peloton Community

 

  • John Mills joins us to discuss Peloton’s new CFO.
  • The Verge has thoughts on the Tempo Move.
  • Dr. Jenn – Making time for marathons.
  • Selena Samuela is pregnant.
  • Peloton hosted a gathering of instructors.
  • Kendall Toole was on the Today Show.
  • Aditi Shah is on the cover of Seema.
  • Robin Arzon is the keynote speaker for Monmouth Medical Center’s Power of Pink Luncheon.
  • Christine D’Ercole was on the Committed podcast.
  • The Peloton blog spotlights Logan Aldridge.
  • Market Realist talks about how Logan lost his arm.
  • Peloton had a “Get To Know Logan” virtual event.
  • Out Loud with Matty Maggiacomo on IG Live features Jess Darrow.
  • Olivia Amato partners with LTK.
  • Peloton is quietly inviting members back to the studio.
  • Peloton’s aborted manufacturing plant is generating lots of interest.
  • Kate Winick, Senior Director of Social Media, was on the Social Pros podcast.
  • The Speaking Human Podcast had a Peloton episode.
  • Sports Illustrated put Peloton on their list of best fitness apps.
  • The Pfizer corporate challenge is done and they are offering Peloton swag.
  • Latest Artist Series: Rina Sawayama.
  • Angleo says, Yes, Virginia, vegans can gain weight.
  • There is a Prenatal Yoga & Meditation Collection with Anna Greenburg.
  • Check out the Get Out & Move Challenge.
  • Peloton Picks for the guide has been added to collections.
  • There is now an Adaptive Class Collection.
  • Peloton has special Pride classes.
  • Later this month there will be Juneteenth and Father’s Day Classes.

All this plus our interview with Susie Platt!

 

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Another Shake-Up In The Peloton C-Suite Plus Our Interview With Susie Platt

How are you feeling?

I’m feeling much better but I am sad that I am not on a beach right now.

I am sad you’re not on a beach as well.

I ruined our Hawaii trip.

You did not ruin our Hawaii trip. For people that maybe did not see the posts in The Clip Out group, Crystal got COVID. She got it 24 hours before we were supposed to leave for Hawaii. This episode should have been recorded on our fancy pants headsets while sitting by the pool. That was the plan and instead, we’re still in our basement in Missouri, so it’s sad trombone. It’s Missouri so it’s probably sad accordion, washboard and spoons. I don’t know what we play here. That being said, you had a pretty mild case.

I’m not in a hospital on a ventilator.

You had a pretty mild case thanks to being vaxxed and boosted.

We’re big fans of that.

We made a new vacation plan. Luckily we bought the insurance. Hopefully, this insurance company is reputable and we’ll be getting a sizable check in the mail soon to cover all the money we lost.

The travel agent was like, “That has never happened before. I have never seen one of those get paid out.”

No one has made a claim. We sent them the official COVID test showing she was positive. Now we wait with bated breath. First world problems, our trip to Hawaii has been scuttled.

It could be so much worse.

Also, some housecleaning stuff. We should probably talk about a new thing we’re launching. We know some people get frustrated when we have ads on the show. We will now have an ad-free version of the show for people. You’ll have to pay a little bit for it. Not much, $5 a month gets you out of all the ads. It’s that simple. You’ll get a special private feed for you.

Don’t be passing it around.

You can find that at Patreon.com/TheClipOut for $5 a month. There’s another tier. For $10, you’ll get the ad-free one. It would be weird to not include that. Also, if you are so inclined, we will record bonus episodes from time to time, whether that would be breaking news Oftentimes, you know how it is. We record on a Wednesday and an instructor gets pregnant on a Thursday, and then we don’t talk about it for a week. We can hop on and talk about things like that.

You’re going to get our unfiltered version of how we feel about things.

You can get Crystal recording fresh off the Rona, but you can’t get it run through a podcast yet. We’ll have a special Facebook group for people that sign up at that level. It’s little perks like that if that sort of thing interests you. It all goes to fund the stuff around here. This microphone, if you’re watching on YouTube, is like $600 and we’ve got two of them.

It was not cheap. We’ve put a lot of money back into it. We do a lot with a production company and we have a whole bunch of help. That’s how I’m still able to do it after five years and multitasking. Gone are the days when I am editing all night. I don’t do that anymore. We don’t have our interns doing it. They couldn’t keep up anymore with their own schedules. They were amazing but it was too hard. We had to put in a lot of resources.

If you listen to any other indie podcasts out there, the audio can get a little wonky. I feel like we’re pretty top tier on how we sound. The sound gets recorded by grownups and things like that. That’s not easy to achieve. A lot of work goes into that.

One other thing we should mention is that we’re going to switch the time that we release the podcast. It’s going to come out around 6:00 to 6:30 AM Central Time. It will be a little bit later than people are used to. We hope you stick around. We hope you still download us. It’s a necessary change.

Right now I have to get up at 3:00 in the morning to do things to the show before it posts.

It’s unsustainable at this point. He gets awfully crabby on Fridays every week. It takes the fun out of doing the show. We want to do our best to keep this fun. That’s one of the changes that we need to make to be able to do that.

One more time, Patreon.com/TheClipOut is where you can find all that.

You can also fast forward through those ads. We hope you listen.

We can’t stop you.

We’re not trying to make you pay for things. That’s why we try to put on sponsors.

Anyway, what pray tell do you have in store for people for this episode?

John Mills is going to be joining us. We are going to talk about the CFO switch up. We also have some things to talk about in the business area. We have a visit from Dr. Jenn. She talks about how to make time for training for marathons. This particular story, you’re going to want to hear because every mom can relate to this. You will be stressed hearing the story. We also have a whole bunch of updates on instructors. There is so much stuff happening. We’ve got a lot of news about Peloton. A lot is going on. Let’s get started.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Wherever you find a podcast, you’ll find us. While you’re there be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. Maybe leave a review. That’s always helpful. You can find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Of course, our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut.

Sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com, and of course, a new shameless plug to shamelessly plug our Patreon, Patreon.com/TheClipOut. For as little as $5 a month, you can get an ad-free version of this very program and all past programs as well. If you want to listen to old episodes, they are also all there ready for you, completely ad-free. There’s all the shamelessly plugging stuff. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

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

When you have any kind of complication, go straight to Facebook, find a group about it, and join it. Share on X

How is it going?

I guess jumping into the topic at du jour. More shakeups in the C-suite. We now have a new CFO at Peloton.

You’ve known this for a year or so. I’m a big fan of Jill Woodworth because she always made me feel comfortable every time she talked. It seemed like she was the adult in the room that knew everything. She spoke in a way that made me feel comfortable. I guess she saw this coming. We knew this is probably coming. I don’t know if I should be all that surprised.

I’m not surprised. I’m just sad. The only people in the management team that are still there are Tom Cortese and Hisao Kushi. It’s getting pretty Slim Pickens.

The person that they’ve brought in sounds like well-experienced. I think she worked with Walmart, Netflix and Amazon. It sounded like based on her experience and what Uncle Barry is looking for, she aligned. I don’t know if you could be mad at it. I guess it’s probably that legacy, that heartfelt piece of you.

It is. I don’t feel like I’m 100% comfortable with Barry yet. This was clearly something he wanted because he went on and on about how he knew Liz and he had worked closely with her for years. He has every right to make that pick. As the CEO, that’s what you do. It’s not surprising, but I’m not 100% on board with him yet, so I’m not 100% on board with this. Jill always made us feel comfortable, but maybe that was a bad thing. We just didn’t know it. Based on what some of the numbers ended up being, maybe we were a little too comfortable.

There are more important things than our comfort.

