We recap Dancing With The Stars.

• John Mills joins us to discuss if gyms and Peloton can peacefully coexist.
• Should fitness subscriptions be a thing?
• Dr. Jenn – Dealing with changing fitness levels as you age.
• We have instructors – Joslyn Thompson Rule and Jon Hosking.
• Cody Rigsby is up for a People’s Choice Award.
• Huffington Post talks to Cody about why his DWTS partner isn’t a man.
• Shape.com profiles Cody.
• InStyle sits down with Callie Gullickson.
• Shape has Callie’s Trader Joes shopping list.
• Callie is now doing boot camps.
• Robin Arzon talked to Women’s Foundation of Colorado.
• Jess Sims is speaking at Reebok Unlocked.
• Tunde spoke NASM conference.
• Pinterest is now working with content creators including Ally Love.
• Angelo joins us to discuss how to handle backsliding after weight loss.
• Peloton makes changes to its referral program.
• Does Peloton have product placement?
• Peloton partners with Beyonce’ and Ivy Park for a new capsule collection.
• Benefit News raves about Peloton’s perks.
• And Peloton salaries aren’t bad either according to SEC filings.
• Is there going to be a new logistics facility in the UK?
• Valuewalk talks to Tom Cortese.
• Peloton makes Ad Week’s digital hot list.
• HBO’s Secession has a Peloton connection.
• Peloton releases its first environmental and social governance report.
• Robin Hood Markets names Peloton exec to its board.
• CNBC reports on how Peloton is dealing with supply chain issues.
• Jennifer McKeehan is interviewed about supply chain issues as well.
• The latest artist series features Elton John.

All this plus our interview with Andolyn Medina!

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Big Changes for Peloton’s Referral Program plus our interview with Andolyn Medina

We’re going to be in Boston over Thanksgiving. We’re going to have Thanksgiving dinner at Plymouth.

I’m super excited.

We are more American than everybody else.

It just means we’re bigger nerds than anybody else.

We’re bigger American nerds than everybody else. We were thinking if we have any Boston listeners that want to hang out, we would do that. We posted a thing in the group about it but we need some help finding a place. We were thinking Dave & Buster’s, although it would be nice to find a place with maybe a little bit more Boston flavor. We’ll have the kids in tow so we’re trying to figure out something and they’re 15 and 17. With Dave & Buster’s, we could be like, “Here’s the money, go play video games.” They’re not bored by their parents’ podcast. They’re like, “Whatever.” If anybody has any other ideas, please shoot us a message or chime in on the thread in our Facebook group.

We would appreciate it.

We’re going to be there and do all the touristy things and we thought it’d be fun to hang out with people. If you’re interested, let us know. Besides that, what do you have in store for people?

We’re going to talk about some financial reports that Peloton had posted. We also are going to talk about Dancing With The Stars. We have a visit from Dr. Jenn. She talks about dealing with changing fitness levels as you age. We’re going to talk about the new instructors. We also have a visit from Angelo at MetPro. He talks about how to handle backsliding after you have weight loss like if you start doing things like bingeing cookies. We have updates on a billion things going on with the instructors.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there be sure to rate, review, and follow us so you never miss an episode. We have a new review. They say, “My favorite podcast. I’ve been listening to your awesome podcast for a little over a year. I ordered my Peloton in April 2020 as soon as I saw the virus wasn’t going away anytime soon. Peloton, your wonderful, funny and engaging podcast, John Mills, Dr. Jenn Mann, and Angelo have kept me going happily in an otherwise strange year. I even joined MetPro right after your interview with Angelo and dropped about 14 more pounds. I love your humor and Peloton knowledge. Crystal, your laugh makes this my favorite podcast. I hope to see you at Homecoming someday if it ever happens again. Thanks for all you do. Stephanie Adams.” Her leaderboard name is Woodsy 44.

I feel like four is a big number in Stephanie’s life. Stephanie, if you’d like to reach out to us and explain that, we would love to know what is up with the fours.

You only need to explain it once. You don’t need to explain it four times.

Thank you for the very kind review.

Also, we have a Facebook page if you want to keep up with us, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. You can sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com where you can have all the links and things like that emailed to you in one easy to digest format. Finally, we have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. You can subscribe to us over there. You can watch all of these episodes on your computer, TV or wherever you watch YouTube stuff. There’s all that let’s. 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?

