216: Is Peloton Seeing a Decline in Engagement? and our interview with Debra Allison

Last Updated: July 16, 2021By Crystal OKeefe (#ClipOutCrystal)Tags: Exercise routines, Fertility, Peloton, pre-cancer, pregnancy, Tonal

Is Peloton’s engagement declining?

John Mills joins us to discuss iFit’s attempt to challenge Peloton.

Equinox merger talks fall through.

Echelon is making strategic moves to increase valuation.

Dr. Jenn – How to climb back on the exercise wagon.

Peloton is finally live in Australia.

Peloton creates Australia-specific Spotify playlists.

Slate reports on how much Peloton pays for music rights.

Forbes writes about iFit’s efforts to “bring down” Peloton.

Photos of a new “Peloton device” have been confusing people.

Angelo has tips on how vegetarians can increase their protein.

We have a winner in our MetPro contest.

Robin announces her “In The Heights” ride.

The latest Artist Collaboration features the Spice Girls.

The Champions Collection spotlights Kathleen Baker.

Vinny from Jersey Shore loves Peloton.

The second boutique drop of the summer hit on July 15

All this plus our interview with Debra Allison!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Is Peloton Seeing a Decline in Engagement? and our interview with Debra Allison

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

She rescued me at work. I know people locked themselves out of their cars all the time. That happens. I don’t know what I did or how I did it but I drove to work and I’m in the parking spot. I throw my car in park. I turn it off. I go to grab my keys and my keys aren’t in the car.

You guys will never know what it’s like to get a call from Tom that says, “I have a weird question,” because that could mean so many things.

It was like, “I have a weird question. Are my keys hanging on the hook in the garage?” She’s like, “Why? You’re at work. Of course, they’re not.” I’m like, “Maybe humor me because I’ve already looked under my seat, my pockets, in my little cooler because I bring all my soda to work, and sure enough the car did not beep at me. It didn’t put up a thing on the screen that said, ‘Your key fob is not in the car,’ nothing.”

I’m glad that you didn’t stop for gas. I still could have rescued you. It would have been more time-sensitive.

I was like, “Bring them whenever because I got to work,” so thank you. I have no idea how that occurred.

I’m glad it was you and not me because as a girl, I never would have heard the end of it. You like to tease me. I feel like I never would have heard the end of it ever. For everyone reading, feel free to drop Tom a message and tease him because I get teased mercilessly.

I’m going to get cyberbullied by a social media influencer.

You have to influence people for that to be a thing.

Hopefully, you influence people a little bit because we’re we sell advertising now.

I’m a social suggester.

Does that mean you’re online being suggestive? I think that’s worse.

No, it isn’t. Do you see what I mean? You found a way to turn this around and make it my thing. Everybody, double down now on Tom. That’s what I’m saying right there.

I’ll start my own only fans, then I’ll probably get locked out of it. It needs your help to get back in. Now that I’ve turned everyone’s stomach by the thought of me having an only fans, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have some interesting discussions that need to happen regarding Peloton’s competition. There’s going to be a whole discussion about that. John Mills will be joining us for that. We had a stop from Dr. Jenn and she’s going to talk to people about how to get back on the fitness wagon after you’ve been off for a long time. We also are going to talk about Peloton Australia. We’re going to talk to MetPro about how to get in enough protein when you’re a vegetarian because that requires a whole set of skills and then, of course, Peloton news.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, 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. You can also leave a review if you would be so kind so people know that we’re worth checking out. We have a new review. This is from Neil H and it says, “A must for every Peloton fan.” It’s short and sweet. If you’ve been thinking about leaving a review and you’re like, “I don’t know what to say.” You don’t have to write a book. It’s great when people say all sorts of nice things but you can be like, “This is a great show,” done. You can find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. It’s a great way to stay up to date on breaking news throughout the week. You can also find us on YouTube, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. All the episodes are posted there in beautiful HD glory. Finally, if you want these articles, pictures and stories sent to you, sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com.

It’s right over on the right. It says, “Subscribe Now.”

As soon as you log in, it’ll pop up. I make it easier. There’s all that. Let’s dig in, shall we?

We shall.

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

What is going on?

There are all sorts of stuff for you. It’s your time to shine. Peloton Interactive falls after Wedbush warns on decelerating engagement.

That’s Wedbush Securities. They have an analyst. His name is James Hardiman. I’ve seen him speak on this topic many times over the last two years. I think he’s not he’s real but commonly, he’s been a huge Peloton advocate.

He’s a big proponent.

Yes. Any time, even during earnings calls, he throws the softball questions out there. He’s always like the next day reporting on the positive spin on whatever they’ve stated. What makes this story interesting is all of a sudden he’s like, “Maybe we should all pump the brakes.” That’s not his normal MO.

My question is where is the data that their engagement is dropping? Have we seen any other articles? I have not noticed any other stories about that. This is the first time I’ve heard that thrown out there.

He said that Wedbush tends to monitor a handful of metrics and I don’t know where he gathers them, but one of them he says is engagement relative to Peloton challenges. I don’t know how he’s getting that or if he’s getting that directly from Peloton. I don’t know where he’s getting that information. He’s talking in terms that there’s less participation relative to challenges. He’s also saying that year over year, looking at June of 2020 versus June of 2021, there’s growth but not at the same clip as we’ve been used to relative to Peloton. He’s saying that it’s a clear deceleration in social media engagement.

I still don’t know if that’s a fair metric. In 2020, the pandemic was going crazy and I know numbers are going up again but it’s not throwing fear into the public in the same way. America collectively said, “F it.” The fact that they’re showing growth but it’s not as fast when people are going back to doing regular things. This is the time of the year where people are typically going to do outside exercises if at all possible. That might cost you a workout or two on your Peloton.

I feel like everybody is wanting to be outside. There was another article that covered this. They indicated that it’s because people are going back to the gym in higher numbers than expected. I think that’s because people are desperate to leave their homes for any reason. That could be a reason. They’re not as engaged on social media either because they’re doing things. In 2020, you had a completely captive audience. We were like, “Put that shit on ESPN. Yes, we will watch it.” We watched it. I don’t know if everybody would watch it again. People certainly would but would they get the same engagement they did before? I feel like not, but I don’t know if that’s as much about Peloton deceleration as it is the sign of where we are as a country or as a world.

To put it into context, I watched him talk to this as well, not just the written article. He makes it clear that Peloton is up here and nobody’s close to him. There’s still growth. He’s trying to make the point that before it was this unheard-of type of explosion of growth. He’s saying that it’s come down to a normal clip. He tries to clarify what he’s saying. He’s not acting like something horrible is happening. He also speaks to the same thing that you guys talked about with regards to it being because people are hitting the gym, we’re hitting the summer season and all the normal stuff. He’s just saying that we’re not as used to that with Peloton, given what we’ve seen.

Even the stock price, a $15 drop is significant. It still went from $130 to $115 is the target. That’s not from a stock that came out of the gate at $29 and went down. That’s still a pretty great place to be. I know that especially if you’re a stockholder or you work there. You always want it to be higher but he’s not like, “It’s over.”

I think the title is a little misleading and makes it sound worse than it is.

