317. Peloton Launches 'Workout Of The Day' Plus Our Interview With Darci Bolger

317. Peloton Launches ‘Workout Of The Day’ Plus Our Interview With Darci Bolger

Last Updated: July 31, 2023By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: Bikram Netflix, Bikram Yoga, fitness, Hot Yoga, Peloton, Peloton Cult

Peloton unveils ‘Workout of the Day’.
Casting call for apparel campaign.
Precor launches distribution division.
Barry McCarthy is in a Wall Street Journal article about CEOs.
Nine.com.au talked about Lanebreak.
Forbes reviewed Lanebreak Tread.
Nikki 🐝 reviewed Peloton Gym for theclipout.com.
Dr. Jenn – How to stop sabotaging your own weight loss efforts.
Cody Rigsby and Matty Maggiacomo attended a Pride event at the White House.
In Magazine had a Matty spotlight.
Ally Love is on Netflix’s ‘Is It Cake, Too?’
Logan Aldridge joins Team Callaway Golf Adaptive Team.
Women’s Wear Daily featured Matt Wilpers.
Susie Chan has started her Badwater run.
Susie also had a message for Susie’s Striders.
Jenn Sherman popped up on the Class Of Palm Beach TikTok.
Charlotte Weidenbach walked the red carpet at Tarantino Live.
Peloton Apparel asked the instructors about their ideal summer day.
Angel/MetPro – Tips for battling tendinitis.
Bikini Kill lead singer Kathleen Hanna loves her Peloton.
Lululemon still looking to sell Mirror.
The latest Artist Series features Samara Joy and Luke Bryan
Outdoor Artist classes have arrived.
It’s not too late to celebrate July 4 with Peloton classes.
There’s new scenic content – Visit scenic Tenerife.
DJ John Michael premiered a new Debbie Gibson remix on an Adrian Williams ride.
Pick Your Palette apparel collection.

All this plus our interview with Darci Bolger!

—

Listen to the podcast here

Peloton Launches ‘Workout Of The Day’ Plus Our Interview With Darci Bolger

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

No. It’s 317. We’re not in March. We are in July.

Is that when it is?

Yeah. St. Patrick’s Day. We are currently in July though. This is episode 317.

We are celebrating the independence of the Irish from whiskey and bad food.

Some of the food is good.

I know the potato part is okay.

It’s just weird like Hagrid.

No. That’s Harry Potter.

It’s Haggis. It’s gross.

It sounds it. They didn’t even try to sell that. They gave it a gross name on top of everything. In this episode, we are interviewing one of our helper bees, Darci. They love it when I call them helper bees.

I know. Darci Bolger.

She has a fascinating story.

She does. By the way, we got to put a little trigger warning on here because we do discuss a little bit of abuse and sexual abuse and things like that. I don’t want to trigger anybody. If that thing upsets you, then please stay clear.

We touch on the topic of the Bikram Hot Yoga guy, and the Netflix documentary. If you haven’t seen it, it’s good.

It is good. Very well done.

She was involved on the periphery of that, and she talks about that. It’s a fascinating interview, but if that sort of stuff upsets you, then you’re going to want to either be in the right frame of mind or wait for the next interview.

Also, you may not want to have little children around for that one.

We also put out a new Patreon episode for our Patreon. We appreciate that. We tell you all about how I almost flunked out of college by forgetting to go to a Spanish final.

Also, lots of Clip Out updates on what’s going on.

Where we will be in the near future. What else pray tell do you have in store for people?

Peloton is popping out new features left and right. We are going to be talking about all of those. We’re going to be talking about all the things, in general, going on with the instructors as we always do. We have a visit from Dr. Jenn. We are going to talk about how to stop sabotaging your own weight loss efforts. We have a visit from Angelo.

He has tips for tendinitis.

Going back to Dr. Jenn, that’s another one that could be a little touchy for people. We touch on abuse there as well.

It’s chock full of trigger warnings system.

All the instructors and lots of interesting things there, little tidbits of things going on with Peloton, and little celebrity news. We got all kinds of stuff.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, iHeart, TuneIn. 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 leave us a review. It’s super helpful. We greatly appreciate it. You can also find us on the aforementioned Patreon, where for a little extra money, you get ad-free episodes. If we get them early, you get them early. They’ve been on a pretty good streak lately. You also get bonus content.

We also take requests. If you have something you want to hear about, let us know.

If there’s something you would like us to talk about, absolutely. You can also find us on YouTube, YouTube.com/TheClipOut where you can watch these episodes. Sometimes it’s easier for people to do it at work. YouTube isn’t blocked at most office places. You can check out our website at theclipout.com. Don’t forget, we’re available on all the social media places like Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. There’s all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

—

Peloton has unveiled its new feature, Workout of the Day. Continuing our St. Patrick’s Day theme, it’s Workout of the Day.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it appears to be in beta testing. If you don’t have it, don’t be alarmed. If you are one of the lucky testers, you can have it on Apple or Android. It showed up on both. You can also find it on the web version if you are one of the folks that have it. It’s handpicking a class each day. Yesterday’s class was the first one of its kind. It was a 5-minute core class with Robin Arzon.

I noticed that as of the writing of the article, there were 1,200 people that had taken it. I thought that was interesting. I used that as a marker because I figure that number is going to rapidly increase as it starts catching on. It will also be interesting to see the different kinds of workouts they push in front of us.

For example, today is a 10-minute yoga flow with Ross Rayburn. Only 354 people have taken it. I find that fascinating. It’s 10 minutes. I will be very curious to see how this goes. Whenever you take it, it’ll tell you a streak. You have a streak of how many workouts of the day you have been doing, which might entice people to continue. It’s not a badge but a streak.

What’s your wad streak? Your wad, Workout of the Day. Show us your wad. That’s #ShowUsYourWad if you want to tell people you did it that day.

That’s one way to do it.

I wonder if the yoga flow one is less because a lot of people don’t even consider yoga.

I think that’s true. I also think a lot of people were off yesterday given that it was July 4th. There were a lot more options to take classes today. People work at that number. It’s still pretty early in the day. It is possible that that number is going to go up quite a bit when people start coming home from work. It’s hard to say but I’m going to be watching it. I find it fascinating.

By virtue of definition, they have to be a little short add-on. If all of a sudden they give you like, “The workout of the day is 60 minutes long,” and it doesn’t fit with what you had planned. Is that the goal?

I think the goal is to highlight the diversity of all the different kinds of workouts that are offered and to make sure that people are seeing. It’s like highlighting. If you’re a bike person, you always go to the bike and you click on the next class. You’re not even looking at all the things that are out there. I think this is to get in front of people to show them, “We got a lot more here.”

I also think that this is another step that Peloton is taking about the customization that Barry has been talking about. He’s been talking about, “We are going to customize like Netflix always did.” I notice that when you go over to the web version, there is a whole new panel that shows up that suggests things to you like, “You should start a program. You should start this. You should start that.” They’re trying to get you more involved, in my opinion.

Do you think we’ll see a day where different people get different workouts or different wads suggested to them?

I would like to find that out. I would like to know that. I think that is possible.

If it’s going to be customized, it could be like, “We have an arm wad.” I’m going to make this a thing.

You’re pushing it. It’s like Brian’s “hit the hay.”

We should explain. My son is nineteen or will be soon. This is not a small child. He has decided that “hit the hay” means that you’re getting ready to go somewhere or engage in some activity. No matter how many times we tell him that that’s not what it means, he’s convinced he can will it to mean this other thing.

Every time we leave the house, he says, “Let’s hit the hay.”

I was like, “That’s not a thing, Brian. Quit trying to make that a thing,” but I’m going to make wad a thing. If you did a Tunde arm program, they’re not going to give you a Robin’s arm thing. because they know that you’ve shot your wad. Maybe they’ll give you a different one eventually.