Crystal is wiped because she did her second Tonal live workout. She finished it seconds before we started recording this.

I had to get the hairdryer, pretend to look normal, throw some makeup on, and pretend to look decent.

The live looks cool. I saw a couple of them online. That’s pretty cool.

It’s really fun. I love it. What do we get going on here?

We will start with where we’ve been starting every week, which is talking about Cody Rigsby and Dancing With The Stars.

Did you get to watch it, John?

I was all ingrained. My eyes were stuck. It was crazy. JoJo Siwa blew it all up. I become a fan. Now I’m a Dancing With The Stars fan.

She did a great job. That was her second week in a row with a perfect score. The exciting moment of the night for all of the Peloton fans was when Cody performed. He killed it and they’d shown in the score. They were handing out those high scores again. This time, Cody and Cheryl got a nice high score of 36.

Cody blew it all up. That was awesome. He’s way up at the top when they combined all the scores. I loved that, then Iman came out there and scared us all to death.

Whenever he threw her around the stage like that, that’s amazing.

Everything they did in the choreography of that was so creative.

I got that Cheryl was the one who’s making up the choreography for their dances. We talked about that Cody seemed a little separate from Cheryl. I feel like he worked on that this time and the choreography worked for the two of them. I also thought it was interesting that one of the articles came up about Cody choosing not to dance with a same-sex partner. He said in the article that he didn’t feel like he had time to even consider that in the negotiations. It was like, “Do you want to do this?” He didn’t have time to think about the big picture. It was like, “Go, go, go.” He was saying that had he had a chance to think about it. He would have done that as well.

I briefly read this article. He said that he didn’t even think that it was an option. He assumed that it was traditional dancing. It’s going to be boy, girl and that’s the extent of it. It wasn’t a political statement one way or the other. It was like, “I didn’t even think about it.”

Since JoJo was the first person that’s done that, it wasn’t like it was top of mind that that’s even a possibility. They didn’t know it was a possibility until JoJo did it. Maybe his connection might feel different if he was with a same-sex partner. That’s where I was going with all of that.

Also, there would have been more buzz around it. As you’re saying, he may have had a closer connection. All of it would have been positive had he thought of that. I get why he wouldn’t. That wasn’t traditionally how the show works.

You can’t fault him for not thinking of that. I don’t say that to negate what Cheryl’s done. She’s a great partner. Even if I’m not always thrilled with the choreography, she’s been amazing and supportive of Cody.

Even if he had thought of it, it probably would be difficult. This was a level up for him. When you first get there, it’s hard to instantly go to, “I want to do it all different.” Even though JoJo Siwa is probably 10 or 15 years younger than him, it’s not as much of a level up for her because she’s had a television show and she tours. She’s operated within that arm of the industry in a way that he hasn’t. She probably felt like she can say, “Here’s how I would approach this. Yes or no.”

In a way, he’s becoming. You could see that he’s getting more comfortable in this. He killed it.

They both did a great job. I will also say about JoJo that she’s probably more comfortable with negotiations in general. She might even have a manager who was the one who suggested it from a PR standpoint. You never know.

Moving along, we had an interesting article from CNBC about Peloton or the gym, how more people are choosing both, and what that means for the fitness industry.

Isn’t that interesting? They have numbers in this article about how connected fitness, specifically Peloton, have been growing over the first eight months. They use the term of eight months of 2021 and they see that they’re still growing, but people are going back to the gyms as well. They talk in this article about Planet Fitness and they’re still down 8% of their standard usage of the gym from 2019. They’re pretty much back to normal. If people are back to the gym but are still buying connected fitness equipment, what is that telling us? Ultimately, they believe that the go-forward is going to be more of a hybrid approach where people are doing both. Maybe that’s all going to augment too as time passes but it was interesting.

It seems like that would be difficult to sustain financially. That’s a lot of monthly financial commitments to carry both a gym membership and a Peloton membership. I get that people probably like the idea of, “There are things that I want to do with the gym that I can’t do with just my Peloton.” I see the advantage but I don’t know much about gym memberships. Is it possible to have a lesser tier gym membership that you go to do a certain thing like if you just want to lift weights, you pay a lower amount?