He also talks about the tread and how we had the issue with the Tread+, and we’re still waiting for the tread to drop. That market is much larger than the bike market. We have to see what’s going to happen there. He talked about how he doesn’t know if the market knows the difference between the Tread+ and the tread when Peloton talks about their tread products. They may think about the issue with the Tread+ when they released the tread. He’s not sure how that’s going to play. He saw this and the way he describes it is like, “Let’s pause for a second and let’s see what happens.”

I want to use this opportunity to tell people that the regular tread has been forecast to come back on the market from mid-July to end of July. For the Tread+, the original or the big boy, there is no date yet. I’ve been getting that question on a daily by multiple people. While you were talking about it, I thought I’d throw it in there because somebody will ask me that question so maybe I’ll help them. It’s confusing when I tell people and I say it just the way I did now. Many people are confused by the tread versus the Tread+. They get them inversed all the time. It’s super confusing.

That’s exactly what James Hardiman said. It’s exactly those terms is what he produced. He was saying that confusion, how is that going to play in the space and that pump the brakes.

You were speaking about how he mentioned that he doesn’t feel like Peloton has any real competitors. Let’s talk about one of their not real competitors. There are lots of iFIT stuff there. I don’t know that they’re bringing the heat but they’re bringing the lukewarm.

Movement is movement. Just take a class and move. Click To Tweet

I’m going to go ahead and make a prediction. They are bringing the heat. I’m not saying they’re going to be successful, but as we talk through these next three items, I will go on the record as saying they are making a solid play. The best play by any competitor I have seen.

We’ll start with how they’ve expanded their presence in digital fitness with Sweat acquisition.

It is gross because it sounds like they bought sweat like sweat dripping off of a person.

Maybe I should have heard of Sweat but I have never heard it.

I’ve never heard it either. It’s some kind of female-owned boutique fitness thing.

The way I read it, they produce content for a bunch of different disciplines. It seemed like they had yoga and Pilates and a bunch of different disciplines and they’re based out of Australia. I got the impression that this was a two-fold play. They were trying to get those disciplines added to their portfolio of categories that they can offer. I’m thinking that they’re looking to get more ties to that Australian market too probably.

Maybe that’s why we’re not familiar with it. Maybe it’s a bigger deal there down under that it is here.

That would make a lot of sense that it’s a company we’ve never heard of because it’s not American.

What I thought at first was how Jay Z invested in the CLMBR and now Pitbull is with Echelon. I thought Sweat has C+C Music Factory. Was that not the case? Okay, I agree to disagree.

That’s iFit part one.

I know iFit have over a million subscribers and I know what that play there. I’m sure they’re trying to boost those numbers. I know they’re trying to go public. I think they’re jockeying. Everyone’s jockeying for how close they can get into competition and how much market share they can take.

You’re right. Based on what we’ve seen in the past from other competitors, they have more money and they are savvy, to put toward it. I still don’t feel like it’s a threat at this point. I wouldn’t go that far but I would say they’re trying, and it’s an actual serious effort.

As we said in the past, they won’t be Pepsi to Peloton’s Coke but they might be RC Cola. iFIT also announced that they’ve partnered up with Michael Phelps. He is a big deal and a good boost for them, but it’s also funny because he’s a guy that’s been very vocal about his love of Peloton.

What’s that face, John? Tell us what that face meant.

It’s just the simple fact that he’s not the first celebrity that we’ve seen where we saw them heavy on Peloton. Kevin Hart, we saw that way. He was heavy on Peloton bike. We would see him on Instagram with Peloton and the tread. The next thing we know, he’s an investor in two other competing companies. That’s probably the face you saw like this is a common thing.

In my mind, it’s more notable for two reasons. One, because it’s iFIT and they’re trying to make some waves here. Two, because Michael Phelps was one of the first athletes that people knew about on the Peloton leaderboard. The Olympic athletes are one of the first people I can remember in my Peloton journey like, “Holy shit, Michael Phelps is on this leaderboard.” I feel like that’s notable for that reason as well.

I was wondering what does it mean that he’s a trainer? Does that mean he’s a guest every once in a while? It looks like he’s going to start with a bunch of curated classes that he’s going to say, “The people that follow me, these are the ones you can take,” but he’s not leading them. It sounds like he’s going to have his own classes that he’s trained as content on their platforms. That sounds pretty interesting.

This is going to be a thing we’re seeing in a lot of the different platforms. Tonal is doing this. They have several guest instructors. Tony Horton is over there from P90X. He does classes and people love him. People absolutely love them. Michael Phelps, I wouldn’t want him teaching a cycling class. That’s not his thing. I would want him teaching a swimming class, maybe a weights class if it were me taking it. That’s interesting. Show me how to swim, that’s what I need.

A lot of these things give their platform credibility. I’m talking in terms of the struggles that I’ve seen with Echelon. A lot of their struggles have not specifically been about price points. I know people talk about price points a lot. I don’t think it’s been about price point. Their struggles have been more about that credibility aspect. A lot of these things that happened with iFIT boosts their credibility.

If anything, sometimes Echelon’s price point damages their credibility. John Foley has talked about how when they up the price of the bike, they sold more. When people see the price point on the Echelon, a lot of times they think, “That’s got to be cheap. If I’m going to go down this road, I want to buy something decent.”

There are a lot of things that make people raise their eyebrows at Echelon, at least me. That’s why I think you’re right because people have said to me and people who are clearly working for Echelon have reached out to me. I’m not even joking. They will say things like, “How dare you to talk about a competitor. That’s not right. That’s not fair.” That’s because I don’t agree with their business practices. What iFIT is doing is they still copied an original design from Peloton as Echelon did, but have they copied every single step Peloton has done every single day? No, they’ve done their own things and they’ve branched out. That does give them credibility. I look at them as a real competitor coming up in the ranks where Echelon is not.

While we’re talking about competitors, Equinox, also known as SoulCycle was trying to get a merger going. I guess the stock talk jargon would be shit the bed.

What’s going on? Is this a jockeying position thing? We know that iFIT is trying to go public with an evaluation of $7 billion. It makes me wonder, was this like, “We’re going to do $9 billion.” right now. I don’t know.

It absolutely sounds like a dick measuring contest and they lost.

The SPAC investors were like, “Are you crazy?” It all then shut down.

Times have changed for SoulCycle. They said no to the SPAC.

I was looking forward to that. I guess we’re not going to see an Equinox SoulCycle IPO in 2021.

Maybe in 2022. It could still happen but they would have to change their valuation methods and valuation period.

We’re doing these competitors in order of realism so we’re ending with Echelon.

It’s funny with Echelon when we get back to that topic, I would always do my non-scientific measurement of followers based on competitors in the connected fitness space. I’m sure you’ve seen those posts and Echelon was always way down like dead last every time. I always thought that was odd considering the number of classes they’re recording every day and the number of products they have, that they can’t get that same level of social engagement. I also found odd their subscriber base and how you always hear these numbers about them. It always seems lower than you would expect.

This article started out sounding like, “This is a positive thing.” They’ve got a person helping them determine what their financial future is going to be and what, which direction they’re going to go. Are they going to do another funding round or are they going to do IPO? It sounds positive but to me, I read it as they’re not sure what they should do because stuff isn’t really working. I’m not trying to diss them or anything. That’s how I read it. They’re not sure if they want to do another funding round. Do they want to sell the business or do they want to go on IPO?