That could be. I think that would make sense. If you never hit barre or Pilates, that would be good to put in front of people or dance cardio. It doesn’t matter if you put it in front of me, I’m not going to take it. To get people to see that there are these other offerings, I think that could be true, Tom. Maybe there are already different ones. I don’t know. I’m only seeing mine.

You’re only seeing your wad. I am not segueing into the next topic until you say wad. Give just one.

Wad.

Thank you. There is a casting call for Peloton members, but don’t show them your wad. It’s not what’s the casting call for.

Don’t make it weird. Probably, your chance is already gone because it happened.

It’s why you need to follow us on Instagram or be in our Facebook group. You see these things in real-time.

You had to be available the week of July 10th. Technically, it hasn’t occurred yet, but by the time people hear this, it’s going to be very late. You also have to be based in the New York Tri-State area, not visiting. Just know that. I love that they’re going to continue to show the different kinds of people. That’s good.

They’re looking for actual regular members to fit the rest of the marketing campaign. They’re going to put regular folks in these leggings so you know what it’s going to look like on you.

I love what they did recently with that commercial. I’m hoping that there’s something more to come like that.

Precor is a division of Peloton. It was briefly called Peloton Commercial. They have launched a distribution division and their first customer is Stages Cycling.

I thought this was interesting because it’s Precor bikes, but they’re wholly owned by Peloton. Now they’re going to be in Stages Cycling. This is the beginning of this world getting smaller. There already had been things that headed down this way, but I think this is a major type of thing that’s going to continue to happen. That’s very interesting.

What is Stages Cycling?

It’s a place you go to take cycling classes.

It’s like a gym studio or a bike studio.

They call it a boutique cycling studio. It’s another one of those. I find that fascinating.

Do you think they’ll have a non-Peloton bike in there?

I can only assume. I don’t know though because they never told us what they were planning on doing. Were you guys going to make Precor and slap a Peloton label on it? Were you going to start making Peloton bikes with Precor parts? We don’t know. I can only assume at this point, since we never saw any of that, that these are going to be Precor bikes.

I thought Stage Cycling was a bike company and they were going to start selling those too.

It does say it’s a distribution. It says that they are going to be the distributor of Stage Cycling. Maybe I completely misinterpreted this. Let me try this again. “The strategic partnership will see Precor becoming the worldwide distributor of Stages Cycling commercial product lines, leveraging Precor’s existing sales service and distribution network.” They are selling Stages Cycling bikes.

That will now be a product that they offer on behalf of Stages Cycling.

That’s how you read this.

How I read it is that Stages Cycling made bikes of some type and that you could now purchase them through Precor.

I didn’t read the whole article. I read only the headline. This is why you should not do that.

For once, I read the article. It was short in my defense. Not unlike myself. I haven’t read any of the other articles that will appear in this episode. I have shot my wad.

My original point still stands that this is a step toward getting this whole market smaller. It also says that Precor is thought to be extending its marketing of other suppliers’ products and taking on further brands. They’re almost becoming a distributorship for all these different kinds of exercise equipment.

Peloton will always have a bike available, but it also seems like they’re becoming equipment agnostic.

That’s the goal. You want to get 500 billion users or whatever it’s supposed to be. That’s the goal. I think it’s interesting.

The Wall Street Journal has an article titled Meet the CEOs Who Pull In More Than $100 Million a Year. It then talks about Barry McCarthy who does not.

On paper he does,

On paper, I’m 6’2”.

That’s the thing. People like myself only read the title of that last article. A lot of people read this and assume that. When you go through and read that Barry McCarthy makes $168 million a year, you assume he is sitting in the back room counting that out.

Like Scrooge McDuck.

We used to make this joke about John Foley all the time.

Yoga changes you from not thinking you’re an athlete to having absolute confidence in your capabilities. Share on X

Except at one point he actually had that money or at least could have accessed that money. The only way Barry McCarthy is going to get there is if he turns his company around and the stock price goes back up to $50 or $60 a share.

He then deserves it.

At that point, that man deserves every damn penny. They’re acting like they paid him $100 million and the stock is currently trading for a nickel.

I love this, “They are outearning Apple’s Tim Cook.”

He’s not. The picture of this guy, whoever he is, I don’t know who he is. He’s a CEO of a company. I’m going to go on a limb and assume he’s probably a douche. They have this picture of this guy like he is posing for the poster of Godfather 3.

There are only so many headshot poses people can come up with.

I suppose, but also the lighting.

The spotlight above. Yeah.

This is a Wall Street Journal. They like business. Maybe this doesn’t sound as sh**ty if you’re a Wall Street Journal reader because you’re like, “Make all the money.”

I think it still sounds sh**ty.

Even when you read the article, they mentioned Barry McCarthy pretty deep in it. They do spell out like, “If the stock turns around and blah, blah blah.” In other words, he doesn’t. It’s currently at $8 a share.

He has the potential to.

We all have the potential to make $100 million.

His is on paper. He’s got potential a lot faster than the rest of us.

He has a greater likelihood. If you use the long arc of history for far enough, then I guess potentially we all could. Anyway, I thought this article was dumb.

That’s why I shared it. I knew you’d love it.

I love to rip on the Wall Street Journal. That’s a dumb article, guys. Nine.com.au, which means Australia, had an article about the gamification of fitness, and right out of the gate, they’re talking about Lanebreak.

They talk about Lanebreak and they go into how fitness is going to be changing into a game in general. I thought that they also talked to some of the instructors. Didn’t I see some Jess Sims in there?

I don’t know. I told you I didn’t read any of the other articles. I saw just Peloton and stopped.

There she is. “Instead of taking direction from an instructor, you’re taken into a world that combines the best in tech, music, and fitness for a truly unique workout experience.” She says, “You almost forget your working out,” which I agree with. I love Lanebreak. I haven’t gotten to try it on the tread, but the bike and the tread are pretty similar. I think that’s true because when I enjoy doing Lanebreak on the bike and I feel like it is, I do forget that I’m working out. I push myself in a whole different way. Whatever gets you to keep working out and make a habit, that is what’s important. It doesn’t matter.

Different people have different things that motivate them or entertain them or whatnot, so there are a million different paths to get there. Speaking of, Forbes reviewed Lanebreak for the tread.

Here’s what it says, “Lanebreak for Peloton tread is available right now for members with all-access memberships. Sorry, app-only users.

How would it work? It can’t. I don’t even think you should apologize to them. That’s an impossible functionality if you’re app-only.

It says, “It’s well worth your time especially if you’re looking for something new to liven up your running workouts.” He seemed to enjoy it. He even talked about that. He found that he was pushing harder, getting more points up, and he even got his heart rates spiked. He was exhausted afterward because it was all harder than he probably would’ve gone on his own. It’s saying exactly what I said about Lanebreak on the bike.

It’s akin to a Dance Dance Revolution.

It is, except there’s structure around it.

Speaking of reviews, our own helper bee Nikki wrote a review of Peloton Gym.

Nikki is a NASM-certified personal trainer like myself. You have to understand, Nikki did not want to have to do this.

Did you make her?

No, I did not make her.

Why are you so mean to Nikki?

She moved and when she moved, it took all of the Peloton equipment out of her life for a month. The timing worked out perfectly because they literally made the gym feature go live right as she was moving. It could not have been timed better. She got to try it at home and she tried it in a real gym and in different variables to give everybody an idea of what she thought. Overall, she liked it. She liked that there were so many variables that you could control. She did not like some things about it.