Most of them aren’t based on that. What they’re based on is how many locations you want access to. Sometimes they’ll do things like if you want access to the pool, that’s a different tier. If you want more family members, that’s a different tier. It can also be like how many different gyms that you want to have access to. I can’t help but wonder if it’s just that some people might even be getting double counted because, in a typical Peloton household, you might have the new standard family of two parents and 2.5 children. Maybe some of them are going to the gym. Maybe some of them are using the Peloton. I don’t know that this is accurate. I don’t know that they’re capturing the real numbers. Plus, how hard is it to quit the gym? Maybe they turned all these people’s memberships back on and they’re like, “Everybody’s coming back.”

Peloton has been such an investment in making fitness feel both feasible and fun. Click To Tweet

Some gyms are like that. I went through that. Some of them are difficult. When you think you canceled, you may not have.

It can get pretty ugly. It’s a little bit of a shady business model that they got going on over there.

My thought also was if people are going back to the gym, I don’t know whether or not, or how much they are. Let’s say that is occurring, but we’re still having connected fitness growing. You know how the connected fitness space has started to get crowded. You keep seeing new players. My thought was, does this start us down a path where connected fitness and these smaller players start to consolidate if the gym is going to be more in play than we thought before?

I don’t know if that has anything to do with the gym specifically but we’re definitely going to see consolidation in the space. I don’t see how we can’t. There are too many new players and they’re not getting enough traction. To compete, they have to do all of the different verticals. That’s a lot to do.

Didn’t we see one of the connected fitness brands partnered with a gym not too long ago?

We’ve seen a couple of those. Is that Barry’s Bootcamp they’re doing?

They did some with Barry’s, and there have been others too. I can’t remember them all.

That is probably the consolidation that you’re talking about, John. That is happening. They didn’t buy form but they’re finding ways to team up and bring their content to the gym and vice versa. I have mixed feelings about this. To me, this is more of a signal that Peloton is going to have to bring their A-game when it comes to the strength component because people are still going to the gym because they still want all those different strength machines. Tonal is an amazing machine, but I know there are people that think, “I need more than 200 pounds.” Even if they don’t need more than 200 pounds, they think they do.

Chances are you don’t.

No, you don’t. You go lift the Tonal, then we’ll talk about it. LeBron James is using it, calm down. My point is there are a lot of people that are like, “I don’t know that I’m going to get anything out of this Tonal.” Maybe they’re like, “I then got to pay a whole another membership fee.” Now you’re looking at the gym, which a lot of gyms you can get for $20 or $30 a month. It’s very stripped down. It’s a very basic gym but you can get those weights. It then does make more sense to have both. To me, Peloton needs to do more than what I see on their plans for strength. What they have planned is not going to cut it.

I agree with that. There was a person in my group that was thinking that this growth, going back to the gym pattern was just things opening back up. We’re seeing that for the moment. They’re thinking it’s going to go back to people coming back home. They saw this as another lump in the wave.

That could be. At the time when the pandemic started, I didn’t want to go see a movie again in the movie theater. Now I’m like, “We can go to the movies again.”

It’s one of those things where once you get over the hump and do it and don’t die, you’re like, “This can be navigated.” If you have a gym membership and you like to spin class, Peloton is still a better value than going to two strength classes a month. You have the flexibility of doing it on your own schedule. You don’t have to fight for that space in the class at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday when you would rather do it at 6:30 on a Wednesday. From a value standpoint, it’s still worth it for a lot of people.

That was the thought in that statement. Maybe they’re running back now, but then that will click the value.

They’ll be like, “This is too much trouble. I don’t want to drive to the gym. I don’t want to fight for a parking spot. I don’t want to roll out of bed at 6:00 AM and workout.”

Speaking of your monthly fee, Android Authority had an interesting opinion piece about the future of smart business is subscriptions but it shouldn’t be.

They’re like, “You don’t need any more subscriptions.” I’m not sure that I agree with that.

The future of pretty much everything is going to be subscriptions. Every business is trying to pivot to some sort of subscription model.

There’s more money to be made.

You’re fighting against the tide ultimately in terms of being against the subscription model.

What this person is actually trying to say is that there are brands that work with a subscription or without, and then there are brands that only work if you have a subscription. They talk about Peloton and that the bike still works. You could use even the lower-tiered but the bike itself will still work, so will Tonal. You could still do FightCamp, even if you don’t have the subscription. Some of them like Whoop, if you don’t have this subscription, it doesn’t work at all. It does nothing for you. You’re just wearing a bracelet.