Selling might be their best option.

To who?

I don’t know but somebody out there could do something with this company. I’m sure they have gathered together some people that are collectively a good thing for some other company out there. They probably want too much for it to be worth it for anybody to buy, but I could see a company getting a bargain basement deal and doing something with this, and being creative and taking their own steps. I could see that being a good sale.

When I say not working, this is all relative. Everybody in this space is making money. Don’t take it like that. They’re successful in what they’re doing. What I’m saying is the space has so much upside, you would have thought they would have acquired more market share and they’ve gone further.

They’re not gaining ground as fast as they thought they would. That’s how you’re defining not working.

As far as I thought they would have. That makes me like, “What do we do now?” That’s how I take that article. That question is in their minds, I think. That’s my perspective on it.

They thought it was going to be easier than it ended up being.

Copycats always do. They think all you got to do is sit down and do whatever the other guy did and it’ll just come to you. It doesn’t work like that.

Don’t get me wrong. The article starts with they’ve got people wanting to invest.

They’re just not sure that that’s the best method for them. Is throwing more money on this at this time the best method?

That’s the question.

I feel like they have been throwing money at it and it hasn’t been at least getting the results that they thought relative to investment. As you said, they’re making all these classes but nobody seems to be watching them. Pop culture rabbit hole, did you know, John, that there was a Blazing Saddles television show?

Why would anyone know that?

Why would they know? It never aired but they produced four seasons of it. It starred Louis Gossett Jr. and Steve Landesberg who played Dietrich on Barney Miller. The studio wanted to make a sequel to Blazing Saddles. Contractually, they had a certain amount of time to produce a sequel or a television show. Mel Brooks didn’t want to do it. There was a clause in there that says, “or television shows.” He was like, “They’ll never make a television show because how do you make this for TV?”

They then were like, “What we’ll do in order to hold onto the sequel rights is we’ll produce a television show.” They made 4 or 5 seasons of 10, 12 episodes. They were like, “It says that we’ve got to make one but it doesn’t say we have to put it out anywhere.” There are clips of it on YouTube. They made a full-fledged TV show that not one person ever saw just so they could hold onto the sequel rights.

How many lawyers were involved in that?

Someone was reading that late at night and they had the epiphany, “We just got to make the show.” That’s a brainiac lawyer.

That’s a crazy move. There were real people on that show. There’s your pop culture rabbit hole for this episode. Thank you very much for joining us, John. Until next time, where can people find you?

They can find me on my Run, Lift & Live group or page on Facebook. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you. You have a good one.

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

You forgot the part about I’m obsessed with Peloton.

She’s so obsessed with Peloton that when I don’t say it, she gets mad.

We have another great question from The Clip Out community. This one comes from Luke. He says that he’s going through the struggle of getting back on the wagon. He was working out 5 to 6 days a week. It was the Peloton bike and the Tonal for over two years as part of getting healthy for the first time in his life. Around Thanksgiving, he fell out of the habit. He went four months with almost no workouts. In May, he started back up but then the toddler is sick, not sleeping, and then he was sick. He’s doing better in June, eleven days straight, closing all three Apple watch rings. He’s still struggling to build back the habits and more importantly, deal with the guilty feelings of having lost ground with the exercise coupled with gaining weight back.

This is a great question. He is not alone and DJ John Michael posted about this as well. I don’t know if any of you saw that. The first thing you want to do is go back and look at what made you stop that after two years. What was it that went wrong? These things tend to happen in isolation. They don’t happen in a bubble. The first thing to do in order to avoid it happening again is to look back and go, “Was I getting burned out and I didn’t recognize it? Did I need a vacation from my exercise plan and I didn’t take it? What did I get injured and not take good care of it? Was I not getting enough sleep? Was I not having enough balance?”

Maybe you were doing too much exercise and not enough family time where it became too extreme. The first is to do a post-mortem and look at where did this go wrong? When I have gone off the wagon, what was it that made me go in a different direction? Once you’ve done it, you want to set up things that will help prevent you from this happening again. I certainly would want to look at what is your plan? The truth is in life, you have a toddler, they get sick. I have twin girls and I remember when they were toddlers, certainly when they were in preschool, they would get sick for two weeks. They’d be out of school. One would get the other one is sick and that would be two weeks.

Whatever doesn't break you makes you stronger. Click To Tweet

We bring them back to school and three weeks later, one would get sick and then we start the whole cycle again. If you’ve got a toddler, you’re going to have to build into your exercise plan the assumption that someone is going to get sick. I would have a backup plan for times like that so that you can feel like you’re on track and you’re doing something. Maybe if you have a sick toddler, all you do is a ten-minute strength class so that you can get your blue dot. You can feel like you are still on track. You can still be physical and also you’re in touch with your body. Sometimes even taking ten minutes for yourself refreshes you.

As a busy parent, it’s very easy to just give, you work, you take care, you change diapers, you feed and you bathe, then you’re exhausted and do not give to yourself. It’s important to look at exercise as part of that self-care and that you got to put the gasoline in the tank for the car to drive. You can’t run on no gas. Part of exercising is putting gas in the tank. Those are the key points. You’ve got to give yourself a break. This happened for a reason and getting to the bottom of the reason is more important than beating yourself up. Beating yourself up is not going to get you back on track. On the contrary, it’s more likely to derail you and make you not workout. When we feel good about ourselves, we take good care of ourselves. We make good choices for ourselves. When we beat ourselves up and we feel like crap, we get all this negative self-talk in our heads and then we’re less likely to workout. We’re more likely to beat ourselves up if we don’t do it perfectly, which then prevents us from working out again.

Those are the key factors but having a backup plan, and I would want to do an in-depth analysis of when do you need a vacation? How often do you need a day off? How often do you need a week off? How often do you need to change up your program? Is there anything that you can do to keep yourself motivated? I’ve talked about on your show that once a week, I work out virtually with a girlfriend. We take Peloton classes on Thursday morning. She’s in DC, I’m in LA. We Face Time and do classes together. We talk and that helps keep me in the game. It’s something different on that day.

Tom always says something to me when I beat myself up. That reminds me of what you said. He always says, “Even if you gained the weight back, if you look all the way back to the beginning, where you were then would kill to have where you are now. Even if you backslid a little bit, don’t forget that.” That’s something that always makes me stop and take stock. It works most of the time.

I’ve read some interesting studies about people who exercise consistently over time and who are considered to be lifelong exercisers. What the study shows is that the people who exercise, first of all, have a positive association because, at the end of their training, they knew they were going to feel good. During the training, they get endorphins. They feel a sense of accomplishment. Oftentimes they will go into what sports psychologists call the state of flow. Flow is like when you’ve been driving your car and then all of a sudden you’re at your location. You’re like, “I don’t remember. I spaced out.” Flow is when you get into that state of mind where time passes effortlessly. Whatever it is that you’re doing start to not become so hard. You get into the groove of it. The hard thing is when either you haven’t exercised at all or you stopped exercising and you’re getting back, you get none of that.

I still get none of that. I don’t get one thing of what you just rattled off.