I will let you read the article in depth on your own, but the big thing is you spend a lot of time looking at your phone. There are some things that don’t go as smoothly as they could. This will be one of those things that Peloton continues to iterate. I will be very curious to see if they continue to iterate that and make it. You’re still going to have to look at your phone for some things, but maybe they could have audio cues so you don’t have to constantly be looking at your phone. Some things that they could do to make that easier. I love that she throws that in. It’s a great opportunity to listen to The Clip Out. Thanks, Nikki

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to Dr. Jenn. She handles a question from someone wanting help to stop sabotaging their own weight-loss efforts. If you find yourself doing that, stick around.

—

Joining us once again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family, and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. She’s a five-year national team member in rhythmic gymnastics and sports psychology for USA Gymnastics, it’s Dr. Jenn.

Hello.

This question comes from Leah Bechtel. She says that she struggles with sabotaging her weight-loss journey herself. She was very fit and a perfect weight as a teenager, but she had abuse issues. I think it was sexual abuse because she says, “I suspect my weight is protection against unwanted advances.” That was what I read into that. “What can I do to finally drop the weight and get fit?”

The number one thing is therapy. This is not about the food and about the weight. This is about the need to protect yourself in that way. You can eat all the right things. You can do all the exercise but if you’re not ready to be at whatever your natural weight is when you’re not using food to protect yourself, then you’re going to end up coming back to it.

To me, that’s where the work needs to be done. It’s work that’s important to do not just for your weight and for how you want to look aesthetically, but to give you some peace of mind and to help you to heal. There’s something that is very powerful about going through trauma, actually processing it, working through it, and getting to the other side of it.

When you’re able to do that, you get to a place where your confidence skyrockets because you are able to say, “If I got through that, I can get through anything.” That’s the strength that you want to have. You can’t control what happened to you. You can’t change your past. You were an innocent victim.

What you can do is decide how you’re going to deal with it and how you’re going to take it on. In order to do that, you’ll also have to tolerate discomfort and pain, facing things that you sometimes don’t want to look at and don’t want to examine, and sometimes feel like you’re going to relive it, or fears that if you open that Pandora’s box, the pain will never end.

What I can tell you, and I’ve been a therapist for over three decades now, is that working through it gets you to the other side. The pain, there is a point where it changes. Of course, it’s something that is in your history. That’s a pain that exists, but the way you live with it is very different. You can ultimately use that trauma to empower you, strengthen you, and get you to a new place. To me, the issue is not about the food or the exercise. I can give a million tips, but none of it matters if you’re not ready to be at whatever your natural weight is.

That makes sense. You got to do the thing before the thing.

For a person who thinks very logically and hasn’t had a lot of experience, it doesn’t matter if they’ve had a lot of experience with it. If you’re a person who struggles with emotions, it’s hard to understand logically why processing trauma helps the trauma. It seems like it shouldn’t be necessary. I know it is, and I know it works.

Many people feel that way. Sometimes when you process it, it gets worse before it gets better. That’s the mind f*ck of it. You’re like, “I’m supposed to feel better and I feel worse.” You have to go through that to get to the other side and feel better.

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

On all social media @DrJennMann. You can find my Peloton workouts on my Insta Stories.

Thank you.

—

Matty Maggiacomo and Cody Rigsby attended a Pride event at the White House.

How incredibly cool is this?

Here’s a picture of Matty with the vice president.

I wonder how many of these instructors have been to the White House now.

It sure seems like a bunch.

I’m not jealous at all. I genuinely think that’s cool. They’ve made it so far, all of them.

Speaking of Matty, he was featured in In Magazine, which is an LGBTQ publication out of Canada.

I love this.

I don’t know if you know this. In Canada, they spell gay as g-e-h.

I feel like you just offended someone.

I don’t think so because they are Canadians. Canadians always say eh.

Tom is very sorry about that. I love this whole layout. I love seeing Matty get featured. I think he is probably one of the most underrated coaches at Peloton. People do not rave about him enough. He is funny and nice. He’s a good person.

It’s because he’s only on the tread, and not as many people have treads. If he was a bike instructor, he would be one of those instructors that would be a household name if not close.

I love that he got this opportunity. I love that he got to talk about something that is so incredibly important to him.

It’s also cool to see Canada starting to talk about the instructors more as celebrities. It shows you something about how far Peloton is infiltrating that market.

The Canadian Pelotoners would say, “We don’t get half the clothes that you guys get. We don’t get Canada Day celebrations.” They get left out of a lot.

They do. I meant that Canada is embracing it.

I know. I just felt them adding me so I was getting ahead of it. They don’t do it in a mean way. They feel left out and I feel bad for them. It’s different up there. They don’t get as many things.

I’m invisible in Canada. We’ll tell that story in our bonus episodes, but in Canada, I am invisible.

He is, but he loves poutine.

I do. Ally Love is on this season of Netflix’s Is It Cake? This season is season 2 and it’s called, Is It Cake 2?

I don’t know anything about the show.

It’s a show where they make something.

That’s Joel McHale. We met him.

We did meet Joel McHale.

He’s such a nice guy. Ally is taller than I would’ve thought because Joel McHale is a giant.

Unless they have her standing on something. Joel McHale is very tall.

Although her hair is very up there.

It’s adding some inches.

Sorry. I got distracted.

Joel McHale has an effect on you.

He does.

You had to take funny or good-looking, and you went with funny.

You’re good-looking too.

Joel McHale was very nice. It was funny how he was nice. We met him when we went to visit the set of Mystery Science Theater 3000 when they were relaunching it for Netflix. He happened to be one of the guests who was there that day filming. He was filming his segment and they didn’t want to ask him to do too much. They had him take one group shot with everyone who was there. It was probably about twenty people or so. He takes the one group shot with the twenty of us.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with him or not, but his whole persona is he’s funny, but he’s also a douche. He’s winking at you at the same time. He doesn’t want to drop his persona. My guess is it’s probably very close to how he normally is. He goes, “I guess all you guys want to have a picture one-on-one. You don’t want just a group photo with me.” He’s right. We do.

We were all like, “Yes, please.”

He stood there and took pictures with everybody and whatever incarnation of people you wanted to have your picture. You and I got our picture taken together.

He was nice to everybody. It was great.

You could tell they didn’t want to ask him, “Can you do this one-on-one Wizard World photo op with these twenty people while you’re here working for scale on our robot puppet show?” It was nice that he offered to do it, but he still did it in a way that was douchey, which is exactly what you want from Joel McHale. It’s like if you make Don Rickles, you want to get called a hockey puck. That’s what Don Rickles does. Anyway, Ally McLove was on a show with him. I mean Ally Love. I got McHale in my head. They got married on that show. Is It Wedding Cake? We are bringing the hate this week. Let’s see how I can screw this one up. Logan Aldridge has joined Team Callaway’s Golf Adaptive Team.

This is cool. I didn’t even know that Callaway Golf had an adaptive team.

I didn’t even know Callaway Golf was a thing.

I didn’t either, to be honest. It’s sports.

I’m sure it’s a very big deal. It’s sports.

Somebody messaged me the other day. I won’t say what context. They dropped somebody’s name and they’re like, “These are St. Louis people. Do you know anything about them?” I was like, “I’ve never heard of these people. St. Louis has a million people. Why would I know these people?” They were like, “Crystal, they’re the owners of the St. Louis Blues.” I was like, “I would not have known that.”

To show you how little I like sports, not only do they own the St. Louis Blues and I don’t know who they are, I used to work for the St. Louis Blues. They did not own it when I worked there, but still, you would think I’d have something. I was like, “I guess that’s them.”

That was great. Anyway, Logan joined them and they have an adaptive team. It is a whole bunch of amazing people. They use adaptive equipment and modified rules to finish their round. I love this. This guy is amazing. He ran the Chicago Marathon and joined an adaptive team for golf. It’s so cool. I love Logan. He’s awesome.

Women’s Wear Daily featured Matt Wilpers.