They will give you the Whoop so you don’t technically buy the equipment. That’s the only way they’re going to make money. If you think about it. Our printer has a subscription service for Christ’s sake. They’re like, “When your ink gets low, give us your credit card and we’ll send you some more.” It’s like, “What?”

Everything’s going towards that model, everywhere we go. I’m in San Diego and my dad’s like, “I’m paying $29 a month. I could wash my car whenever.” Erica is going, “I got this subscription to STARZ.” I’m like, “I thought we had every channel with cable.” “No, in order for me to see Raising Kanan, I got to buy STARZ.” I get the idea of the article scrutinizing where are all these subscription fees going. Also, the component of this where they’re going, “If you’re locked into a particular brand via their subscription, does that limit their need to innovate as much?” They go deeper into that. I get the question. I get the thought of scrutinization but I don’t think it’s going anywhere.

The whole idea of fitness shouldn’t have a subscription model, what do you call the gym? The gym is a subscription model. I bet you, Peloton is a lot easier to cancel than your gym is.

What irritates me about this is this guy is like, “All you need to do is just workout. You don’t need somebody to tell you.” You’re right. I could do that. Here’s the problem, I never did. You can sit there and say that all you want but this is the only thing that’s ever worked for me, this level of engagement. I will gladly pay for it. That is a service that I feel is worth it. If he doesn’t, then fine. It seems like a grumpy curmudgeon to me. I think he yells at people to get on this line.

That’s a direct benefit that you’re going to get from Tonal, specifically. Having that mechanism that’s going to tell you exactly what to do. It’s going to spot you. It’s going to give you a program. All of those benefits from a Tonal at home with the internet. That’s a critical one. I thought that was silly as well, the way he framed that. Overall, I get the scrutinization of all kinds of subscriptions all over the place.

It is frustrating when you feel like everybody’s coming at you for a monthly fee. It starts to weigh on you.

The kids are on a thing called Discord where they chat all the time. Now Discord has a monthly fee. You can pay $9.99 a month so that you can make your own custom emojis.

If I was the scoring team, that would be enticing.

Unfortunately, we have a fifteen-year-old that’s very enticing.

I used to go home and go, “Mom, can I get $0.25? Now they’re going, “Mom, can you pay $9.99 a month?

It’s inflation.

When you target kids with something like that, it’s going to go on their parent’s credit card and the kid’s going to lose interest, then how long is that going to live on the parent’s credit card? That’s the frightening part.

You’re like, “What’s this $9.99?”

Here’s my next business model. Here’s what I’m inventing. I have the idea. Someone needs to figure out how to do all the stuff. For $10 a month, I’ll have a subscription monitoring service and it will go through and tell you which of the subscriptions you forgot about that you canceled.

It already exists.

That’s a thing, but that subscription service sounds like a mad hay den. Every other subscription service should be upset at that one service.

It’s a financial institution one like that app called Mint. That’s one of the services they provide. They’re like, “We will look at your transactions and if you have this stuff and it’s going on for a long time, we’re going to call your attention to it.”

If they all have to go to some global subscription conference, everyone else should sit at a different table from them.

It’s like, “We’re not talking to them.”

I have a subscription for my car, my home, my electricity. That’s about how you frame it. John, thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, where can people find you?

 

They can find me on Facebook, Run, Lift And Live or my group. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive. They can find me on TikTok or they can find me at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you.

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Go to JoinFightCamp.com/clip to get an additional pair of gloves for free all November.

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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.

It’s so good to have you back. We have a question from Shelly Gherkin. She would like to know how can we mentally reconcile naturally declining athletic capability as we age. She says that over the past decade, she’s experienced decreasing speed stamina, and the ability to effectively recover. How can she reset her vision of what fitness looks like in her 50s and beyond without feeling like a former athlete?

She asked a great question and whether it is in your 50s, 60s or 70s, every once in a while, I’ll see someone in their 70s or even 80s on the leaderboard, which excites me to no end and gives me hope. First of all, if you’re encountering this in your 50s, the first thing you want to do is meet with your doctor and make sure everything is okay. The second thing you want to do is re-evaluate whatever the regimen that you’re doing is. You may be over-training. A lot of the time, I see people not recovering as well or hitting the wall because they’re over-training. There’s a tendency when you don’t see yourself getting better, you go more than you need to do more.