That’s what I get from the people in my group too. They’re like, “John, the company was now here, the CEO and the CFO. That’s what you should be looking at.” They’re placing all these logical conclusions to the whole thing. I don’t know if I’m being illogical and speaking from my heart, but I hear you. I’m a little disappointed but I understand.

I know they said she stepped down but we all know that’s not true. I hate that too. I know it’s the game and these situations. She’ll be fine.

She sold how many shares when it was $120.

She’ll be fine. I know that but I still feel bad for her.

That’s the world you live in. If you’re going to get to that level, things can change fast. That’s why you make the big bucks and hopefully, you save some of them and I’m sure she did. If she’s a CFO and she didn’t save any, then she didn’t deserve to be a CFO.

That is for sure. I just want to say too that all these financial types out there who send me messages and tell me, “You don’t have a right to be upset. They’re trying to fix the company, Crystal.” I do have a right to be upset. I didn’t care about just the financial. They don’t get it. This was not just a company to me. They’re never going to understand that. This is about more. I get the shareholder side of things. That’s something you want to see. I hope it works out the way they have planned, but I see nothing yet to say that it will. Hopefully, that’s all going to be for the best, but I’m entitled to my feelings about this.

It’s also frustrating because there’s a mentality with the people that are into the financial end of things and that’s all they care about. They follow Peloton because they follow the financial world. They don’t follow Peloton because they follow Peloton and that’s fine. There’s this mentality with that group where it’s like, “You accidentally built this cute little thing. We’ll take it from here.”

That is exactly the arrogance that drives me crazy because there are a whole lot of other companies out there that had all these people that are like, “I’m so awesome,” when they send these messages. There are a lot of companies also that are not doing well, it’s not just Peloton. A lot of arrogance floating around.

That’s an interesting thing about Peloton for me. I had made investments before this, and then I had products that I was passionate about. They probably should have always overlapped, but they generally didn’t. It was like I’m investing here because there are other financial reasons for it. I’m passionate about this and I’m doing this because it’s part of my life. It just didn’t. This was one of those scenarios where it overlapped. There are people now that I had grown to be fans of them as people. It wasn’t about Peloton and my investment. There’s this odd overlap so that you have to have a logical mindset as it relates to the financial, but then you have an emotional aspect of it too. That didn’t mix for me before.

The financial people reading this right now are probably screaming at their iPhones, “That’s not how you do it.”

The thing is you can and you should. I’m not saying that you should pour everything you have into those. That’s not a good idea. Let me be very clear. If you have disposable discretionary income, then that is the thing that you should put some of your money into because it’s those passion projects. That’s how companies seem to get off the ground. We shouldn’t ignore those altogether because they don’t make sense on paper. Sometimes some things that don’t make sense on paper still turn out to be amazing. I still think there’s a place for that for Peloton. I just have no idea how we’ll get there anymore because everything is completely confusing at this point. It’s all upside down. We’re in the underground of stranger things. We’re in the upside-down.

For whatever it’s worth, it does seem like stock types liked it because Citibank is still in the bull camp.

They appear to be the only ones though. I don’t know that you can say stock types like it. I only included this because I thought it was interesting. Citi and Chase are two different companies. Chase has the Sapphire thing that they do, but Citi is separate from that. They are the only ones that I saw that were still saying we’re positive. I also want to point out that for all of the money-saving that this is going to do, that new CFO they’re bringing is going to be so awesome. It’s like a $1 million base salary. That’s not exactly cheap. I’m throwing that out there. That’s not nothing from a company that’s hurting and had to get rid of all these people.

I guess if you want to bring in somebody with that pedigree, you got to pay them.

They had somebody with that pedigree and I’m sure they were paying her.

You make the argument, “But their sock is at $12.” I’m not trying to be a jerk to Jill Woodworth but it’s like, “We’re paying you $1 million for $12.” That’s bad math.

I think that Citi reflects what I hear from these more experienced investor types that tend to hit me up as well. They tend to talk about the hires that Barry McCarthy has made in a positive light like, “This is right. This is good.”

The financial people love Barry and they love all the crap he does.

They tend to like these moves he’s making. I’m not as advanced in all of that, but the things that I hear tend to align with the Citi statements.

I agree, John. That’s the same thing I hear too. I don’t know what that tells us long-term, but that is what I noticed. The financial folks think it’s all good. That’s how you sum that all up.

They probably thought it was all good in 2021 too. I don’t know.

The thing that confuses me is that financial folks seem to like this, but it’s not enough to get the stock above $12 though. If you like it so much. Why don’t you marry it?

It’s the Beyonce scenario.

Exactly. Speaking of Beyonce, that was a multi-year deal. We haven’t heard any more from her.

 

We did. It was the second year in 2022.

What did she do? I don’t remember anything.

It was two years in a row. They had the big Beyonce thing. We had a bunch of classes.

I thought it was longer than two years.

I think it was three. A few months ago, they did the second part of it. There could be a third part.

I should pay attention more. Moving to the larger world of connected fitness, The Verge has a review of the Tempo Move.

What did you think of this?

What’s funny about this is the person was like, “It’s cool. It looks good in my living room. It looked like a piece of furniture. My boyfriend didn’t even notice it was there for two weeks. I love the rep counting. I love it. I’m going to give it a six.” The person completely confused me with the six. They seemed to like it until the six. What was interesting to me is the fact that they talked about training for strength, particularly in sports disciplines like golf, tennis or running. That was the interesting part, which made me go, “Wait a minute. I know Tonal is doing that for golf.” Now I’m going, “Is this about to be a thing?”

I think it is because Tonal does that with a lot of things. They have a whole strength for runners program. They have a whole program called Better Bike and Treadmill. They have Better Bike and Tread Two. My point is it’s like sports performance improvements. They have a whole category to that. They’re really good content. It’s great because you get a lot of bilateral movements. I do think it’s going to be a thing. A lot of people are going to be jumping onto that. We’ll be talking about it later, but Logan Aldridge has the adaptive training. You’re going to see that be a thing too. Peloton happens to be a little more focused on the adaptive training right now. Other competitors are focused a little more on sports performance. Eventually, all competitors will end up in both places. That’s my guess.

That makes sense. I agree. I’ve been thinking that probably will be the case as well. They mentioned a little bit about programs rather than just classes based on body type. We’ve heard that for years. That’s the reason why they like the Tempo. Another thing I was thinking is the Tempo Move is $495. We know that Peloton dropped the price of the Guide down to $295. I think that is very logical because have they kept it at that $500 price point, we would have been more in line with trying to compare. I think because they changed these price points like, “I’m looking at a review for the Tempo.” I’m not then thinking, “What about the Guide?” Once they dropped the rep counting stuff, maybe we will start saying that, which then makes me think, is it a great value now or do they then start reconsidering the price?

Obviously, they can go up in price. We’ve seen that, but I don’t know that that’s their goal, at least in the short term. I think they want to make the barrier to getting the Guide low. Their goal is to pump as many of them into the marketplace as possible right now. I think they want to see people ending up with their whole at-home fitness and beat through Peloton.

I definitely agree with that assessment. I don’t think we’re going to see that price go up. You’re going to continue to see changes or different stuff happening overall with Peloton like the pricing structure for things like the monthly membership. They’ll add additional products. I still believe that. Also, as they bring people back to the studio, I still think there are going to be changes to how that looks. They’re going to have ad-ons in different ways. The hardware in this particular case is considered to be a loss leader. That’s my feeling.