It’s Women’s Wear Daily, but it’s under men’s wear.

It makes sense.

They have a whole article here about Matt Wilpers building his whole own brand, which I find fascinating because we’ve been talking about him building his brand for years.

Almost since the day he was on the show, which is the first episode of The Clip Out.

One of the culty things about Bikram yoga is that he tells you that it is the only real yoga. Share on X

It goes way beyond these people he’s collaborated with. It’s way beyond that. It goes deep. We are not going to show you this whole article because it’s behind a paywall. You can go check it out, but we will send the link to you in our newsletter.

As we record this, Susie Chan is running Badwater.

Tom, I am on pins and needles about this. She’s nervous about this. It’s the farthest she’s ever run. It’s the hottest place on earth, and three mountains, 135 miles. Laura Watts is also running. She is also a Peloton user. She’s been on the show. I’ve been tracking both of them all day. I’m going to go get an update while we show this video.

It will be three days old by the time anybody hears this.

I love Susie Chan and I am so excited for her.

We have to get you the freshest three-day-old information. That’s the beauty of podcasting.

Checkpoint 4. They’re at miles 72.8 as of 49 minutes ago. They are over halfway. I want to make sure that I see Susie because the last time I checked the little runner time, she didn’t have an update for the most recent. I was getting nervous.

You sent me a picture of her sitting down with ice on her knees.

She had ice but she was smiling. She looked happy but that ice made me nervous. We talked about it. It could be preventative, so it doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad. It still made me nervous. I’m trying to find her name on this.

Running 135 miles is bad. This is what’s called Badwater.

In a row. That’s crazy. You can sleep, but the thing is you still only have 48 hours to do it. Here we go. She has not crossed the 58-mile or the 72-mile. She could be sleeping. I don’t know, but it’s the hottest part of the day there. It would make sense that she was. They are doing this very cool video that Tom was showing up on YouTube. It’s a docuseries that you can watch. It’s called Ultra the Long Run. Episode 1 is about Badwater 135. I highly recommend watching this because it’s fascinating.

These documentaries get me so revved up. I’m like, “I need to go do this.” Even though I would die like literally. I could never handle this heat. I don’t care if you put me in a heat chamber for days. It will not matter. If I get sweaty at Disney World, I’m such a bitch the rest of the day. You could not put me in the desert. It would not work. I am so motivated and inspired by these ladies and gentlemen.

What if there was a doll whip?

Maybe there’s one every mile. We were cheering Susie and Laura on.

She also had a message on her Instagram for Susie’s Striders.

They’re doing that amazing event. They have people on the tread for the entire 48 hours that she’s out there now. They’re not doing 48 hours in a row. What they are doing is having at least two runners on the tread the entire time to support Laura and Susie. It’s called Super Stride-athon. I think it’s amazing that they’re doing this for Susie and Laura.

Jenn Sherman was spotted by the Class of Palm Beach when she was out and about. They started asking her what she and her friend were wearing.

All name brands I have never heard of because I live in the Midwest.

Although I will say this lady’s sunglasses that she said were from Amazon were like $7.

That’s true. I have heard of Dior, but some of the brands I’d never heard of. I’ve heard of some of them. It’s funny. I’m like, “Their entire outfits are worth more than my entire closet.”

We’re in St. Louis. We just got Jordache.

That was last week. It’s brand new.

It’s very popular. Charlotte Weidenbach was spotted walking the red carpet at Tarantino Live.

I know they call it Tarantino Live, but I believe that was a little typo. I think it’s Tarantino Love but it says live in the background.

It’s Tarantino Live. It’s a show that’s premiering in the West End.

It said love earlier. I swear to God there was a love in there somewhere.

Maybe she loved the show. I love your comment in the background, “Ha, ha, ha.”

This is a new show. Tell us about it.

It features well-known songs from Tarantino movies. I can’t tell but I think it’s recreating scenes because the clips I saw were like the dance at Jack Rabbit Slim’s from Pulp Fiction and things like that. I might know a lot about Quentin Tarantino. I guess it’s just recreating memorable musical moments because these soundtracks are so crucial to the structure of his films. It’s premiering in the West End. I guess if it does well, at some point, they will transfer it over here. That’s how a lot of those shows work. We should say that this video was captured by Joslyn Thompson-Rule.

You say the West End.

That’s like a London’s Broadway.

That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure.

Peloton Apparel asked the instructors to describe their ideal summer.

I thought this was funny. They were all over the place with their answers, but I have to drop that Cody Rigsby said, “No kids.”

As someone who has kids, that can be enticing.

He’s not wrong.

When I was younger, I thought I would be like, “I don’t want to get older.” Now I’m like, “I’m ready for the kids to go so we can do stuff on our own.”

I have to schedule around them.

I like including them, but I don’t necessarily want to include them in everything we do.

We love them.

Fly, little birdie.

I’ll be a mess.

You will. Coming up next, we’re going to talk to Angelo. He has tips for people who are battling tendinitis.

—

Joining us once again from MetPro, it’s Angelo here to answer all of your fitness and nutrition questions.

Thanks for having me back.

We’re glad you’re here. We have some folks dealing with some tendinitis. Leslie Gray Colbert is dealing with forearm tendinitis. She tried not lifting for a week, but it didn’t help. What should she do?

Leslie, you have an itis. It’s an inflammation. I’m not a doctor. Talk to your doctor. They can give you doctor advice, but I will tell you that tendinitis is super common in the fitness world with our clients. It is one of the more common things that anyone who is active sporting, athletics, exercise, or weightlifting experiences. What you probably notice is that when you rotate, or anything where your palm is in the pronated position, that’s palms facing down and underload, it’s probably very painful.

What you’re going to need to do is manage movements for a while that tax that range of motion. A way that you can do that is to adjust some of your common movements to a neutral hand position. Go to YouTube and watch this on YouTube. If your hands are neutral, you have your arms out in front of you, your thumbs will be pointing straight up, and your hands will be pointing toward each other as if you’re going to clap. That’s a neutral position. The pronated position is with your palms facing down. Likely, that’s going to hurt that tendinitis in the forearm.

The supinated or supine position is going to be palms facing up. if you are doing a pulling motion, likely by switching your hand position to either neutral or supinated palms up, it will take some of the load off of that tendon in your forearm that’s inflamed. It may enable you to do some of your upper body movements without inflaming it. Sometimes tendinitis can be so acute that anything causes inflammation. If that’s the case, you need to lay off of it and let the inflammation come down. There are things you can take for inflammation. You got to see your doctor about that and discuss it with them.

The other thing is you got all of those pressure bands. For some people they do work. I’ve had a number of clients with tendinitis express that when they exercise, they wore those miniature vice that goes around their forearm. You can get them cheap on Amazon. They get a little bit of relief. Don’t expect it to be the magic fix, but it may help a little bit.

Other people have expressed relief with things like acupuncture, accu-pressure, massage, golfing, Graston Technique, and different forms of massage therapy, especially if it’s been there for a long time, and you’re dealing with scar tissue. The most common thing that eliminates it for a lot of people is allowing it to not get re-inflamed, and then it tends to go away. It’s like having a paper cut right on the crease of your finger. If you keep messing with it, it comes back and comes back.

Karen, when you’re exercising, try bringing your elbows to your sides with both pushing and pulling motions. Your lower body works. You’re going to be fine with it. It shouldn’t be bothering your elbow at all, and of course, your forearm at all. As long as you are not overdoing the wrist motion and movements in the pronated position, you can probably still exercise carefully around a little bit of tendinitis. If it gets severe, don’t wait. Talk to your doc, and they can probably help you out with that.

Great advice.

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

Thank you.