Sometimes what you need to do is less. Sometimes what you need to do is alternate better between maybe the bike and the tread, or a strength day versus a cardio day, or do more stretching. It’s important to re-evaluate your entire exercise plan. I would do this with an expert. I would do this with someone who is a trainer or a sports physiologist to look at what is actually age-related athletic decline versus what is over-training or not hitting a good balance of strength, flexibility, cardio, etc. That’s key because if you’re in your 50s, there are plenty of people who continue to increase in their stamina at that age, believe it or not.

If it’s not any of that and if it is just something where you’ve peaked to some degree as an athlete, what you want to do is look at, how do I maintain and am I over-training? That’s one of the key questions to ask here. A lot of people who I follow on social media are Peloton fanatics like I am who are training so many miles. There are some people that I see and I can’t believe what they’re doing. More power to them if that works for them in their bodies. You have to be careful that you’re not comparing yourself to someone who’s doing 200 miles a week and going, “That’s what I should maintain.” It’s what is realistic for your body and in terms of wearing down your joints. There is a point of diminishing returns where if you’re training so many hours a week or a day, that it’s not necessarily optimal health even.

It’s important to evaluate that. Looking at maintaining and shifting goals, maybe some of what you want to do is look at more flexibility, more yoga and more balanced. As we get older, our balance declines. A lot of people fall and break a hip and all that sort of stuff. One of the things that have inspired me to do yoga is going, “I want to make sure when I hit my 70s and my 80s that I have good balance, and my kids aren’t in the hospital with me with a broken hip.”

It’s re-evaluating what your goals are and what’s important to you. Sometimes we get focused on the numbers, how many miles, how many workouts, am I setting up PR, am I going fast enough. Instead, we want to look at, what are my health goals for life? What do I want to be able to do? How long do I want to live? How long do I want to be able to walk up the stairs carrying my groceries? Evaluate differently in terms of lifestyle and also find other people in your age group, whether it’s through Peloton or a Peloton group on Facebook, who are going through similar things as you, and can support you as you’re going through this.

My secret was to not start until I was 50, so I can only get better. Go back in time and don’t ever exercise. Problem solved.

Thank you very much. It’s awesome advice, Dr. Jenn, not you, Tom.

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

You can find me on all social media @DrJennMann. I post on my Instastories all my Peloton workouts. You can see what classes I’m taking and what I’m up to as well. InStyle Magazine, every Wednesday, I have a column that comes out called Hump Day with Dr. Jenn. That’s all sex and relationship advice.

—

We have new instructors.

Joslyn Thompson Rule is amazing. I took her premiere class earlier. She’s a lot of fun. She’s a mom and she’s very funny. She says she lives in a frat house with her two boys and husband. I’ve laughed a lot with her. I enjoyed her classes. If you haven’t gotten a chance to take her, I highly recommend that you do.

I also think her children should cut down on their beer consumption.

We also have Jon Hosking. Jon started doing classes. I did Jon’s class and then Joslyn’s class, back to back. Jon has a completely different feel for his classes than Joslyn does. In his premier class, he was doing an imagery thing where he was picturing himself at the club and all the different people there. It was like a story but in a good way. It distracted you from the fact that you were running and you cannot pay enough money for that to be a thing. When you don’t even remember you’re running, that’s gold. Welcome, Joslyn and Jon. That is cool.

—

The year of Cody continues. He has been nominated for the People’s Choice Award.

Everybody needs to go vote for him. He is the competition contestant in that category. There are eight nominees. I don’t know if these move every time. He’s listed at the top left. I don’t know if he’ll stay there. He is on for Dancing With The Stars. Everybody needs to go out and vote immediately.

He’s up against JoJo from The Masked Singer, but he’s also up against JoJo Siwa from Dancing With the Stars, Gottmik from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Matt James from The Bachelor, Katie Thurston from The Bachelorette, Symone from RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Wiz Khalifa from The Masked Singer. I watch a grand total of none of those shows.

I know none of them. I know they exist but I’ve never watched any.

Cody was also featured in the Shape Magazine. This one is written by Jaclyn Hendricks. I’m like, “Is Michelle K okay?” I’m worried.

Yes, she is. She’s okay. This article is about his journey so far on Dancing With The Stars. He labels it as incredible yet challenging. I think that’s accurate. It has been a ride. He’s kept up a great attitude about the whole thing and I’m sure it was exhausting going back to back to different coats, week after week, in the middle of being sick. I love this. They have managed to throw in a Shivani commercial right in the middle of it with Cody. They even talked about how he was exhausted trying to do that, but the COVID symptoms only lasted a couple of days. They were much milder than the last time he had it. Thank goodness he got his vaccine when he did.