You probably won’t for quite some time. I give you so much more credit for working out, Tom, the way you’re working out than I give myself credit because I get those things now. You have to reach a certain level of fitness to get those things. In the beginning, it is pain and agony, “This sucks. This hurts. I’m not good at this. It’s boring. I’m at the bottom of the leaderboard. I hate this.” You have to be able to get past that period of time to get to that point. There are times where I’m on the treadmill and all of a sudden, I felt this happy feeling. I’m like, “Those are endorphins. That’s cool.” At the very least, even if my run sucks or even if it’s terrible because running is so challenging for me, I feel such a sense of accomplishment at the end. I think to myself as I’m running, “At the end, I’m going to get that great feeling,” and that will get me through.

I agree wholeheartedly, especially on the running part. It’s harder.

Thank you so much for joining us. For people who can’t get enough of you, where can they find you?

You can find me on social media @DrJennMann. I post all of my Peloton workouts on Insta Story. You can find me in InStyle Magazine. I have a weekly column on sex and relationship called Hump Day With Dr. Jenn that comes out every Wednesday.

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Peloton is officially in Australia. It’s live and it’s going.

The Bike and the Bike+ are officially on sale. You can go to the stores that are located in Peloton and you can buy it there or you can buy it online at the Peloton Australia store, OnePeloton.com.au. To commemorate the event, they dropped two brand new Spotify playlists. They are all about Australia’s most popular music.

AC/DC, Little River Band, Men At Work, Air Supply.

I didn’t actually look at it. This is more like you and Gail need to have a conversation about this.

Before someone tweets at us, the INXS are Australian.

I love the INXS. They’ll never die in my head.

I like the Little River Band. I did the INXS show once and I’ve lost so much money. I thought I was going to get fired. It did so badly. Anyway, they’re officially in Australia so it’s a good day.

Welcome to the family. If there are any Australians out there, please reach out to me at ClipOutCrystal@Gmail.com because I would love to interview you and have you on the show. That would be so fun.

Let’s talk to an Aussie. Would they say that? Was that offensive?

You have offended every new country that has joined Peloton.

Welcome Australia and we forgive you for Yahoo Serious.

I liked that dude.

While we’re talking about music streaming, Slate had an article and the title was How the Heck is Peloton the Best-Paying Music Streaming Service?

You got a kick out of this article. This was right up your music pop culture bailiwick.

They talked about what each streaming service is paying per song. Normally you would say per spin but it might confuse people given that we’re talking about Peloton. Peloton pays a lot compared to something like Spotify or Apple.

Give us some numbers.

Spotify seems to be paying $0.003 per stream. Apple is $0.00675. YouTube is $0.002. Amazon is $0.01. They’re basically paying a penny. If you slide all the way down to Peloton, they’re number 12. They’re paying $0.031 per stream.

They’re number 12. How does that make them number one? What are they number one at?

They are not number one but compared to Spotify, they’re paying significantly more per stream.

They’re paying more per stream and therefore, they’re paying the largest in money overall because they pay so much more. Are we saying they pay more?

They’re paying more per song. They don’t necessarily stream the song as many times. Some of these larger providers are getting a volume discount because they play the song. I don’t know how they’re breaking out.

I know I’m just trying to understand it.

They’re paying significantly more per stream than Spotify. When you look at this, it comes down to the fact that they don’t necessarily have the volume of plays or streams on any individual songs so their per cost is higher, but I also can’t help but feel that they got bullied into paying a higher rate because of the lawsuit. It’s also a reminder for all the people who were bitching during the lawsuit that Peloton is stealing from people. Now if you look at it, they’re one of the best-paying outlets out there for having your songs streamed. It’s all come full circle which is what we said as that was going down. It’s like there is no rule for what they should pay and they’re going to fight it out in court, then they’ll say, “Cut us a check for what you missed.,” and here we are. Now you have artists clamoring to be a part of the Peloton ecosystem. Forbes.com had an article about The War to Bring Down Peloton.

This ticked a lot of people off. A lot of people did not like the title to this because why does it have to be either-or? Why can’t it be both?

How is it going to be both? Nobody’s going to buy both of these products. That’s a ridiculous notion.

The point being that there are plenty of market shares to go around.

There is room for both but it is a war. It’s naive to not think of it as such. They set their sights on Peloton. That’s a metaphorical war. Will it be a war in the sense of they actually get any traction or do any damage? I don’t know. It reminds me of Bill Hicks had a great line talking about the first Gulf War. He says, “War? A war is when two countries fight.” I don’t know how much damage they’ll do. I think there’s enough. They’ve created enough of a market that if you get a sliver of it, you’re still going to be living in a mansion.

That’s it. Peloton created the market. That’s always going to be my take on it. They’re clearly making a huge effort here, and good for them for being an actual serious competitor. That is good for Peloton. Serious competition is good. They have a tremendous head start, years at this point. It’s going to be tough no matter what company it is. They are the first ones I’ve seen that I’m like, “They’re giving it a go.” They’ve been around a long time. Nordic Track is not new. They didn’t bring the joy of working out at home the way Peloton did.

They didn’t figure out a way to make working out at home a hot commodity in the way that Peloton did.

Nobody can ever take that away from Peloton. Speaking of ridiculous notions.

We thought we’d talk about this a little bit. There’s an article that we keep seeing get passed around. It’s called Peloton gets redesigned for a full-body workout and recovery massage with aromatherapy at home. It’s some weird-looking device that I don’t even know how to describe it. If you want to go to our YouTube channel, we have it up. People are like, “Is this real?”

No, it’s not real. It was described to me. I thought the most succinct word for it was fan fiction. That’s what this is. I never thought it was real but I was like, “Why is this out?” Here’s the deal. This person who runs this website goes around to all these different popular brands. He takes the designs they already have, and then he makes a new design, and then he puts it out there like it’s real as an ode also to get attention. He’s clearly a designer. He’s got some talent and I’m sure this is a good way to get attention. For the Peloton community, it’s confusing the heck out of them because it’s getting posted everywhere. If you see this weird looking box thing and it’s got an arm on it, it’s not Peloton. Even if it has the Peloton P, it’s not real. I’m surprised Peloton hasn’t made them take it down yet because it has the Peloton P on it or it did at one point, maybe it doesn’t now.

Me too. The only thing I can think is maybe there’s some sort of mouse print on their website that talks about how it’s parody or homage or something but it’s not real. If you want your bike or tread to have aromatherapy, stop wiping it down when you’re done.

If you want real aromatherapy, you can get it from Amazon for $10.

—

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

Hey, guys.

We have another question from The Clip Out community and this one comes from Tracy and she would like to know how to eat high protein as a vegetarian. As you know, legumes are mostly carbs. She’s in nuts or mostly fat. That seems to leave non-fat yogurt, egg whites, and low-fat cottage cheese, which can get monotonous.

I’m glad, Tracy, that you asked me, “How can I eat high protein?” Because the last three people said, “How can I eat low carb as a vegan?” I’m still scratching my head on that one. I hope you like the two foods because that’s all you’re going to eat. Yes, it can be a challenge. It is harder as a vegan than a vegetarian. We have to ask because I get a lot of people that I like to refer to it as plant-based because it means something different to everyone. Some people say they’re vegetarian. Some people are vegan. Strict definitions are different but it sounds like Tracy will eat some egg whites, some cottage cheese, some dairy so that gives her a few more options.