—

We have a new celebrity sighting. This is a little niche. Some people might not know this woman, but her name is Kathleen Hannah. She’s the lead singer of punk band and original riot grrrl movement band, Bikini Kill. She is over here singing on her Peloton and loving it.

She says she’s preparing for a tour after being sick. Who did you say she was married to?

She is married to Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys.

That’s a lot of punk rock.

They’re more like rap rock, but they started as a punk band. They definitely have that aesthetic, even though their music isn’t truly punk rock. It’s always fun to see people, especially somebody who’s very anti-establishment like that, and she’s still digging her Peloton. Good for her.

—

We have two new artist series. The first one features Samara Joy.

There are going to be two classes. One is going to be Yoga Flow with Ross Rayburn, and another one with Nico. One is 30 minutes with Ross. One is 20 minutes. They’re both coming up on July 3rd, but there are only two classes. Her music is a little softer. It’s soulful. It’s not necessarily something you would want to pedal to or hit things.

It’s not super intense that gets you driving. It’s a different type of spot.

It’s perfect for yoga. I’m glad that they were able to find a way to do that.

We also have a new artist series from Luke Bryan.

I am super excited about this. I need a little country music in my life.

You like your country.

I do.

We did. We do live in St. Louis. We are in the Midwest.

I got my Jordache on.

Also, there were outdoor artist series classes that came out.

It started last week and they had a ton of them. They took classes and they reimagined the music. We’ve got Jermaine Johnson’s Eminem run, Susie Chan’s Taylor Swift run, Joslyn Thompson Rule’s Bob Marley, Jon Hosking’s Queen walk, Robin Arzon’s Dolly Parton walk, Alex Toussaint’s Kendrick Lamar walk plus run, Jeffrey McEachern’s Bob Marley walk, and Bec’s Gentry’s Madonna run.

I would think the Queen wouldn’t be a walk. It would be a strut.

That’s fair.

A sachet if you will, and you will.

You have to. It’s Queen. It’s pretty much the rule.

You could prance.

If you had a little attitude in your prance, you could do that.

—

The July 4th holiday is over, but there are still July 4th classes out there if you can’t get enough of America.

There were all kinds of them that dropped on demand. We had Callie’s 20-minute 4th of July arms and shoulders. There was Logan’s 4th of July run. Hannah’s 4th of July ride. Ross’s 4th of July flow, and Alex K’s 4th of July row.

We also have new scenic content for people.

This one looks neat. Tenerife. It’s somewhere around Spain’s Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa where you go in summer.

Now, you can go there because you’ve got a Peloton.

There are classes with Jeffrey McEachern. It’s a 30-minute run with Jeffrey, a 30-minute hike with Rebecca Kennedy, and a 30-minute bike ride with Rebecca.

I feel like the instructors are just submitting places they want to go to. “I’ll film this in a class while I’m there.” St. Louis only has one scenic class, and it’s done entirely at a crime scene.

I don’t even know if that’s still up. I have to check sometime. That’s funny. That’s the sad bridge.

DJ John Michael debuted a new Debbie Gibson remix on an Adrian Williams run.

It’s one of the live DJ classes. I love this because he premiered it and he got to do the mix for it. He loves Debbie Gibson, so that’s neat.

He got to do that in the waning days of Pride.

If you were wondering what the song was, it was the new single Love Don’t Care.

Peloton Apparel has dropped a new Pick Your Palette Collection.

I love this. A couple of weeks ago, Peloton posted on their Instagram. They were like, “Which color would you choose?” They had a whole bunch of different colors. They dropped this collection and it was so many colors. There are pinks, purples, and blues. They not only have women’s bra and leggings, but they also have socks and accessories to go with it. They also have a huge selection of sunglasses in a range of colors

For men, they have T-shirts and shorts. For unisex, I would call it unisex, they have tank tops that you can get in matching colors. My only gripe about this is the royal blue that they put on the men is n non-existent in the women’s collection, which is my favorite color. What’s up, Peloton? I did get a few things though because I wanted to try them out with a little mix-and-match thing going on. I felt like I needed to try that, so I did. They’re all the Caden fabrics, which are my favorite of the Peloton fabrics. I like them.

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to helper bee Darci. She’s going to tell us about her fitness journey. She’s going to talk about her Bikram hot yoga experience. Just a reminder, we’ll touch on some sensitive topics like sexual assault. If that’s a problem for you, get in the right head space or you don’t have to listen to this one. Stick around. We will be right back.

—

Joining us is Darci Bolger, one of our helper bees. I started saying helper bees and I don’t know if that’s upsetting but I have been saying it.

You have and I love it. I giggled. First, I thought it was an adorable leaderboard name the first time you said it, and then I laughed when I realized you are talking about me. It did no offense. Only delight. That’s great.

People joke around about Peloton being a cult all the time. But the real difference is that the cult of Peloton is built around a piece of equipment, not a person. Share on X

It’s funny because we had some people that have come on that have been helping us with things. We have mentioned them from time to time writing reviews, different articles, and that type of stuff. Offline in real life, Crystal and I have been having this great debate on how to refer to you collectively. We were both lapsing in two girls and I was like, “That didn’t feel right.”

It sounds so icky. It’s so condescending.

She was doing it too.

He was like, “I don’t like it.”

In the meantime, you guys started calling yourselves gals, which somehow feels worse.

One is too young. The other is too old.

The one that makes you too young. The other makes me too old to say gals. It’s like I’m going to the general store for some gingham.

Somehow, when he was introducing you, it landed on helper bee and there it is.

At least it’s gender-neutral.

When I refer to all of us collectively, I still do not say the helper bees because that sounds weird. Now it sounds like you guys are a music group. I don’t know.

That’s not a bad thing for a band, The Helper Bees.

You could be the Helper Bee-52s.

I was thinking of The Swarm. We have already gone astray. That was probably the fastest ever. Hi, Darci.

It’s very nice to see you guys. It’s very surreal to hear you do the intro and it not be a recording that I’m listening to. It’s fun to see it done live in real-time.

You are the main event. You know my first question because you hear it every week.

What’s your favorite funny joke I have ever said?

No, Tom. I got this. I wanted to know how you found Peloton, but I have a caveat. That is I know that you are involved in all kinds of fitness before that. I’m curious how the transition occurred.

I had a lot of fun going through my fitness timeline over my life. It didn’t start until I was an adult, but it has been twenty years, so now I feel old. That’s not as much fun as it was the first. In 2002, I started doing hot yoga because the people I worked with loved it. They said, “You should come along sometime.” I thought it sounded insane the amount of sweating they were describing like wringing their clothes out after class.

There’s only one reason you should sweat that much. It could occasionally involve a room full of people but for most people, it does not.

That’s true. I have got a few more reasons on my list so let’s keep going. I started doing hot yoga in 2002. I was an adult by that point. I didn’t do a lot of fitness stuff as a kid. I was a dancer. Casually, at the YMCA or my aunt would send us dance lessons on VHS tapes and we do those at home.

Was your aunt Jane Fonda?

She was better than Jane Fonda because she used my name in the videos. I got the first-ever shout-out.

That’s amazing.

Vintage shout-outs.

Your aunt was cool.

She is cool. I never did any team sports, and we weren’t super active as a family. In 2002, I started doing hot yoga, and then my sister started running marathons with a team and training. That got my attention a little bit. One, she has talked about it nonstop. I was like, “I need to know that I could do that without talking about it nonstop.”

Once I’m doing it, I’m talking about it nonstop. I feel like it’s not possible to not talk about training for a marathon. I started hiking a ton and backpacking. My husband and I love to do that together. I have run three marathons, done a bunch of long-range hiking, and started teaching hot yoga in 2011, then I had a bunch of kids. It feels like a bunch of kids.