That makes sense. Another thing that was interesting to me about it was the movement tracker. We were talking about this. Other people love the thing, but for me, if you’re questioning it filling up, you don’t have some frame of reference to know why it may or may not be. That has been on my mind. As I was listening to this person in this review, they’re like, “I did a rep but it didn’t count the rep.” They made some changes and it’s counting the rep now. Now they know that I actually did 11 even though I’m at 10 right now. There’s a measure that they know. It took my mind back to that movement tracker if they had the rep counting, you would have some mechanism to say that it didn’t fill up because of this.

It makes total sense. Let me say it in a different way for people who haven’t used the Guide. The thing that John is talking about is that it tracks your movements, but it doesn’t tell you how many you’ve done. It just shows that it will get full. If the segment is two minutes long, as long as the movement tracker sees you moving in a move that is approximately close to what it expects, it counts it as movements. If John and I were both doing it side by side, we might have wildly different counts for two minutes. Your point is that you wouldn’t necessarily know if you’re not getting any tracking, why isn’t it tracking? You’re able to see that with Tempo and hopefully, whenever Peloton adds the movement tracker, that will be corrected.

The other piece of it is that it would be good to know what cadence you should be moving at if they expect 10 reps in this 2 minutes, or 100 reps in this 2 minutes because you may not be using the appropriate weight or doing it appropriately. To me, that’s the big question mark with Peloton. With strength, I believe that they have an opportunity to make it more prescriptive and a safer place for people. I see people wildly swinging weights around and it scares the crap out of me. Somebody is going to get hurt. Not everything is momentum. I feel like there’s a lot of momentum happening because people are new to strength training, and there’s not something that’s telling people to slow down.

Weight training, I should know. You could get injured very easily out of form. You do too much swinging and you hurt your back but you’ll learn.

We don’t want another treadmill situation. We don’t want any injuries.

I hear a lot of people go, “I called for support” or “I returned my Guide,” which takes me back to that whole idea of aligning rep counting. To your point about cadence or more information about what they should be doing, it will have a positive effect on those things.

I definitely agree with that.

John, thank you so much for joining us again. Until next week, 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.

Thanks, John.

—

Tom, I am so excited. Guess what I got in the mail?

I don’t know.

I got a whole new set of the summer colors of the Olive & June Mani system. The summer colors are absolutely beautiful. My favorite is the Funfetti. It has all these different colors in it and you can put it on top of other colors. It’s beautiful.

Just in time for our trip to Hawaii.

The best part about Olive & June is that it lasts for seven days. It won’t last until our next trip, but that’s months away at this point now, but once we’re on the trip, it will last the entire trip.

It won’t chip.

That’s right. It’s awesome. You get all the tools with the Mani system. You get one to help with your cuticles. You get up a poppy that is a patented brush to help you put it on. You get a cleanup brush. Everything you need to do your own nails at home and do them well. Getting beautiful salon perfect nails at home is now a dream come true with Olive & June. Your new nail life is here. Visit OliveAndJune.com/tco for 20% off your first Mani system.

—

Joining us once again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and Sports Psychology consultant. She also has a wonderful app called No More Diets that you should check out. It’s Dr. Jenn.

Hello.

A lot of people think that they need to have another human next to them sweating. What they don't know is that they don't need that other human to be in the same room. Share on X

I’m glad to see you again.

You decide to not be running with me right now. I’m sweating. Tom, I have to tell you, your wife is amazing. We did a 45-minute run with Olivia. You know that runs with Olivia are no joke, then your wife went and did another 45-minute run. After I got off it. I was on the floor with Chelsea stretching and doing my pigeon thing. After her 45 minutes with her second 45-minute run class, I was like, “You are a champion” I’m so impressed with you.

Thank you so much. It’s because I’m able to go slow for a long time. I don’t know how impressive it is.

The mental stamina alone is impressive, much less the physical stamina to go an hour and a half doing something that monotonous and demanding. It is amazing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. It also works well with this next question because Vanessa is struggling with time and specifically, she’s working full-time. She’s a single mum. I think she might be from the UK. She has four kids aged 13 to 19, trying to take care of a home and trying to train for a marathon. I am so stressed for Vanessa.

Me too. I need a Baileys just thinking about her. This is a lot. Four kids, single mom, marathon, any one of those alone is a lot. First of all, she doesn’t say the ages of her kids but first of all, you want to assess, is this the right time in your life to train for a marathon?

They’re 13 to 19 she said, so a little bit self-sufficient.

The fact that they are teenagers and up is good because that means that when she does her long run, they can be at a friend’s house. They can entertain themselves. They have more autonomy. They don’t need her constantly watching over them. Training for a marathon is incredibly grueling. I did one in ’99. I did not have children at the time. I was not married at the time. I had all my time to myself to use it as I please, and it was still grueling and difficult. One of the things you want to do is to think of your marathon training time as self-care time and time for yourself.

You also have to make sure that you’re not burning yourself out and making sure that you’re getting enough sleep, that you’re eating enough food, and that you’re having some balance in your life. You also have time with friends, and you are doing things that feed your soul as well. Getting your kids on board in support of your marathon training is going to be crucial for you to actually make it to the end of your training. That’s a difficult task, but if you have kids who are going, “We’re so proud of you, mom. Go run. Don’t worry, we’ll take care.” Explaining to them why this is meaningful to you, why this is a goal, and why you want to do it will help them to get on board. Achieving such an incredibly difficult goal is a great role model for that.

There may be times when you feel like, “I don’t know if I can keep going.” Those are moments where you can reflect on, “My kids know I’m doing this. I told them I was going to do this.” Sometimes that will give you the extra ump you need to keep on your training. Sitting down, looking at your calendar, looking at your kids’ calendars, and figuring out your time management is going to be key. You are someone with four kids, a full-time job, being a single mom who is training for a marathon. You don’t have a minute to spare.

You are probably going to have to calendar out and schedule out every minute of your day. It’s like, “Free time, self-care time,” just so that you actually have the time to take care of all of the tasks that you’re taking up. I’m super impressed and I want to hear about it after she completes her marathon. I hope that she will write on The Clip Out and tell us how it goes. That would be amazing.

It’s one of those things where it’s like some days, without adding training for a marathon, we all have moments where we’re like, “Why am I doing this?” Fill in the blank. When you’re adding something like that in, that is only for you. You’re not beholden to anybody other than you set it out loud. It’s tough to keep going.

Before I trained for the LA marathon ’99, I’ve talked about a lot here on the show and also on social media that I used to always say like, “I’m not a runner. I’m such a terrible runner. I can’t do it.” I had a lot of negative self-talk until I realized I teach people to not have negative self-talk and I’m having negative self-talk about this one category of my life. That shouldn’t be an exception. I changed it, which changed my running as well.

What I was saying is that the training for a marathon is incredibly difficult. It’s an incredibly wonderful thing to do for yourself. I read a study in ‘99 before I train for the marathon. The study found that people who trained with a friend had much higher rates of marathon training completion and marathon completion.

When I trained for the marathon, I reached out to 50 friends. This was before there was the email. I actually had to make phone calls. I called them all up and said, “I’m going to do this. Do you have any interest in doing this? Would you think about it? Here’s the group I’m training with. This is what I did. I figured if I got 10 friends, I would probably lose at least 5 halfway through. I might end up between 2 and 3. Sure enough, I started out with 5 and then I ended up with my 1 riding partner.

We train and it was an incredible memory. We get up at 5:00 in the morning and do trading in the dark because of her work schedule. We lived very close to each other. It was an amazing and inspiring experience. It was one of those things that for many years after I reflected on and I would say, “If I could do that, I can do anything.” It’s a nice thing to have in your arsenal of knowing how incredible you are and how amazing and how you can accomplish things.

Thank you very much for all that. Until next time, where can people find you?

You can find me on all social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. I post all my Peloton workouts on my Instastories, @DrJennMann and my weekly column with InStyle Magazine called Hump Day With Dr. Jenn.