I’m going to say something which is quite ironic in light of the previous question that we had, but this is where some supplemental protein powders can work so well because it doesn’t have to be a thing like, “What am I going to cook and make to my 15 grams of protein with a snack?” How about if I have two tablespoons of this protein powder and mix it in a little water and it’s done? There’s nothing wrong. You’re going to have your nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, nut butter. Don’t fall for the whole, “There’s trace protein in dark leafy greens so I’m just going to eat enough of the dark leafy greens.” You’ll never be getting enough dandelion. That’s not going to happen unless you’re Billy goat. You’re going to have to get the protein from another source.

Some of my plant-based clients still eat fish, some don’t. What I tell them is make your primary protein meal your dinner, not because there’s something magical about 6:00 at night or your body needs it more than any other time, but from a lifestyle, socially, that seems to make the most sense. Try and get vegetarian-based protein sources at lunch or breakfast such as the items we talked about. At snack times, if you find you’re not quite hitting your protein needs and you want to bring it up by 20, 30 grams a day, that’s where there are excellent plant-based protein powders. I use a plant-based protein powder. The brand that I use tastes delicious. It does have a few grams of carbs but not many. It’s mostly protein. I’ll have it along with some fruit typically. I’ll put it in a little glass of water, mix it up and it’s not even a thing. I find that that works well if your protein needs aren’t being met.

If you’ve listened to any of our conversations, the question I always want to ask is, why do you feel you need more protein? Just like I would ask, why would you want anything? Look at it through the framework of your goals. Assuming your protein levels are adequate, is your goal to add more muscle? Are you trying to add more muscle because you want faster metabolism? Those are two different things. They’re not always related the way some people would think they are. Know what your goals are versus, “I’m told that more protein is better for XYZ.” It may very well be better. In your case, if you have a strategy session where you’re thinking about, “Here are my goals, here’s my current diet and training routine,” you might be surprised to find out where the most obvious levers are. I hope that those couple of suggestions of foods you could go to and supplements you could use help a little bit.

That is the perfect place to add your supplements. That makes sense and there are so many supplements out there. There are so many protein powders out there that you can use.

It’s a little overwhelming.

That’s a difficult question.

A lot of people say, “Angelo, I heard you like this protein powder or that protein powder, why don’t you refer to the brand or the one you use?” I get asked that a lot and there’s an answer. It’s by the time you’re all reading this, they’ve changed their formulation.

They do it all the time.

In picking foods out for our food lists and inside our technology suite, the app, the tools for our clients and everything that we use, people are like, “This is a great product. Why don’t you have this in your app?” We love that product also. Our coaches will talk with their clients about it, but six months from now, that will be a different product. Companies are constantly changing their formulation, which is why I like to talk about principles of the types of foods, the macronutrients, and the ingredients you’re looking for versus specific foods.

Until next time, where can people find you?

MetPro.co/tco.

Thank you.

While we’re talking MetPro, we got a winner for our contest.

Congrats to Stephanie Toledo. She is the winner of a six-month transformation from MetPro.

That’s a good deal. Congratulations and thanks to everybody who entered. Sorry, if you didn’t win but congrats to Stephanie.

We appreciate everybody entering. Stephanie, hopefully, you’ll reach back out to us and tell us about your results, I would love to hear how they went.

We would love to hear that.

—

Robin has finally done her In The Heights classes.

Multiple instructors did it but people had been clamoring for Robin to do an In The Heights ride. She had interviewed Lin-Manuel Miranda and people thought this was going to be her first class when she came back from maternity leave. It ended up being an All For One ride, which was great. This was very shortly after and people were super stoked about it. There were some other In The Heights classes. If you miss those and you love In The Heights, you definitely want to take them.

While we’re talking about artists collaborations, they announced that there would be the Spice Girls classes.

People are losing their minds on this.

They were huge.

I was never into the Spice Girls.

I get that but if you think about it demographically, they were big about twenty years ago. If you were 10 to 15 then, and now you’re 30 to 35, that’s who’s using Peloton.

It makes sense. It’s a great win for Peloton. I like that it crosses over from the UK and the US. It’s an artist that two countries can get super excited about. They wear very unique outfits that I saw ready for the Spice Girls ride. I’m glad people enjoyed it.

There are lots of mad middle-aged dudes for no reason.

What is up with that?

Not everything is got to be for you, dude.

I know it’s not for me. I try to try to approach it like that’s good. If it’s all for me, then Peloton is doing something wrong.

The level of anger is weird. Normally that’s associated with an artist who’s politically outspoken or something. They’re just the Spice Girls.

What could you possibly have a problem with them about?

Spice World was awful. That was their movie. It was bad, but I don’t think twenty years on, you should have that level of anger about it.

There are so many bigger problems in the world.

If you’re that mad about the Spice Girls, it says way more about you than it does about the Spice Girls. There’s also a new addition to the Champion’s Collection spotlighting Kathleen Baker.

This time around, she has her own curated classes. Kathleen is going to be joining Christine D’Ercole for these classes. She’s going to be live on the leader board. Somebody mentioned to me that they did not know that this was a new feature, so I wanted to point it out in case there are other people who don’t know. Whenever these champions are live on the ride, you can go to your filters and one of them will be special guests. You can find them right there and high-five them. You can see where you are in relation to them on the leaderboard. Mel B from the Spice Girls was on. Stacy posts that in our group. She was above Mel B on the leaderboard.

When you’re dealing with Olympic level athletes, you’re probably not going to keep up.

That’s fair but keep in mind, all of our bikes are calibrated differently. Whether you are or you aren’t, I don’t know that it means that much. It’s cool that you can.

—

It looks like Vinny from Jersey Shore has joined the Peloton family.

It is very exciting. Apparently, he wants to be a Peloton instructor.

He tweeted, “I want to be a Peloton Instructor.” Peloton replied, “We’ll add the GTL class type now.”

I want to have a GTL class type. I will take that class.

How do you do laundry on your Peloton?

We’ve discussed so many things that bike can do.

Here he is from his Instagram. He has two Instagram accounts. This is from his Instagram account with some Pelotons in the background. He’s gotten very fitness-oriented in the last few years, which is funny because when he was on the show, he wasn’t heavy or anything. He was the one that didn’t go to the gym all the time and the other three guys did. Now, he’s definitely all-in so hats off to him. It’s not an easy shift to make.

I guess you would know.

I know. I never thought I’d have something in common with someone from the Jersey Shore.

Can I just tell a little story about you? It’s not a bad story. Tom was figuring out what workout he was going to do next on Tonal. He did not only a short cardio workout that he was supposed to do, but then went into a barbell workout right after that, Go Big or Go Home. He started off the program. He did them back to back. He has now become the person that is not just working out once a day. Now it’s twice a day.

Angelo said I needed to do both so I did both.

It doesn’t matter. It is to be celebrated. Everybody out there is applauding you. They are so excited for you. It’s a shift and it’s very cool. It sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? This is how he talks about it, “It’s going to be an easy one. It’s only got this. It’s only got that.” I’m saying in general, when you go and look at the workouts, that’s how you look at them now.

My definition of easy is I’m not going to need a nap later.