I have had two kids. My oldest is 10 years old now. When he was 6, I was working full-time. I had two small kids. I couldn’t practice yoga and teach, and take care of myself and my family. I took a break that I thought would be about 3 to 6 months. When my younger kid would get into kindergarten, I thought that would be the time I would start teaching again. A few months later, we were in a pandemic.

I wasn’t interested in learning to teach yoga over Zoom and fell away from teaching altogether. I miss it terribly. In that mix, I found Peloton. I saw a commercial, not the commercial, probably 2017 or 2018. It caught my attention because the aesthetic of it looked good. It looked quality to me for some reason. In 2018, a friend of mine had gotten the bike and she is a great athlete. Hi, Gina, if you are tuning in. It had instant credibility for me. It was also beautiful and it looked solid.

I decided I would try the app. I did the free trial on the app. I ordered a bike from Amazon. This was before Peloton was on Amazon. It was a Schwinn, and it was so unergonomic because the crank for the pedals was as wide as my shoulders. I’m having a pedal with my feet all weird, and it was not comfortable. If you went out of the saddle, the pedals couldn’t hold you up. There wasn’t enough resistance and you would go jump with every single stroke.

I used it as a proof of concept to prove to my husband that it would stick with it. I was in a meeting at work and there was a lady with a Peloton logo sticker on her laptop. I was in over my head in that meeting and a little bit nervous. She was one of the most important people in the room. That logo took down all barriers. I feel like I dove across the table and I was like, “Tell me. What do you think of that? Are you on it? Tell me everything.”

I was a little bit afraid that I would be falling into a new fad or buying something that was cheap, hokey, or something. I didn’t think that was the case, but having somebody whom I had this respect for talk so highly about how long she’d been doing it and how committed she was when that wasn’t a part of her lifestyle before. I was like, “Okay, done.” I ordered my bike on Black Friday in 2018. I called my showroom or my store, and I ordered it over the phone.

It was a showroom back then.

What’s crazy is I had gone into that showroom to look at the bike to see it in person, now that I have my Schwinn stationary compare experiences. The tread was on a preview display. You couldn’t order it yet, but I had just bought what I thought would be my forever treadmill. I was like, “Damn it.” That would have been so nice to know to be able to get it. At that point, I was convinced this is going to be my favorite thing ever. Fast forward three years. In December 2021, my husband surprised me with the tread, but the surprise was ruined because a couple of weeks before then, I was on Facebook and I saw on the marketplace my treadmill for sale.

You are either like, “I’m either getting on a new treadmill or dateline.”

A very weird brand of stalker and I’m not sure I’m okay with that. This is a picture of my little gym room now. I call it my yoga room, but I do less yoga in there than anything else.

It’s very pretty. I like your aesthetic. It’s very calming in there.

Thank you. Do you know what’s funny? The thing that stands out to me in the picture right now is that. For people who can’t see, there’s a water bottle in my water bottle holder that is not Peloton branded. It’s a super cheap water bottle.

Thanks for joining us.

Get out of here, Darci.

It stands out like a sore thumb to me but it also aligns with the rebrand. Neon pink on that pretty purple that they are using. Now I appreciate it.

Put a sticker on it. That’s what stickers are for.

Get the new black logo with the white. Put it right in the middle.

That’s how I get Crystal to pay attention to me sometimes. I put a Peloton sticker on my forehead and she’s like, “You are looking very sexy.”

People are going to jump across tables to ask you about that Peloton sticker.

I wear it to meetings.

Did I answer your question?

You did.

All we did was ask your name.

Peloton is considered by some to be very culty. You said that you taught hot yoga. Is part of hot yoga also Bikram yoga? Is that all involved there?

Yes. I like to refer to it as hot yoga, specifically hatha yoga, these days.

This is weird because Hoth was the cold planet where the Snow Walkers were. That’s what we are talking about, the Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back?

No. Hatha yoga, for people who aren’t familiar, is there’s no flowing into downward dog and chaturanga. You are not moving with your breath per se. You are setting up a posture. You are holding the posture to the fullest extent your body is capable of, and you are breathing deeply while holding a static pose. While you are doing that, the theory is it’s like broad science. Who knows if it’s real but people believe it. you are building up oxygenated blood at the pressure point you have created through the posture. If you are leaning to the side, you are maybe compressing the left side of your body and you are building up oxygenated blood there.

I will say as a non-scientist, it sounds like BS.

Will you let this woman get through a whole sentence?

I do believe as a teacher, that visual helps you to send your intention to that area. It helps you to relax or contract a certain way. After you do this holding the posture for 10 to 60 seconds, you stand or lay in a mountain pose, either standing mountain pose or you lay in Shavasana. You take a few breath cycles, and the idea is that you are letting that blood now rush through that area.

Also, what I think is more realistic is a HIIT exercise that way. You are doing intervals that are highly intense and then a good reset so you are able to get the peaks and balance with your heart rate, and then you don’t get too exhausted with any of your single muscle groups. It’s a sustainable way to practice. That’s what hatha yoga is.

I did Bikram yoga when I got started in. It was the only yoga I had ever done besides a DVD here and there. I knew after my first class in 2002 that I wanted to teach that yoga someday, but I thought that was insane. I thought it was irresponsible like, “How am I going to make enough money as a yoga teacher?” Going through college right now not to teach yoga, I thought it was like, “Who am I to say I could teach this?”

That teacher had so much charisma, knowledge, and all this. That idea was clear to me when I walked out of that room. I felt so connected and energized in my body that I was like, “I want to give that to people.” It took me nine years to get up the guts to go to training. What changed my life was I learned that one of my favorite teachers at my studio worked full-time and she taught in her free time. I was like, “You can do that?”

Side hustles. That’s your friend and her side hustles.

I went to the Bikram yoga teacher training in the fall of 2011. Before I went to my training, I was pulled aside by the teachers who had been so wonderful at helping me be a student and to prepare for this training. It’s a big deal training. They said, “When you are there, be careful.” I was like, “Be careful from getting mugged walking into the grocery store. What do you mean?”

They are like, “With Bikram. Don’t be alone with him. Don’t let him ask you questions. Keep it to yourself. Don’t give him attention.” That was my first indication that there was something shady going on, but I was so appreciative of the yoga that I’d experienced. It changed me from not thinking I was an athlete to having absolute confidence in my capabilities. I was in studios that were supportive, smart, and compassionate. That’s what I was attached to go to the training. I was blown away by the cultishness of it for one and the yuckiness. Bikram was shockingly abusive verbally to everybody.

We should say there’s a Netflix documentary about this guy where you can see some of the footage from the class. I’m watching it and I’m like, “This guy is a jerk. Why is anybody buying it?” As a kid, I ran into a jerk T-ball coach and I was like, “I’m out.”

You see these personalities in coaches. Even music teachers can be that way. You see it in different authority figures who end up having a positive impact on people’s lives and they deal with it. It’s like tough love or whatever, but this was a little bit over the top. He would berate people for being too thin or fat. He would say, “If you couldn’t do a pose a certain way, that’s why you can’t stay married.”

They were the most extreme abuses, and it was disgusting. On top of that, there’s sleep deprivation happening. They have remodeled and maybe even torn down the building since then, but it was the most disgusting hotel for 9 weeks with 450 other trainees. The ballroom is now your yoga space. You are on a squishy carpet with sweat walking in and out of that practice. You practice a ton in the hottest room you have ever been in your life. You are sweating. You are not allowed to leave the room. Although people do, you also have people who pee on their mats. It’s disgusting, but they keep you up until 3:00 in the morning watching Bikram’s favorite childhood movies.

Why is that necessary? How is that helping you?

They call it his thing, which is justifying psychotic behavior. I’m not a psychologist, but it doesn’t pull up to reality when you take a step back. His thing was he would say he was teaching us that we could be as broken as possible but then always have the yoga to bring us out of it. We all thought going into the training that practicing twice a day in these extreme conditions every day for nine weeks except for Sundays would be the hardest part of the training. It ended up being that yoga was our lifeline.