—

Another week, another pregnant instructor. “How common are pregnant instructors?” You might ask. It’s so common that I didn’t even put it in the headlines. People are going to think we’re just posting the same episode week after week.

Congrats to Selena Samuela I have felt in my heart this was coming for a very long time now. I am super excited for her. She was adorable when she did her announcement. She was like, “You all have been speculating. Did I have too much pasta or is it a baby bump? It is in fact a baby bump and I have been eating more pasta.” It does not have to be either/or so it’s cool. She was a really good sport about all the speculation that was out there. I’m super excited for her.

I feel like she drew the short straw on when she could announce. They got all the pregnant instructors together and they were like, “Pick a number between 1 and 38,” because that’s how many are pregnant.

I thought if somebody had said, “Make a bet,” I would have bet she was going to make her announcement before Becs. I told you that weeks ago. I was like, “It’s going to be Selena then Becs.” I was so sure and it was Becs then Selena.

At this point, unless I hear otherwise, I will assume that all the instructors are pregnant. Selena, Chelsea, Ally Love, Matty Maggiacomo. They’re all pregnant.

Matty is not pregnant.

We don’t know that for a fact.

Here’s the thing though. Five instructors are going to be out. Three tread instructors and two yoga instructors. It’s interesting to see what on earth will they do with the schedules. At least two babies are doing the exact same day.

You will be getting lots of pre and postnatal classes in your future, so enjoy. There was a gathering of instructors. We know because everyone posted this video.

Every single instructor posted this video. It’s a cute video but by the end, I was tired of looking at it. I was like, “If I see Ally Love in my feed one more time.” It was great to see all 54 instructors in one place. The stupid COVID has kept all these instructors apart and it’s frustrating. It’s cool to see them all in one place.

If you want an idea of how many instructors there are and how long they’ve been kept apart, they have to wear name tags.

Many people have said that. Isn’t that crazy? I wonder if that was for each other.

There are other people we’re not seeing.

TCO 262 | Peloton Community

 

They might have done a big meeting since all are going to be in town. I know that they are preparing for the big launch that they’re doing on the 10th, but I think that there’s more to it than that. Also, everybody keeps saying, “They must be doing the all for one classes,” and maybe they are. I have no idea, but keep in mind. They said those are going to be posted in August 2022, not July. They also said that was going to be the all for one music festival again. I wonder if they’re going to do something different than they’ve done in the past, but that includes all of the instructors.

It’s so rare to get them all in one place.

You would think they would make use of that. I absolutely agree. There are going to be less classes available because of that. Get ready because we’re about to see people in the studio again. It’s going to get crazy. I can’t wait to see the OPP light up. We get to watch that every day. That will be fun.

Kendall Toole was on the Today Show.

She did an entire studio tour for Carson Daly. He’s looking different these days. She talked to him about her mental health journey, but she also did a tour of the new studio. He was one of the first press people to get to see the new studio. Anybody watching the Today show got to see it too. She talked about how she’s had suicidal thoughts. She has talked about how she has changed her perspective over the year, and all the things that she’s been through. It’s pretty cool to see all that.

She has mismatched shoes on like Punky Brewster.

Those are actually a set that’s mismatched on purpose.

Aditi Shah is on the cover of SEEMA Magazine.

She got to do a cool photo shoot. She talked about how you can reinvent yourself as many times as you want and the importance of storytelling and why representation is everything. It’s neat to see that she’s gotten several highlights lately. I’m excited about that. We don’t see a lot of the yoga instructors getting a ton of attention. That’s great.

Robin Arzon will be doing the keynote address for Monmouth Medical Center’s 27th annual Power of Pink luncheon.

It takes place later in July. I don’t know of anybody going to this, but you never know. Sometime between now and then, I might hear about it. It’s pretty cool that she’s doing that. She’s going to walk them through her journey as well.

Speaking of Robin, this isn’t on the list, but I saw someone post in the group that there’s a book available on Amazon from Robin Azon.

It’s called Strong Mama like her actual children’s book. Her book is obviously by Robin Arzon. This is by Robin Azon. It got a similar cover but is clearly not well done.

It’s like when your grandma would come home with the DVD copy of Transmorphers.

It looks super suspect. Spread the word. No one buys that book. Let’s make sure they’re buying the right book and get the credit to Robin.

Now I feel silly. I bought a copy of Speech by Dunte, so color me red.

Hopefully, that doesn’t happen.

If Robin Azon moves copies, I promise you, it will happen.

That’s fair. People are icky.

Christine D’Ercole was on the Committed podcast with Jo Piazza talking about her love story.

She details a portion of her love story that is similar to that article that came out a few weeks ago. If you didn’t get a chance to read that but you want to hear the story, you can totally tune in here and get that information. It’s about 50 minutes long.

The Peloton blog had a post welcoming Logan Aldridge to the family.

This was actually put out. I’m not sure when it exactly did because it said he was a consultant and he was going to be a future instructor. I thought since he was officially doing classes now, we should revisit this. It talks about the fact that there’s a whole new collection that’s out there. There are six classes. We’ve got standing, full-body, seated full-body, and standing adaptive warmups. Check them out. It’s interesting.

He also had a virtual community event that happened shortly before we recorded this.

It was moderated by Ally Love. People were able to register and ask questions ahead of time, but you also could join the chat and ask questions in real-time. Logan is a real joy. He lost his arm at the age of thirteen in a boating accident. He became a public speaker at the age of fourteen. He was traveling around the country motivating adult business folks. Isn’t that crazy to think about. I say that because he’s so well-spoken. I think that’s because he’s had so much experience. He’s very young in the grand scheme of things, but he’s been doing this for a long time. One of the questions he was asked is why Peloton and why now?

He was talking about that it’s because it is the largest fitness platform on the planet. He felt it was a good time to take adaptions that people may not know about, and put them out there in a forum where people could find them easily. People who do need to take the opportunity to make adaptations may not know the steps they need to take. They may not even know where to go searching for it. He wants to be part of the solution in getting it in front of people. I think that’s cool. A lot of good information in there. If you didn’t get to hear it, the link is still out there. You can still go listen to the replay.

While we’re talking about Logan, Market Realist had an article. The headline is New Peloton Instructor Logan Aldridge Finds Power in His Mantra: “It’s Just an Arm.” The URL is How Did Logan Aldridge Lose His Arm. Someone is working the SEO there. Let’s talk about how that occurred.

Here’s the other interesting thing. That is his mantra. He says that all the time. The Peloton community, being what they are, have already created a fan group for him called Just An Arm Crew. A lot of people are out there in that group. He talked a lot about how he keeps it in perspective. This article says that as well. That’s why it’s his mantra. That’s a very healthy perspective to have.

Matty Maggiacomo has a new episode of Out Loud on his IG live.

He’s going live with Jessica Darrow. She films as the voice of Luisa from the Disney movie Encanto. How cool is that? She’s a queer Latina and mental health advocate. She embraces the importance of being a role model for the Latin X and LGBTQIA community.

Olivia Amato has partnered with LTK. I say that like I know what that is.

Peloton is not a solo act despite you being alone in your living room. If you want to have other people with you, you just have to find those people and put yourself out there. Share on X

It’s some kind of linking service that allows her to share her fashion finds. She can post, “I have these shoes, ” because she always wears those high platform shoes everywhere. She can share, “Here’s what I’m wearing,” so that if people want to emulate her style, they can. She had quite a few things out there. There were lots of other posts that went with this. I thought it was interesting because people are always talking about how she is so fashion forward. It’s fascinating to me that somebody found a way to capitalize on such specific things.