Now you’re like, “It’s only got some of these and some of those. This is no big deal.” That’s how far you’ve come. It’s a big deal. I’m celebrating. Everyone, celebrate. You can not tease him as I said to you earlier.

Bury that at the end of the show when no one’s going to hear it. I know this game.

—

Finally, Summer Drop 2 has hit the boutique.

We wanted to put that out there. I am excited to see what the Summer colors look like and hopefully, we’ll be right because the Peloton Prophet told us. We’re hoping that is true. We can’t wait to see Summer 2 colors.

—

Joining us is Debra Allison. Debra, how are you doing?

Hi there.

I like to always find out from people where they first came across Peloton and decided, “This is the machine for me.” Tell us your story.

Know that you can't do anything wrong with your Peloton workouts. Click To Tweet

Before I answer that, I wanted to say thank you to both of you. You both have been influential in my life. Not only do I see this podcast bringing together the Peloton community like nothing else but you share your experience of the Peloton or nonexperience. Your openness and honesty have been inspiring to me. To give you some indication, I own a Peloton. I’m a huge Peloton fan, hence being here. I also own a Tonal, thanks to both of you. I’m also working with a MetPro coach. She’s the best. It’s life-changing. If that’s not enough, I’m getting my NASM personal training certification.

I feel like I should try and get you to read some comic books.

Before I draw the line.

One episode of real spoilers, is that too much to ask?

Where would I or other people be without this show? I’ve never felt good in my life and comfortable in my body. I’ve been thinner and heavier before. I feel like I am finally right. I am strong. When I was thin, I know thin is not well. I was not strong then. That is the result of Peloton, Tonal, MetPro. The NASM thing, I’m doing that for fun because this opened my eyes to the fitness world. I want to know what those muscles are called and create my custom workouts on Tonal.

We’ve had quite a few people tell us, “I bought a Tonal because of you.” I’m always waiting for them to be upset and so far, nobody has been. That’s good. It’s a lot of pressure.

We try to be careful about the things that we choose to speak about because we do like them. It’s from the heart. I’m glad that you are having a great experience with Tonal too. That’s amazing. I did the NASM for the same reason. I wanted to learn stuff. Maybe someday it will have another use? I don’t know. For right now, it’s cool information.

I am such a Peloton fan. I love those calendar dots. That motivates me. I need to have a dot every day. Now, I need to have a Peloton dot and a Tonal dot every day. I do it. I don’t know why those dots are motivating to me. I can’t miss one dot.

It keeps you accountable. We should turn that into a Dr. Jenn question at some point and ask why is that such a motivator for people? We got a little bit off track because I don’t know when you found Peloton.

The Peloton came into my life in 2018 from a Facebook Ad. They got me. I saw the ad and it resonated with me. I said, “I want this. I need this.” I had taken only a couple of spin classes in my life and I loved them. I was not a fitness person. I have little spouts in my life here and there. I did a half marathon at one point but I was chunkier and it was harder. I did work out for a couple of weeks, 1 or 2 months. Ever since I’ve got the machine, I have had a dot every day. There was something about the machine and the show. I started listening to the podcast before I even got my bike. I will say that my bike wait was two weeks and that felt like a long time. I was not big on exercise. To give you some indication, when I was in high school, my marching band counted for my PE credit and I was like, “No.”

You gamed the system. That’s a hat tip. Well done.

Walked around the track three times, done. I’m kicking myself that I wasn’t more active when I was younger. I remember also buying the Peloton over the phone. The sales lady was like, “Do you know anyone who has a Peloton? Do you have a referral code?” I’m like, “What? I don’t know anybody who has a Peloton.” She’s like, “Let me do you a favor. I’m going to give you my referral code. Isn’t that nice of me?” I thought, “It was. I saved $100.” I had no idea.

That money was going to go away. She might as well. Good for her. I would have done the same thing.

That lady now works for Echelon.

I hope not. I wanted to talk about my fertility journey and how exercise has kept me sane. Exercise, fitness or healthy living is what is moving me along every day and making me get through all the hard times, whether it’s fertility. For me, it has been fertility. A little spoiler alert, I do have three healthy and happy kids. I have a singleton, an older daughter and twins. On the outskirts, I am lucky. If you scratch that surface a little bit for me to get my family here, it’s been a lot. Robin has been one of my favorite instructors and I was pregnant at the same time as Robin. I thought that was cool. I’m taking all these classes and learning about different modifications.

After doing some blood work that didn’t come back normal, I made a choice to terminate the baby that I wanted. I always pictured a super large family, a family of four. Odd numbers are hard. I wanted that fourth one. I could have brought that baby into the world. Some people choose to. I’m in a support group and it’s called Beyond Choice. I still rode and exercised. The morning of that surgery, I still got up and I did what I needed to do because I am a happier mom, wife, person when I wake up and I do what I need to do and then can greet the world. I wanted to come on here to bring more light to the fertility journey and to reach out to anybody who or has struggled. It’s awful. That fourth baby was meant to be my rainbow baby.

After a crap storm, outcomes the rainbow. To get my three kids here, this was pre-Peloton, I did massive fertility treatments and nine cycles of IUIs. People who know the number of injections, canceled cycles, 14 or 10-day waits. It’s one of the hardest things that I’ve gone through. I hear Robin’s voice or Tunde’s voice in my head. When I’m going up a hill, they say, “You’ve been through worse.” I’m like, “I have been through worse. That is my worse, those nine cycles.” I had a baby that I also had to terminate but that one was deemed incompatible with life. Still, it’s a crazy journey to go through anything like that.

After I had my three kids, I decided to help out a friend of mine who could not get off that fertility train and I was a surrogate for her baby. It’s not my egg, not my anything, just my oven. I felt like it was my way to take away the pain that I felt that nobody could take away from me. That was lovely. People always asked me, “Isn’t it hard to give up a baby? Don’t you want that baby?” It’s not mine. It has nothing to do with me. I’m a good babysitter. In the end, I don’t want your baby at all. I remember meeting with the therapist. They match you up at the fertility clinic. You have to go through therapy before you get signed up to be a surrogate, which is illegal in a lot of states and countries.

Is it illegal to be a surrogate or to have the therapy?

I don’t know why therapy would be illegal.

You’ll never know in Missouri. We got some weird laws here.

I’d wonder if surrogacy is legal there. It can go either way in my head. Surrogacy could be illegal because there have been cases that once the baby is born, the actual parents, for whatever reason, don’t want that baby anymore. It’s not healthy and then they don’t want that baby. The parents die and then what happens to that baby? There have been some nasty, ugly cases. In my case, everything was smooth. I remember that therapist saying, “You need to explain this unique situation to your kids because they’re going to think that you’re going to give them up too.” They were much younger.

I remember my older daughter was embarrassed that I was a surrogate. After I gave birth, somebody said, “Where’s the baby?” She told her friend, “My mommy gave it up for adoption.” “No, mommy did not give that baby for adoption.” The therapist said, “Explain to your kids that if your neighbor’s oven broke and your neighbor wanted to bake a pie. She came over and asked if she can use your oven, we let her use our oven. At the end of the 40 minutes, is that your pie or is that the neighbor’s pie?” Clearly, that pie goes right back to the neighbor’s house.

That’s a good analogy.