It was the one moment of our day where we could be like, “I’m not being yelled at.” I’m not being grilled to memorize a script you had to memorize, and you are constantly drilling. There’s anatomy that you are up until 2:00 in the morning being lectured on and there are tests. It’s very intensive. Yoga ends up being the thing that you come back to. It sounds so creepy now when I put it that way because it’s like you are being abused into needing that so desperately.

It’s like, “Life is hard and you are broken but yoga will help. Here’s The Apple Dumpling Gang.”

I know. You mentioned the documentary on Netflix and it’s well done. They did a great job capturing what it’s like to be in that bubble. A trigger warning for people, but it also highlights some experiences of sexual assault and abuse by Bikram. Accusations thereof I should say, but I know personally one of the women. If you go to 42 minutes and 25 seconds, there’s a still of me and her in the thing.

From what I experienced and from what I know of these women, I believe it. Not only do I believe that these things happened to them, I witnessed what we all tolerated from him and I was very naïve. I was oblivious. I wasn’t aware of the fact that tolerating that behavior might embolden somebody to think they can get away with more.

Also, with that many people tolerating it, it made the women victims, feel like they didn’t have a voice because it was like, “I’m going to stand up to these hundreds of people,” and it’s thousands of people who were so dedicated to this practice. That’s another culty aspect of it. Everybody became blind to these mistreatments.

It became normal.

You get used to it. I went to Catholic schools growing up. There was like, “You don’t want to be alone with that priest.” “Okay. Got it.”

Everybody said that like you just knew.

I feel like we should also say to people who haven’t seen the documentary and maybe aren’t familiar with Bikram yoga, that it was name-brand yoga. If they were Coke, everything else was RC Cola. He also had leveraged over people that if you want to teach a version of yoga that anybody gives a crap about, it’s this. Everything that you described for what was pushing you to tolerate that stuff is true, but there’s also the added wrinkle of if you are looking at this as any level of a career choice, there was no real option for people.

It’s so true. It became what people thought of as yoga. Power yoga wasn’t a thing then. He also made you believe that any other yoga wasn’t real yoga. I’m so thankful that I was in studios that the ownership, the mentors, and the students were not part of that. In the studio, I came back to teach after my training. I want to say by the time I was even back from my training, they had changed names. They were no longer using the Bikram name in their studio. It’s always been a positive environment for me, but one of the culty things about Bikram yoga is that he tells you that it is the only real yoga, “You do it my way.” There’s even a line that you are supposed to say that says, “Your back is going to hurt. Don’t be scared,” and then just bend backward.

The one thing I appreciate about Peloton and the way that their instructors teach their classes is they are always encouraging you to check in with yourself and to listen to your body. Sometimes that means you are going to take it easier or not even take a class that day. Maybe it’s meditation or stretching. Get your blue checkmark but on other days it might mean trusting yourself to go a little bit further or a little bit faster. They are very much about queuing you into your own body. He even says, “Don’t think. Just do,” all the time. “Don’t feel yourself. Just do what I say.” It’s super dangerous on a physical, emotional, and mental level.

There’s always that mentality in sports of play through the pain and show how tough you are. Obviously, to get better at something physical, there’s going to be discomfort, but that’s not the same thing as pain, and it’s important to know the difference. I was also going to say that people joke around about Peloton being a cult all the time.

The real difference is the cult of Peloton is built around a piece of equipment or the exercise you are doing. It’s not built around a person. Everybody has got their instructor of choice that they gravitate towards, but collectively, the whole of Peloton isn’t focused on Cody Rigsby or focused on Robin Arzon. It’s focused on Peloton. Now more than ever, there are twenty different entry points for Peloton. It could be your bike, tread, or Guide. It could be yoga, barre, or whatever.

I feel like they are focused on the user’s access to wellness in whatever terms they define those to be. The app now allows you to track and get credit on Peloton if that’s a motivator for people. With this episode, I love that story and that it is a motivator for people. You can get credit for meditating. If I’m going to sit in my backyard and notice my senses, Peloton is supportive of that. That’s not at all attached to their product or service. It’s in supporting engagement for me, which is what they care about, but it doesn’t control how I do it. I love that about Peloton.

It doesn’t weigh like when talking about the blue check mark. It doesn’t like, “You rode a bike today but yesterday, you did yoga so your blue checkmark is going to be a lighter shade of blue.”

It’s so true. I feel like a lot of people who get into fitness, they believe that the more they do, the harder they do, and the bigger they do, the better. Peloton instructors do a great job talking about this. It’s sometimes self-sabotage. If you don’t give your body time to lock in the benefit of your workout, you are going to come out worse.

You need those down days. You need rest and recovery, and then your body can rebuild. It’s not just your muscles. It’s your whole nervous system. It’s your stress response. You have to respect your body’s needs outside of just, “Did I work out today?” There’s so much more to it. I feel like Peloton’s platform encourages that, and so do their coaches. I love it every time I hear them reference needing to rest. Andy Speer will say, “This is the workout you can do every day because it’s not a stress on your nervous system.” I hear that and I get so happy.

It’s teaching newer science instead of old science or in some cases, not science.

Do they ever talk about the special oxygen on the left side of your lung? Do they ever talk about that?

I have never heard that come up, I have to say. I also wanted to go back to Bikram yoga. First of all, I don’t think we ever said the name of the documentary and I believe it’s called Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator.

My guess is if you type in yoga in your search bar, it will probably pull it up pretty quickly.

It’s a good documentary. To your point, Darci, they did a good job. I have never taken Bikram yoga so I can’t speak to like how they captured the people and that feeling, but I can say it held my interest. It was good stuff. That was good.

This might shock people. I too have never taken. I have done the opposite of hot yoga, which is called frozen yogurt.

I used to tell students, no matter what, even if they come in the room and all they do is take a sweaty nap, it’s still good for them. Tom, you might get to do some Bikram yoga or hot yoga someday.

I famously took a sweaty nap after my first Tonal.

He did. Whenever he did his very first Tonal, it was the assessment. He laid down in front of the Tonal and instantly fell asleep. He’s like, “I need a nap.” He was out. I’m trying to workout around him.

I love that story. I feel like we uncovered a little artifact of Tom. It is legendary that you’d spent a year doing Tonal without telling anybody. We got to hear about your first experience.

I crapped out right there on the basement floor.

It was carpeted but he was out instantly.

I have done hot yoga. I’m essentially a yogi.

Going back to that. Isn’t part of it that you couldn’t open your spot without Bikram’s consent? You had to get approval.

It’s like a franchise.

He told us all that we weren’t allowed to teach anywhere if it wasn’t the Bikram yoga studio. You weren’t allowed to say words that weren’t in his script. You weren’t allowed to teach any classes besides his 90-minute sequence. You certainly couldn’t open your own studio or any of that without his blessing, or he’d come and get you legally. I feel like most of that was just smoke.

You believed it, and who’s got the muscle to test it out? It’s going to take deep pockets.

With the reality of whether it was required or not, the people involved in Bikram yoga were so invested in that community and Bikram himself. They are fully bought in that you wouldn’t even want to not be a Bikram yoga studio. That was what they wanted, and they were everywhere for so long. I’m very thankful. Lots and lots of credit to the studio owners that I got to work with.

Even one of the women in the documentary I mentioned, I know her, and I taught for her. She had a beautiful studio, a beautiful community, and wonderful instructors. Not at all beholden to Bikram’s machismo or script, and I learned a lot. I have also been to additional training since then. I’m certified outside of the Bikram space because thankfully, I had a supportive mentor who encouraged me to do that, and there was a group of us.