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Peloton is inviting members back into the studio. Not just the press, but actual people who give them money.

They sent out invites to select members. That does not mean influencers. I have no idea. It’s some kind of random thing. People from all over the country here in the US and the UK were invited. There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to who they are choosing or why. You are selected by getting the email. You fill out the Google Form and then you submit your entry, and then they decide if you’re going to come. Who knows who will actually get in. Some people are posting the stupid Google form everywhere. Let’s say they invited a thousand people. Now that people are posting it everywhere, we have 15,000 people to choose from.

I don’t think Peloton will figure out what’s going on.

We sent invites to a thousand people. How did we get 15,000 responses?

I guess we must have sent it out to 15,000 people and we forgot.

All they’re doing is watering down the ability for people to go. Let’s say Peloton is like, “We’re going to choose a thousand people. We don’t care who those thousand are.” Let’s say they’re going to do that. Now your chances got smaller because everyone posted it everywhere. Don’t do that guys. You’re not helping yourself. It’s all going to be open to everybody sometime in the future.

Not only are you not helping yourself. You’re making it harder for people that it was intended for.

This will be every Friday through June and July. They said that it will open up to the general public later this summer. I assume that means August because it went all the way through July with the different options. We will see.

The aborted Peloton manufacturing plant in Ohio is on the market and generating lots of interest.

This article says it is going to be sold by the end of summer. They would be very surprised if it was not.

It’s pivoting. It’s nice that it’s generating interest. Maybe they won’t take quite the bet on it that people thought that they were going to.

They were saying during the last earnings call at Peloton that when this is sold, it was going to go a long way towards that profitability that they’re trying to achieve in 2023. Everybody cross your fingers because we need profitability so all the financial people can back off and we can go back to having fun.

That new CFO is like, “Get this off the books.”

I bet every day he’s like, “Did we sell it?” I thought you meant Barry. You said CFO. I heard CEO.

Kate Winick, senior director of social media at Peloton, was on the Social Pros podcast. You would think the Social Pros podcast would have a more inviting website.

It sounds like an interesting discussion about what Peloton has done to continue to engage and connect with their audience.

While we’re discussing podcasts the podcast Speaking Human featured Peloton in an episode entitled Ride and Fall of Peloton.

This is an interesting one. It’s not fun to listen to. I got to be honest.

It’s twenty minutes long. How do they get it all in twenty minutes? That’s a lot of stories to tell in twenty minutes. Sports Illustrated spotlighted the best personal training apps of 2022, and Peloton made the list in the best for fitness classes.

Well then, what are the rest of these things? Best for cardio, how is that different from best of classes? They’re all classes.

I read this as they’re saying Peloton classes are the most engaging, but Aaptiv has the best variety. If you want to focus on HIIT classes, you want Keelo, whatever that is.

Map My Run is interesting because it’s only for running, not the best of cardio. It’s very interesting. Do with that what you will.

We talked a while back about the Pfizer corporate challenge, and how Peloton is doing these corporate challenges that are corporate programs that are only available within certain business ecosystem platforms. This one has been completed and they’re offering Peloton swag through their website.

It comes from the corporate challenge website. You can choose either a Peloton hat, a water bottle, a resistance band, a running belt or a courthouse. I think that this is always what you have as an option for these kinds of challenges. I was also told that the Chase Sapphire challenge that was done in 2021, these are the same exact prizes that were included as things you could choose from. People have long asked for there to be never-ending, evergreen outfits that you could get from the Peloton apparel store. They’ve never done that, but I think that their solution is for corporate challenges to have these options that are always evergreen options.

It is interesting to know because my first thought was, are these leftover products?

This is the stuff that they give away for everything. When they’ve done all those excess like when there were like 15,000 point challenge and here’s all the stuff you get, it was literally leftover stuff from the store. That’s not what this is.

I thought this might have been more of that like, “Here’s a way to blow it out.”

No. Fair question though.

—

We have a new artist series with Rina Sawayama.

TCO 262 | Peloton Community

 

I know nothing about this artist because we’re old. She is on a quest to turn every genre of music into a dance floor banger. So far she’s succeeding and the class started on June 8th. It’s all pop. That I know. There are three different classes that you can take, a 10-minute warmup ride, a 30-minute yoga flow, and a 30-minute ride with Kendall. I’m curious if anybody gets a chance to take those. I probably won’t because I haven’t been doing much of the biking or yoga lately, but who knows? I might get a chance to.

—

Joining us once again from MetPro here to answer all of your nutritional questions is Angelo. Hello.

Thanks for having me back.

Thanks for being back. Karen Smith has an interesting question. She says that she currently lives with an exchange student in her house who is a vegetarian. Karen thought this was going to be great because she thought, “Healthy foods.” It turns out the exchange student is picky. Now Karen has put on 7 pounds and she’s having trouble getting back to her healthy eating.

It turns out that fried okra is technically vegetarian.

That is the deal. Vegetarian is undisputedly a super healthy way to eat, but it is not something you can do casually like, “I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll figure out how to be a vegetarian one meal at a time.” That doesn’t work so well. I will admit that it is becoming easier. Here in the States, we have more options than we ever have, but it is still one of the most deliberate approaches you could take as far as accessibility. It takes a lot of advanced planning. It is great if you can pull it off.

They might have more options where you are. In Missouri, vegetarian means your cow was grass-fed.

If you’re lucky, you might get one of those Beyond Burger.

There are a lot of moving parts here. We could take this in a number of different directions. The joke is French fries and beer is vegetarian. We can’t automatically equate vegetarianism with weight loss. When people are eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, the side effect of that is almost always it’s replacing a higher calorie option. Therefore, it’s not the vegetarian nature of the foods. It’s the low-calorie content of the foods that do often result in weight loss when we talk about vegetarianism.

On the flip side to that, the counterargument is simply this. When we overconsume carbs, that can lead to weight gain. When you have three macronutrients; protein, fats and carbohydrates that you’re consuming, most people don’t stare at their plate and say, “I have my protein here. I have my carbohydrates there and this here is my fats.” Most people think here are my proteins and here are my carbs. The fats are built-in. They are in the dressing. They’re in the meat. They’re in the seasonings. They’re there. What that ends up resulting in is when you remove the protein. How do you fill-up? Will you end up eating more carbohydrates? Some people can just have an extra portion of green beans and they’re good. Tom and I aren’t those people.

Those people are called sociopaths.

What ends up happening is it becomes an inadvertent high-carb diet for people who are not rehearsed in doing it. Again, it does not have to be that way. For Karen, what I would recommend is if you like protein, cook by macro and cook a complex carbohydrate. Things like brown rice, sweet potato, and oatmeal are all carbohydrates that are known to be good for weight loss also because they’re high in volume and low in calories for the volume consumed. They’re going to be very filling.

What you could do is cook vegetables or have some fruits and vegetables and eat some of both. What you can also do is you can keep some protein on hand that is not a carbohydrate. You can do some vegetarian sources of protein, but you can also have a mixture so that you can have a little bit and think of it real simple.

This doesn’t need to be rocket science. Chop down 30% of the carbs you’re eating at that meal and replace it with 30% more protein. Vegan or vegetarian protein sources, the problem is a lot of people say that those protein sources aren’t as good. Don’t think it was not as good. They’re great. The issue is they’re going to be more monotonous. There are only so many sources of protein from non-animal products. If you’re the type of person that doesn’t mind having 2 or 3 items in quantity frequently and it doesn’t bother you then, great.

If you’re trying to get protein and you like variety, that’s where having some lean healthier animal protein, I’m a big fan of fish personally, is a great thing to mix in if you’re not a vegetarian. If you are, it’s beautiful what they have now as far as vegan and vegetarian supplementary protein. That’s what I take in the mornings. I take a vegan protein shake along with my carbohydrates and fats. That works well for me.