I got to be a surrogate and then the Peloton came into my life at the right time. It’s how to lose the baby weight, some of it. Tonal and MetPro came. I finished all that up. I was told for years that I could not get pregnant, “Don’t even try on your own. Go right to fertility treatments,” or my numbers didn’t look right. Surprise, I got pregnant. I get frustrated when people who aren’t accustomed to the fertility world say, “It will happen when you least expect it.” I think it happened because fitness came into my life. I was healthier. I wasn’t as thin. It made my body in a healthy state. I went into the doctor’s office for the normal first ultrasound when I was 6, 7, 8 weeks. I went from, “Yay baby,” to, “No baby,” to, “This could be cancer,” in six seconds.

That’s a lot to take in.

There is something that they don’t talk about there and it’s not common. It’s called a molar pregnancy. It has nothing to do with the molars in your mouth. This is something that they must talk about in Catholic schools when they tell you, “If you have sex, you could die. This is how it can happen, the pregnancy goes awry in your body and your body starts to attack it.” The doctor said that if I miscarried on my own, it can metastasize all over my body and they wanted to all of a sudden give me chemotherapy drugs, prophylactically.

It’s crazy. It’s 1 in 1 million. It happens to this girl. I’m not pregnant. That was not my rainbow baby. I went through that and it’s like a year process of wrapping that all up. “You can’t get pregnant again within the year.” HCG blood level markers that they use to test for pregnancy are the same marker that they were watching me for cancer. If that number went up, they wouldn’t know if I had cancer, I was pregnant or both. That year went away. I did not need chemotherapy drugs. Exercise, eating healthily, I felt lucky on that end.

I exercise pretty early in the morning. One morning, I was in my Power Zone Ride. I need to give a disclaimer before I share this because I just listened to the whole story and hear it out before anybody jumps to a conclusion. I was on the ride and I miscarried during the ride. I didn’t want to share that story because I don’t want people to think you can miscarry while riding. Not at all. I talked to my doctor many times about this and he said that the actual miscarriage happens days before the actual miscarriage. I did not cause it, the bike did not cause it, Power Zone did not cause it. It was going to happen. It happened then. Exercising or not exercising wouldn’t change the outcome.

I didn’t know that I was even pregnant at that point. That’s how early it was. I didn’t know what was going on. I remember calling the doctor and they patch me right through to the ER doctor. This is right before Peloton became a household name. He’s like, “What? Did you run into your bike? Why are you bleeding?” I was like, “No. I was riding my bike.” It took a while before we connected all those dots. I went to the doctor and they said, “Maybe this is cancer. Maybe it didn’t all go away.” We don’t know. Here we go again for the year. Maybe chemotherapy or not chemotherapy. We need to watch. The 1 in 1 million happened again. There was that pregnancy.

I’m blessed with fertility cards but for some reason, a challenging fertility card. People don’t know what to say and what not to say. Sometimes they see my family of three girls and they’ll say to me, “Are you trying for that boy?” They have no idea. I have been trying. I terminated on St. Patrick’s Day 2021. I don’t say anything. I don’t even smile. Another example of that is I was also dealt the diastasis recti card in my infertility journey and that’s when the muscles don’t go back. I delivered four babies. I get it. I was 5’1”, 5’ 2” on a good day if I’m sitting tall. I put my body through a lot.

I had an extreme case of diastasis recti. It’s not just the mommy pooch that happens. I could share pictures if someone wants to DM me. I looked easily eight months pregnant. I had to adjust all of my clothes. I remember going to Disneyland thinking, “They’re not going to let me on the rides.” It was something that I lived with. I saw a physical therapist who said, “I never say this but physical therapy is not for you. You need surgery.” I did get surgery, which is never covered by insurance. I’m in diastasis recti support groups.

When I first got the Peloton, I thought, “This is amazing. There’s a Peloton mom Facebook Group. This must be private.” I posted a picture of why I need to exercise at home at the gym where I was at. This is back in 2018. I couldn’t go to a spin class in 2018 with my distended belly without people making comments. This was before I even received the bike. This isn’t my two-week wait. When I posted that to that Peloton mom group, tons of moms reached out. They showed me where the secret private diastasis Facebook Groups were. That same day, a Peloton mom hopped on the phone with me and told me what the surgery was like. Amazing arms extended wide from this community negative day one. My two intense surgeries were fully covered by insurance, which never happens.

Who’s your carrier?

It’s Kaiser. They never cover these. I was the one case, 1 in 1 million. My body was deformed. It was not plastic surgery. It was putting me back to some semblance of normalcy. I feel like I am a great candidate to talk about fertility issues and riding because I did it all, do it all and it’s fresh in my mind. I needed the bike. I choose the ride based on how much I need to cry that day. I know that’s okay. That’s what I need to do.

It’s hard because Robin was my go-to. I now have to be in a different mindset to ride with her. It’s hard staring at a pregnant body for 45 minutes. Maybe it’s too fresh for me. I know, logically, that her baby doesn’t mean that there’s one less baby out there. I get that. That’s her baby. I don’t want her baby. At a time when I want my medicine, I don’t want to have to also deal with some of that too. It resonates when the instructors say to me, “Whatever doesn’t break you makes you stronger.” I get up that hill even more.

I love those instructors. They’re not shouting in my ear but they’re pumping me up to push forward and use my experience, “This is who I am. These are the cards I was dealt. How am I going to now play my hand? I could cry every day.” That last baby that I terminated was my last shot. I now can say that I have my family here. This is who I meant to have here and it’s the girls. We have a little gym set up in the garage prior to quarantine. I had my second surgery in January 2020. We ordered the Tonal in November or December 2019. I remember like, “I should get it delivered in April. I can’t use it until April anyway. Why am I going to get it delivered before then?” My husband’s like, “Maybe I’ll use it. Let’s get it and we’ll have it.” We got it delivered on December 31st, 2019 and then the world shut down. Somehow, it all worked out.

You snuck that at the end of the wire.

For you, that came at an incredible time. I’m sure that was necessary. Has the community continued to support you as you’ve gone through these different things? Have you shared? Have you told people what’s going on?

I haven’t shared about the miscarriage. I didn’t know how Peloton would feel about that, probably not too thrilled. The friends that I have made through Peloton and Tonal are my real friends. We check in all the time, sometimes more than other friends. The fact that I didn’t know about these secret private Facebook Groups, now I’m in them all, the molar pregnancy, the diastasis and because of medical needs. I go through my scroll and I’m like, “What is that? That’s a baby.” I see it all. Being a surrogate and for the diastasis, I was able to find all of my people through all this community.

I am a member of a lot of Facebook Groups for the Peloton. The Tonal is getting started with their little breakout groups but there are many with Peloton and I’m in a bunch. It keeps me busy. It’s somebody to reach out to, somebody who gets it in all of these different facets. Whatever I’m feeling on that day, I know I can reach out to someone. I needed Kristin and one of her rides. When she was talking about her cancer situation, she said, “We keep getting up. If we get down, we get back up. Keep getting up no matter what.” I needed all these words.