Your body is not just a machine that goes forward if you ask it to. Your body has a million systems working in it. To train properly, you have to take time to train each system. Share on X

There were a group of Bikram teachers who went to this non-Bikram yoga training. We had been so conditioned to feel like we were doing something wrong by doing other yoga. It was like we were in tears at times. We were a support network for each other. It’s like, “We can do this. We can say different words besides the one that you tried.” It’s wild to think about.

It sounds like my first marriage. After we started dating, it was like, “It’s okay if I’m out of your sight for two seconds? You don’t think that I ran off and had an affair?”

Do you have a favorite instructor or also I’m curious if you have a favorite type of Peloton? Do you do favorite classes?

I have a list so I wouldn’t ramble too much because I know we all say this, but it depends.

That amuses me.

My favorite workout on Peloton between the bike, the tread, strength, yoga, and everything is hiking bootcamps. You were talking about hiking bootcamp or hiking in general, and how good it is. I have had a lot of injuries in my life. Hiking is one of those things that you can do if you have got a number of injuries if you can’t run fast, and if you can’t go far. Hiking can be low-impact but high-intensity, and you can do it outside.

If you want to take your tread workout on your headphones outside, walk up and down your hill, and do the workout at the bottom of the hill, you can do that. It’s so good for you. The hiking bootcamps, it’s like it doesn’t matter how burnt my legs might have been from my run. I can manage a walk uphill and then I get my strength training in while I’m doing it, and it’s my favorite.

That’s my favorite workout type on Peloton. My favorite instructors for running, it’s Matt, Becs, and Marcel Dinkins. For hiking, Rebecca. For rides, I love Jess King. I love the helicopter ponytail. She’s also good at queuing you into your body and sensing what’s happening. It’s like moving meditation.

I have never heard anybody call that out for Jess King. It’s so interesting to hear what people highlight about each instructor. They always talk about how fun she is or how kooky she is, but they never say that. That’s amazing.

I guess someone has been teaching yoga and stuff, that’s probably something that you pick up on.

A whole 100%. She got me with her kookiness and her fun party and her jokes. I started to pick up like I am being queued into my body in ways that I’m not getting from other instructors with her. That is what keeps me coming back to her. I love Olivia for high cadence training. People complain about it, but high cadence training is a lot less stressful on your body. You can go further if you are taking more strokes in the process.

Are you talking about the bike?

Yes, Olivia for the bike. I love her on the tread too, but she’s almost too hard for me on the tread. Dennis also has good cues. He’s a yoga teacher and that’s why. He also is good at describing the bike mechanics going on there. Strength, glutes, and legs, I love Andy and Adrian. Arms, I love Ben and Robin. Core, I love Olivia and Emma. It’s a lot of the same for me because I did too much with her core programs. It all seems the same to me now. Yoga, Kristin and Anna. Meditation is Ross. For stretching, Hannah Corbin’s foam rolling is the best.

That’s good stuff right there. You broke it down.

You named all 52 instructors.

I love how you broke down body parts. Nobody has ever done that before. That is new.

One guy did but we had to cut it out. It got weird.

Do you need a short answer?

Not at all. It was funny. I love it. Who is your favorite instructor overall? You could only pick one Peloton instructor.

I’d have to go with Matt. He references a running coach. A great running friend of mine got me onto named Jack Daniels. Not the liquor, but the coach. I know Matt is an incredibly smart and accomplished trainer, but I have read Jack Daniels’s method running book and I understand the science. It helps me to know that Matt also understands the science.

Your body is not just a machine that goes forward if you ask it to. Your body has one million systems working in it. When you are training properly, you take one day to train each system, and then you have your culmination where you put it all together Matt’s workouts are structured so that you are training those systems individually the type of running or cycling.

When you put it together for your FTP test, all those things come together. You are not going to do a good FTP test because you practiced riding hard for 20 minutes straight every day for 5 days a week for the last 3 weeks. That would kill you and you’d have the worst FTP test ever. You are going to have a good FTP test because you followed the program of easy, moderate, and hard, and then the variability within those. Matt programs and all of his stuff is that way on the bike and the tread. I know I’m going to get a smart workout. Plus, he’s adorable. People give him too hard of a time about his lack of rhythm. He has rhythm. I have seen him dance. It’s adorable.

Matt is a lovable nerd.

Nothing wrong with that.

Exactly, Tom. That’s the thing. He’s never going to dance like Adrian Williams, Cody Rigsby, or Jess King, but he’s got his own thing going on. We need to appreciate him for what he is.

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

Don’t overdo it. My personal mantra is to rest like an Olympian. Olympians aren’t out there doing their event every single day. They have a structure and they will include rest and recovery in that structure. If you want to be like the best, rest like the best. Matt’s low-impact rides are brilliant. I feel like in any of them, anyone that I have ever taken, he goes through all these mechanics and drills. He teaches you how to pedal. It’s not intuitive. You weren’t born knowing how to pedal.

He teaches you where to put the pressure on your foot. You do these different drills that the pros do before the races. They are a fantastic warm-up and they are a good refresher. They make you more efficient. You could not get more fit but you will be able to go faster and further because of the skill you are learning. You see a lot of overuse injury from poor mechanics and too much. Those two things combined are important for new riders.

Those are good calls.

Those are different. I don’t think that you just pedal. As I said, I have ridden a bike before and I was just pedaling. Do you mean I can even pedal something wrong like that?

You can because if you mash the pedals, then you are only using your quads. You are not using your hamstring. See, I listen too. He does a good job of teaching that. I feel like Kristin is another good one that talks about the mechanics of the bike and how to use those different pedal strokes, but Matt’s low-impact rides where you can get all that information, that’s the best concise place to get everything for sure.

That’s good for people to know that.

We didn’t ask for her leaderboard name. We have to ask for her leaderboard name.

What is your leaderboard name?

My leaderboard name is PreRunDonut and I love my leaderboard name. I was DarciB for a long time but I don’t remember what I was.

Darci Helper Bee.

I will admit that I consider changing my leaderboard name or creating a shadow leaderboard name because sometimes I go in and I research classes for the show or articles, and I don’t want them messing up my metrics. I have to go back and delete them and that’s annoying. Anyway, the leaderboard is PreRunDonut.

I am always running behind. I’m always running late. I try not to beat myself up about it. I also love donuts and I feel like the image of running out the door and grabbing a fun donut on the way to my run is perfect. You don’t take yourself too seriously. You enjoy what you are doing even though you are running a little bit late. That’s my leaderboard name.

I don’t know how it could be singular. That’s multiple donuts. I’m like, “One donut.” What’s a sociopath eats one donut?

Eating it before your run, you don’t want to have too many donuts before your run.

I don’t want to have too many donuts.

Maybe 1 before and 2 after.

We no longer deem you a sociopath. Thank you so much for joining us and for all the work that you do for the show.

We do so much. We appreciate you.

You are so welcome. Thank you for letting me do it. It’s an honor. I love it.

We praise every moment of everything you do. Thank goodness.

Let me know if Crystal starts yelling at you or something.

He won’t let me talk to you anymore if that happens.

We won’t let that happen. Where can people find you if you would like to be found?

I have a Peloton Instagram account that I rarely use, but that would be a good place. It’s @PreRunDonut on Instagram and sometimes I post stuff there.

They can find her work at theclipout.com.

Lots of Darci articles. Thank you.

I post on the group and the Patreon group page wall things under my name on Facebook, but I don’t go on Facebook for anything. I don’t post up there. If you try to engage with me on Facebook, I’m probably not going to see it. It will be an accident if I do see it.

Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

—

I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until next time, 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 on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online on Facebook.com/TheClipOut. Don’t forget, all of these episodes live on YouTube if you want to go over there and watch them. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running and rowing, and shoot your wad.