These are some simple ways that you don’t need to eliminate or have a knee-jerk reaction and take out all these good things that you may be doing. If you can replace a little bit of the carbohydrates with a little bit more protein at least at lunch and dinner, you may find that that helps you out. There are common sense things. That is if your version of being vegetarian is eating a bunch of mac and cheese. I can tell you, there are some vegetarians out there that that’s their way of being a vegetarian. You will gain weight.

Nobody is going to say, “I gained weight because I ate too many fruits and vegetables.” That’s unlikely. That would be a very unique scenario that happens. If the bulk of your food volumes comes from fruits and vegetables, you’re going to be safe. I’m reading between the lines and guessing that you may have a vegan on your hands who also likes things that aren’t just fruits and vegetables. That’s why there has been that issue in your house, so balance.

Thank you so much for all that. If people would like fitness and nutrition tips tailored for them, where can they find you?

MetPro.co/tco.

—

We have a prenatal yoga and meditation collection with Anna Greenberg.

This was already out. I was confused because it’s yoga and meditation, but they had that Strong As A Mother collection that came out a while back. I’m not sure if this is all new content. At any rate, this is specific. I think it’s new. The more I’m talking about this out loud, the more I have convinced myself now that it is new. It has classes that will help you connect with your mind and body and breath as you journey toward parenthood. All three trimesters are included.

Can’t you tell how new it is by how far along she is?

I thought they added classes to an existing one that they dropped on mother’s day. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, which is why I made you guys listen to my thoughts out loud.

She’s still fighting the Rona, people.

Give me a break. I was supposed to be in Hawaii. Who knows what I would have said about this then?

We have the Get Out & Move challenge for people. That’s what I called my first divorce.

They had this in 2021 and it was not at all memorable to me. You can take a class from the outdoor category, outdoor walk, outdoor run, and they also added a bunch of classes like barre and Pilates that you could in theory do outside. There are 24 in the collection. You can get a badge for doing 24 of them. The interesting thing to me about this was they released the Just Workout beta. It’s all about taking outside classes, but because it’s beta, it’s not included in the Get Out & Move challenge.

That seems like a missed opportunity to me by a lot. I have confirmed that if you are to take a Just Workout class, that is not included in this particular challenge. What I have not heard confirmation on, and I have not done any digging, is that perhaps those minutes on a Just Workout are not included in your minutes for the entire year that Peloton tracks. Supposedly, they may not be included. Again, I have not confirmed that.

I’m confused by all of it, but it doesn’t matter.

The Just Workout feature does not appear to be included in any challenges. That’s the fast way to say it.

There’s also the Peloton Picks Collection has new stuff.

Use hashtags to grow your community. The more people you follow, the bigger the community you're going to have. Share on X

It has been updated and now it includes the Guide. There are 29 classes that Peloton has chosen and included in their Peloton Picks. If you haven’t seen these before, there’s one for running, there’s one for yoga, there’s one for the Guide, and there’s one for strength and cycling.

This one is not technically an In Case You Missed It. It’s more of a don’t miss it or some upcoming things to look forward to.

There have been six different classes for Pride so far in June. I thought this was interesting. They did a Two For One with DJ John Michael, Jess King, and Adrian Williams on the tread. They turned it into a walk and a run. That was the first time I had seen them do that. I thought that was interesting as well. There are also some classes coming up later in June that are going to be specific for Father’s Day and Juneteenth. There are a lot of specialty-themed classes in June. Make sure if you’re a person who tracks your badges, you got to be on it. Lots of stuff going on.

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Joining us is Susie Platt. How is it going, Sussie?

I’m good. How are you?

We’re good. How did you originally find Peloton? When was it in your timeline?

I knew of Peloton and I wanted one for quite a while, but I didn’t want to pay the Peloton money. I was a gym rat. I would go to the gym, make friends, and go to classes. As much as I wanted something at home, I couldn’t justify the class, and then the pandemic happened. I was around two days into the pandemic and I was still waffling about whether I was going to do this or not.

I had a friend who was like, “Susie, do the math. Figure it out. You’re going to see that it’s cheaper for you to buy this.” That’s what I needed to hear. He was the one person who said exactly what I needed. I did the math and he was right. It was around two days after my work. I said, “You’re all going to be home for I don’t know how long.” I hit submit and I bought it. A few weeks later, I had a Peloton at home.

It’s good that you jumped quick.

It is because you would have been waiting months otherwise.

Past Susie made a good decision doing it at that time. I don’t know if I had a sixth sense.

Sometimes things align and you see it so clear. I remember when I was a teenager, my mom bought me a CD player. I had 300 records but I had six CDs. I kept listening to those same six CDs over and over again. Finally, I was like, “I need to sell all of my records because pretty soon everybody is going to be selling their records and they’ll have no value.” I took all my records in and the guy at the record store was like, “What are you doing? Do you have a drug habit? Did you get a girl pregnant? What is going on?” I was like, “I’m buying CDs.” He was like, “Okay.” That was my Peloton pandemic moment.

I still have records.

It’s the opposite now. It has become cool again.

My sixteen-year-old nephew is taking some of my records. I guess I’m cool at points for it.

That’s good because it’s hard to get from a teenager. You said you were a gym rat before. What workouts did you do at the gym?

I have been taking spin classes for a very long time. My first spin class was twenty years ago. I loved it from the start. I loved going into this room where it was usually dark and the music was loud. People would come out looking like they were super close to death. For some reason, that drew me in. I was like, “I need a piece of that.” I had a gym that I enjoyed going to. I took some intro classes and after the first one, I hurt for a week. It was rough. I couldn’t walk very well but I loved the experience. I loved hearing new music, meeting new people, burning calories, and feeling that sense of accomplishment.

You talked to the people in your spin class. That’s a novel idea.

I did. I always say that I’m an introvert, but when I get around people, I can’t not say stuff.

Coming from an actual introvert, that is not an introvert. Introverts hide from other people. That’s what we do.

I always say that I fake it well, that I’m an ambivert. Sometimes I think that I don’t know myself as well as others know me. I made friends at the gym and I loved going. I had my regular instructors. I knew them and they knew me. That’s something that I need when I workout. It’s not enough for me to live a healthy life. I need people who will point me out when I’m not living a healthy life.

You like a little call out, a little tough love.

I do. You can still be a little nice about it. If I don’t show up for class, I want you to tell me, “Show up for class,” and ask me why I didn’t show up for class, and to make sure that I show up next time.

How did you transition that to Peloton then?

That was a concern of mine because I do have such a social aspect when it comes to working out. I had been at a gym for a couple of years where we became a tight-knit group and it was like that. If you didn’t show up for a class, you would get ten texts asking you where you were and why you’ve decided to live an unhealthy life. I would show up for the class after that. I thought, “Who’s going to call me out?” One of the first things I did when I got my bike was I went to Facebook and searched for Peloton groups.

There were seven billion.

I joined like seven billion.

Did you know that there were all sorts of Peloton groups out there? Were you playing a hunch?

I was playing a hunch. If anyone knows Facebook, it’s me. Any complication I have, I go straight to Facebook. I find a group and I join it. That’s what I did.

Somebody out there will solve your problem.

TCO 262 | Peloton Community

 

They will tell me that this is the problem, even though it’s not. I found a bunch of different Peloton groups. I found your group. I found PeloPets. I found Power Zone. I found so many different groups. I joined them all and started talking. Later I realized that there are special groups for instructors too. I would join those also. Suddenly, you know people.

You see them over and over again. You see comments they make over and over again. You’re like, “I know how this person thinks. They think like me.” You can tell from their posts and things.