I am being held up by this, by you guys, by The Clip Out. I read this show every single week. It’s part of my week. It’s one of those benchmarks things that I do to help keep me on my path. I listen to The Superset. There’s so much listening going on when I’m doing dishes or laundry. I’m in the Tonal Book Club. I can’t keep up with all the listening that I need to do. I get to it all because it’s important to me. It’s my little therapy in my ears. It’s my friends in my ear. It is what it is.

We sit here in our basement and prattle on. It’s weird to think that it’s having that impact on someone out there. Thank you for letting us know that.

It’s for me and my kids. You always ask about favorite instructors but I wanted to talk about my favorite classes.

That’s different.

I have two classes that stand out. One is Becs’ marathon outside running class. Women’s History Celebration Run outdoor is from March 8th. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody. Even if you’re doing dishes and you don’t want to go for a run, I don’t care. This is a story that I had no idea what the plot was. I have since shared it with everybody I know.

I made Tom listen to the whole story. I didn’t make him listen to the class but I repeated all of the details. I was like, “Did you know?”

Many people don’t know about this story. Please, listen to it. The other one is a random ten-minute Kristin McGee Yoga Flow. I’ve probably taken the class over 100 times. I don’t love repeating classes, except for this class. This class is the first thing I do in the morning to wake up my body, whether it’s before I go on a ride or before I go on Tonal. It is for ten minutes. It hits everything well. The funny thing is I started taking this class at the same time, every single day and noticing there’s this one other woman who also took that class every day, same time. We started to high-five each other. I remembered it because my sister’s name is Stacey and so did this person.

I don’t know where she is now. Maybe I went off on my schedule a little bit, potentially. Her leaderboard name is Stacey1971. It was a little high five and that helped. Those are my two classes. I do everything on Peloton and on Tonal too. I remember you first talking about Tonal and you sharing the name of the coaches. I felt like a three-year-old covering my ears and I didn’t want to hear other names of coaches when you were saying their names because I love them. I’m like, “I don’t need any more coaches.”

“I’m not going to cheat.”

There’s room for them all. I use this coach for this and this coach for that. Ross gets me to sleep like nobody else.

That voice is magic.

I have gone through all the sleep meditations by Ross. Even though I haven’t heard them all to the end, for some reason, I get bunned repeating that even though there are many in the library.

Start later into them.

You have to ease in.

“I wonder what he did?” Ross, if you’re out there, please you can do 100 more and it’s not enough. For Barre, it’s Tara Lee and Hannah. I love them on the bike. Ally’s Feel Good Ride makes me feel good. I’m sitting there and writing down. She gives riddles. I want to share him with my kids afterward. It’s distracting because I want to remember them. I write them down on my phone during the ride but yet I want to ride and share them with my kids.

Write down the time code and then pull it up later on your iPhone.

That’s why she’s a project manager. That’s how her mind works.

I’m like, “I might as well write down keywords.”

We all have our times.

The great part about Peloton. It doesn't matter what your fitness journey is because they will always meet you where you are. Click To Tweet

That could save me some time. Those are my favorite instructors. I can’t get enough. I’m a Pelotoner until they stop. I love the variety. Especially introducing Tonal, my peloton journey has shifted. Now I’m taking more 20 or 30-minute classes, endurance rides. Whatever it is I need for Peloton, it’s there. I remember I was doing five-minute warm-ups.

That’s the great part about Peloton. It doesn’t matter what your fitness journey is because they will always meet you where you are.

In 2019 or so, I was fresh with the bike and I was at Disney World one time. I had a little Peloton sticker on my water bottle and someone came up to me. These were different times. People didn’t talk about the Peloton. She was big into Power Zone. I was like, “What’s Power Zone? I don’t get it. You, lady that I don’t know, walk me through it. I will try anything.” I don’t remember her name. We texted for a while. She got me into Power Zone. I was doing a bunch of those challenges for a while. There’s so much. I did do strength on Peloton before the total. It’s great. It’s fine. There are features of Tonal that are different. You can look up my profile on Peloton and see the number of classes I’ve taken. I have taken all of those classes. I made it through all of them, except I’m asleep.

What is your leaderboard name for everyone to be able to look up your profile?

I am not great at branding. I do have different names in different places. I’m going to point everybody to my Instagram, where I do give my peloton name there. My Instagram is @Plant.Strong.Debra. I post all of my workouts as posts. It’s for me. I’m in the Tonal Book Club and they talk about having some diary for your habits. This is my diary of every single day that I’ve worked out. I haven’t missed a day. You can look at my information when you go to @Plant.Strong.Debra. If you follow me, I’ll follow you back on any platform.

Do you have any advice for people that got a Peloton?

I have things I want to say but I’m going to go through the first because that’s my main one. Number one, no decisions on the day of the workout. I lay out my clothes, fill up my water bottle. I pick my classes whether I bookmarked them or stack them. I use the app a lot. I scheduled them. I don’t think you can do that feature on the bike yet for whatever reason. It’s coming, I’m sure. I schedule them not necessarily for the reminders. I am somebody who works out no matter what. It makes it easier to find them. I go right to my schedule and there they are in order. It eliminates the choices. When you’re scrolling through, “Do I take this? Do I take that right?” I made a deal with myself that even if something else looks good, bad or whatever. No decisions on the day of the workout. I might make a mental note that I take it later.

I got to put on my lawyer hat. No decisions on the day of the workout mean that you can only work out every other day.

After I finish the workout sometime during the day.

But that’s a decision that day.

Not for the same day, I’m working out. That’s what I meant.

This is what living with him is like, all the time.

That’s the main one. The other thing I wanted to say was that know that you can’t do anything wrong with your Peloton workouts. When I first got the Peloton, I didn’t know which class is 20 or 30 minutes, “What do I do?” Movement is movement. Yoga, Barre, Pilates. Just take a class and move. I realized on day 1 or week 1, clipping in. There is a process to learning all of that stuff. I remember not knowing what all the numbers were on the screen at all. Forget about the leaderboard, I didn’t even get those main numbers. I heard Tunde say in one of her rides, “Resistance starts with R and it stands for Road.”

That made a little bit more sense to me. All these little things that I take for granted and how easy it is for me to pick my classes. One thing that I do now is filter my classes. I like to filter for the hardest classes or the most popular classes. If you’re new, filter the twenty-minute ride to the easiest class. There’s no judgment. Nobody cares. You’re going to get there eventually. Keep moving. The last piece of advice is to get involved in all the different groups. If you’re following this podcast, you are getting involved. That’s the advice.

That’s a lot. You came loaded for bear.

I’m a teacher. I’m in a Peloton teacher group too. That’s what we do.

You set up a lesson plan.

She speaks like she can do it in Spanish.

I am a Spanish teacher.

I’m going to be on The Best Advice podcast because you guys talked about it.

We were supposed to be on there and they never reached out. You’re better than us.

Zak is nice. Email him. I’m sure he wants you on. He’s a Peloton fan, for sure. I heard about the podcast through you. In The Best Advice podcast, I’ll be talking about my best advice for learning another language because I’m a Spanish teacher.

Congrats. You’re podcasting all over the place.

I love podcasting. Here I go.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your story. I know it’s a difficult one and we appreciate it.

Thanks.

—

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

We are going to talk to Jessica Menardy who came very highly recommended and I greatly enjoyed her interview. I can’t wait to share it.

Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Twitter, Instagram, the bike and the tread @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Don’t forget our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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