Have you systematically destroyed your gym? Have you sold Peloton to all the other people?

There’s one person who did. I’m still pro-gym. I don’t belong to anyone. I found that this fits my needs. I try to sell it to everyone because it has been such a game-changer for me. I didn’t expect it to be. I did think that I had that need to have another human next to me sweating. I realized that I don’t need that other human to be next to me in the same room.

That’s fascinating to me because I was the opposite since I am a true introvert. In all honesty and seriousness, I am painfully shy. I would never talk to the people at the gym. Are you kidding me? Make eye contact with strangers. Why would I do that? Why would I do that on purpose? In fact, I remember we started this show. I was like, “Tom, I don’t even know how to do that. Do you want me to talk to people?” It’s easier here because this is just like we’re on the phone. This isn’t threatening. In a room when you’re standing there next to me, that’s threatening. I don’t know how you did that.

From the start, I never felt that way. It felt like it was something that was necessary for me. It makes me think about the people who say that they come to work when there’s no one else around. That’s not me at all. I like coming to work when there are other people around. I want us all going through the same thing at the same time. I want to see you going through it.

I am glad you’re not my boss.

It works in the virtual world too. Where I work, I’m still mostly virtual. I come in sometimes. I have people in different parts of the country. We have never met each other face to face, but I know they are there. I know they are working. That always brings me a sense of peace. I like to know that there’s somebody else with this experience so then we can talk about it. That’s how it has been with me with Peloton. Immediately, I found thousands of people who get it.

How did you narrow it down to people that you were like, “These people especially get it. They get me?”

Anyone who likes Matt Wilpers, I was in immediately. I was on the HIIT group for Matt’s Maniacs. A workmate was posting these beautiful graphs that she got from her ride. I’m a data person. I work in technology. I saw that and was like, “I want a part of that. I want to know how I’m doing. It’s not enough to know my output. I need to know more.” She introduced me to Power Zone, which introduced me to Matt. Once you’re part of the Power Zone Pack, you have thousands of people who are there to cheer you on.

Another group that I was part of where I immediately found people who I had something in common with was PeloPets. I have a dog. Her name is Cota. I’m surprised that it has taken me this long to mention her. Usually, when I introduce myself, I mention Cota. I joined the PeloPets. From there, someone mentioned that there’s a PeloPitties page. That’s for people who have pit bulls or who like pit bulls. Cota is a pit bull. I joined that one. I posted one day and said, “Who does Power Zone? Maybe we should have a team.” There are a few people who are like, “I am in.” We all migrated to the same team.

Poaching people from preexisting things is a pattern for you.

It seems that way.

I’m sensing a pattern. We’ve got poaching, pets, pit bulls, and Peloton.

It’s all P.

It’s an alliteration.

Also, Platt. It all comes together. Apparently, that’s my MO. I’m good at it. We joined an existing team. That team has become a Peloton family. I feel like in Power Zone challenges, time doesn’t exist.

How many challenges have you guys done together?

Anywhere between 400 and 600. I’m not sure what the exact number is. I am certain that it’s between 400 and 600. That’s about how many. It’s probably closer to 400. We’ve seen people have babies. A lot of people have COVID. There have been a lot of injuries that people have gotten through. People have moved to different countries and we’ve stuck together. We know each other personally.

We reach out to each other and are each other’s support system. This is something that was unexpected for me with Peloton. I figured I’m in my living room, this bike, and it’s a solo act. There’s nobody around me. That’s the opposite of what I discovered. If you want to have other people with you for this, you will. You just have to find those people and put yourself out there.

Given that you are fairly new to the community. For somebody that has been around as long as I have, it’s a lot easier to have found people because the group was so much smaller. The community, in general, was so much smaller back in 2016 and 2017, but now it’s ginormous. How do you go about putting yourself out there now? People can be mean to some of these groups. I mean the OPP. I’m not picking on any group in particular. It can be scary to put yourself out there.

First, my advice is to not join that group. If anything will make you not love Peloton, it’s potentially that group. I feel like I came in at the start of when Peloton got huge. Peloton had a great year in the first year of the pandemic. It’s not so much anymore, but they had a great year. Because of that, there were a lot of people who came in. A lot of new groups formed. It can be easy to get lost in that. You have to be active, whether it’s on a group or showing up at the same rides, having the same hashtag as others have. If you are riding with Cody, which who doesn’t? I guess even Tom likes riding with Cody and he doesn’t even ride.

Tom does enjoy the sizzle commercial.

How can you not? He seems like a fun guy to be around. You find that hashtag and you add it, and then people follow and notice you. Even if you’re not on Facebook, I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s certainly easier to find others if you’re on Facebook. If you’re not, it’s just using those hashtags, adding them, and following people. The more you follow, the bigger community you’re going to have. I am shameless when it comes to high fives. Sometimes people get annoyed with that. I probably seem like a stalker. If I have high-fived anyone many times, it’s not just you. It’s everyone.

Here’s how you reach stalker level. If somebody has blocked you on all forms of social media and you continue to high five them, you have reached stalker level. That’s my definition.

I’m not there but I will high five you. Part of it is because sometimes I need the extra high fives. You reap what you sow. That’s a way to get your community because that makes you noticed. People will start to follow you back also. When I see people who don’t have many people who follow them, how do you get through it? Do you just enjoy the exercise or what? I don’t understand it. I like to have the people who I high five. I like to have the people I follow and I will follow everybody.

Do you always take live rides? With the classes that you’re taking, do you have set times to take them together? How does that work for you?

I do both. I mostly do the on-demand rides. One of my PeloPitties friends, we are on the same Power Zone team. We meet every morning and ride together except for Saturdays. We plan the day before. We say, “This is what we’re going to do,” sometimes the morning of, and then we ride together. We would post it for the team and let them know. For our Power Zone rides, we did Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Everyone on the team knew that that’s when we are riding and they are always welcome to come. The more people you follow, the more likely you’re going to have people you know on the ride. I’m at that point where I could ride at 2:00 in the morning. Chances are there’s someone who I know who lives in England and is riding at the same time.

It does not matter what time I’m taking a class or what class I take. I get at least a high-five from somebody, whether I know them or not. Sometimes it’s like, “There’s somebody out there taking a class at the same time as me.” People will high-five and I do the same. It is nice to have that support. Somebody’s doing the same thing you are at that very moment. It feels like I’m not alone. It’s a nice feeling.

I love that. I also love classes that you take with instructors. Probably for you, it’s a Matt Wilpers type of thing where you hop on and you know so many people. It feels like you just walked into a party where all of your friends are because everyone is high-fiving each other. It’s an awesome feeling of like, “My friends are here.” It’s a good feeling.

You can't do Peloton without saying you do Peloton. You just need to talk about it. Share on X

That’s how it is with Power Zone. When you’re in a challenge, no matter what class you’re on, if you’re riding ahead or if you’re a little bit behind, there are going to be so many people who are on the ride with you. No one high-fives like a Power Zoner. They high-five you and they high-five you again. I appreciate that.

In theory, the pandemic is winding down. That’s what we’re hoping. The studios are opening. That’s what they keep saying. Are you planning any trips to go to the studio?

That is the dream. I have a lot of family in New York. My work has an office in New York. Whenever anyone goes there, I’m like, “Can you please, for those who can’t, go to the studio and get a selfie? I don’t care if it’s with anyone. I don’t care if it’s with a picture of someone.” There’s a group of us who have been talking about making the pilgrimage and going to the studio. I would love to do that. I would ride with anyone in there. All the coaches feel like you’re friends at this point. They have no idea who I am. Every once in a while, I’ll get a Matt Wilpers high-five. I’m like, “He knows who I am.” It’s very exciting, but I would love to go to the studio. I’m going to make it happen. If anyone wants to go, let me know. Let’s make it happen together.

You ask more on this show. You’re going to get so many people reaching out to you.

Let’s be within reason. Who doesn’t want to go to London too? It has a beautiful studio.

In New York, the window clings came down, so it’s getting close.

They switched out the Treads. There are so many signs.

I’m a little worried about the viability of the Tread+ but that’s a whole other story.

Do you still talk to your gym friends?

I still talk to my gym friends.

Do you go to the gym?

I don’t go to the gym. I’m fortunate that my work has a couple of gyms on location. You might be wondering, do I go to those gyms? The answer is, “I do not.” I look at them and think, “How lucky are we?” I consider going to them and then I don’t. I have everything that I need here. During the last few years, I worked on getting my home gym set up. I’m in good shape with the items that I have here, knowing that I still eventually want to go back to the gym because they have more dumbbells. They have more kettlebells. I don’t have everything. Eventually, I’ll go back. I need a partner to go back with. I don’t do this alone.

Do you send screen grabs of the leaderboard so you can be like, “I still live a healthy lifestyle?”

If anyone’s on my Facebook, they know. It’s like the thing about running a marathon. You can’t run a marathon without saying you ran a marathon. It’s the same thing with Peloton. If you have a Peloton, you need to talk about it and talk about it some more. There’s no human that I come into any association with who doesn’t know.

That’s the origin story of this show. I get it. I can’t get my leg up here, but I’ve got Peloton on the back of my pants.

It’s who we are. At work, we have a Peloton message board. It’s part of so many different aspects of my life. I never thought that I would be that person. Back in the day, I was a runner. I did triathlons. I used to talk about that. I don’t talk about that anymore. Now I talk about how I woke up at 6:00 in the morning and I did an hour-long ride. This is how long we were in the zone.

No one else knows what that means unless they do Peloton.

It’s just a specific group that would know but I’ll find you and I will give you my referral code. That’s what I will do.

I’m curious. Do you run now? Do you do any Peloton runs or anything like that? Are you a bike purist?

I’m a bike purist, except for when it comes to the outdoors. I do some of the outdoor activities. I don’t consider myself a runner anymore. I want everything that says Peloton. I still want the Tread. I tease myself to think that I would use it and become a runner again. I don’t have a Tread, but I do use it for outdoors every single day. I use it when I walk the dog.

Do you think you’ll be getting a Rower when they are released?

I want one so badly. How long has that been a rumor?

It’s literally four years. It’s probably closer to five at this point.

I know about it, day one. Rowing is a great workout. I used to take a rowing class. I would love to do it. If Adrian is going to be one of the coaches, sign me up.

It looks like he’s going to be the lead coach.

Let’s get that and let’s get that now. I’m in.

It sounds like on your wish list, the Rower is higher than the Tread.

It is definitely higher than the Tread.

I’m glad we got that established.

That’s where it is today.

Work in Power Zone with the Rower.

TCO 262 | Peloton Community

 

I will say that in Power Zone, I’m in a three ride a week team. You get extra points if you do the accelerator. Back in the day, the accelerator had to be another ride, but now it’s not. It can be any Peloton class, 30 minutes or longer. That’s how I would work it in.

I’m glad that finally changed. Lots of people were getting injured by riding way too much. That’s good that it finally got shifted.

It’s nice to have the cross-training.

It’s a lot healthier too.

Maybe there will be a paddle zone.

I don’t think that we’ve mentioned yet your leader board name so that you can have even more people follow you, Susie.

Please do. My leader board name is I Am a Rock Star. You all can figure out why. For those of you who aren’t sure, I think it was Christine who said that your leaderboard name should be motivational. Before this, I’ve had a few different leaderboard names. It was Susie from MKE because that’s who I am. I am Susie from Milwaukee. There you go. Was it motivational? No, it was factual. I wasn’t sure what I would change it to.

One day, I did Her Pink Ride. It was the second time I had done it. People say that they ask for rides where you can get in a good cry. This was an ugly cry that I got in during this ride. She played So What and it hit me. I’m like, “That’s it.” Right after that, I changed my leaderboard name to I Am a Rock Star and it stuck for probably more than a year.

Pink has the most songs on my perfect playlist for a spin class in all of the classes I’ve ever done. There are so many great ones. I love Pink. That’s a perfect song for that.

She is quite talented. I remember when her first song came out and that was a long time ago. Look at her, still going strong. Keep rocking.

If you’ve never seen her in concert, you should.

You need to drop everything. You must go. She is phenomenal. I know you like her, so I’m not talking to you, but for people out there. Even if they don’t love Pink, you will have a good time at that concert. It’s impossible to not have a good time.

I love those acts. If you’re not a fan and you go because you’re like, “I feel like I should. Someone bought me a ticket,” you leave being a fan.

You will feel that way.

She is like that. I’m not a huge fan. She has songs that I like but whatever. Her shows are amazing. It’s like the Cirque du Soleil type of performance.

It’s Cirque du Soleil done to rock music. It’s amazing.

You got to wonder how they do that if I leave exhausted.

She trains for a very long time before she goes out on tour. Over the last few years, she’s backed off after trying to take some time to be a mom and not work out as hard. She has taken some time off for that. I’m sure before she goes back on the road, she will be back in fighting shape.

I’m looking forward to it.

Do you have any advice for people who are just getting their bikes?

My best advice is what was given to me which was, “Do a Cody ride.” On my first ride, I did a twenty-minute pop ride with Cody. Fun fact, I thought that I had the right clips for my shoes and I did not. My first ride was in regular shoes, not even clipped in. I did a twenty-minute ride, but it was still so much fun. I was like, “If this is the way the instructors are, this is going to be the best.” If you’re new to cycling, twenty minutes is great. Something that I appreciate about Peloton is that it works on any schedule. If you’re new to cycling, they have the 10 minutes and 15 minutes. Do what you can. Do not compare yourself to others.

When you're new to Peloton, do not compare yourself to others. You are competing with yourself. Who cares about that leaderboard. It does not matter what place you're in. Share on X

You are competing versus you. Who cares about that leaderboard? It does not matter what place you’re in. What matters is you got on that bike and you’re going to get off that bike, and you’re going to get on it again. Set a schedule and go in with the attitude that this is going to be fun and keep coming back. Send those high-fives and keep coming back. Find those rides based on music. It’s so hard to find an artist series that isn’t out there or an artist who isn’t covered in some way. You can start with that and keep going from there. You’ll quickly find those instructors who you gel with and whom you want to continue.

All wonderful advice.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. We greatly appreciate it. Before we let you go, remind everybody where they can find you in all the places if you would like to be found.

I live in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee. It’s hard to get anywhere from here. I’ll do the best I can. You’ll find me on the leaderboard, I Am a Rockstar. On Instagram, please follow my dog. It’s CotaRocketBigBee. He is super adorable. Don’t follow me on Instagram. It’s not interesting. Follow Cota.

If people follow Cota and they want to ask you a question, is Cota answering or are you?

Cota will be sure to get it to me. I’ll answer, but Cota is along for the ride so she knows. She is well-versed in Peloton. I’m sure she has her favorites. That’s the best way to find me and in pretty much every single group, you’ll find me there. You’ll find me on The Clip Out. I’m here. I’m there. I’m everywhere.

Thank you so much for joining us.

It’s great talking to you.

You too.

—

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. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter and 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. While you’re there, like the page, join the group, and of course, don’t forget our brand new Patreon, Patreon.com/TheClipOut. For $5 a month, you can get all of this ad-free. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

 

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