Callie Gullickson has given Cody a run for his money. She’s got lots of things going on. She was featured in InStyle Magazine.

This was all about her favorite dance moves for an effective cardio HIIT workout. Don’t forget, she was one of the brand new instructors that they had on the Dance Cardio. She got added to that team. I’m sure that that prompted this article. That’s great. Good for Callie. The body roll is a lot tougher than it looks if you are stiff and have no rhythm like me.

It doesn’t look like it would be difficult.

You get up there and do it, Tom.

I’m Good. We all know my opinion of Dance Cardio. I hate it. While we’re on our little Callie streak, she’s featured in Shape.com with Michelle K. She’s back. I’m glad everything’s okay.

This one is about Callie Gullickson being the ultimate Trader Joe’s expert and here’s what’s in her cart. It says three words, pumpkin-flavored everything. She’s very seasonal. I hope she’s not eating pumpkin-season everything in June. It’s only special because it’s in the fall.

That’s arbitrary.

You can have it any season but I don’t want it all the time. It stops being special.

No matter your size physically, it doesn't tell you how physically fit the person is. Click To Tweet

You have me all the time. Am I no longer special?

You’re absolutely special.

You’re like, “How do I segue out of this?”

You’re not food, honey.

While we’re on our Callie streak, we should close out by saying that she will be your next bike bootcamp instructor.

She did her first live classes. Congrats to Callie. It has been a very big week for you. Welcome to the Peloton team. They’re getting to them earlier and earlier.

Robin Arzon was in Colorado speaking at the Women’s Foundation of Colorado.

She talked about how she changed her career and how movement is medicine, but not just every day. It literally in her mind saved her life because it was the therapy that she started doing after she had that very traumatic experience of being held up at gunpoint. She talked all about that. It’s a powerful story because sometimes it’s not getting into your head and dissecting things. Sometimes it’s getting out of your head and moving.

If I was held at gunpoint, I didn’t have a movement.

A lot of us would.

Reebok had their unlocking fitness panel.

I think that you can sign up for it. Did it occur?

I thought it had occurred. Maybe it hasn’t occurred. Maybe I should read this first before talking about it.

I think it’s coming up. It’s pretty cool because Jess Sims is an ambassador for them. This panel is going to be how pro athletes train, eat, prevent injuries, practice wellness, and more. How cool that she is going to be part of that. Notice that Emily Abbate also is. Remember, that name from our previous episode where she was interviewing Adrian Williams.

You were participating in one of the NASM conferences and lo and behold, who popped up?

It was Tunde. she was the keynote speaker. She kicked off the entire Optima Conference for NASM. She talked about what her experience was and why she chose NASM. “It’s the best,” those were her words. She also talked about how do you get your career started, and a lot of like the background of where she came from, and her weight loss experience too. You might remember that Tunde was overweight as a child. When we interviewed her, she gave that whole experience. She gave a synopsis of that. She also did a Q&A. Even though this was a virtual event, people had submitted questions. She answered those as part of the recording. It was pretty cool.

Closing out this segment, Pinterest introduced its first-ever original content series, which is fascinating because Pinterest is all about repurposing other people’s content. It’s an interesting move for them. One of the people they’re partnering up with is Ally Love.

They list her as CEO of Love Squad, Peloton instructor, and host. She will share her skincare routine after sweaty workouts, her favorite smoothie recipe, the basics of bossing up, and how to style athleisure. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Lots of other people out there too.

—

Joining us once again is Angelo for MetPro to answer your nutrition questions. Hello.

It’s great to see you again.

It’s good to see you too. We have a Clip Out member that needs your help. Trish has lost 80 pounds, which is incredible. She has maintained it for a year. However, lately, she has developed a cookie habit on the weekends. She eats well throughout the week, but on the weekends she’s eating nothing but bakery cookies. What is this doing to her body? In other words, what do food binges do to the body and how do they affect weight loss? I feel you, Trish. It’s so hard.

I’m going to give you, Trish, maybe a surprising answer. I don’t know what it’s doing to your body but you do. Are you gaining weight? Now we’re going to talk about it from a metabolic standpoint. If you eat cookies on the weekend, are you gaining weight? If the answer is yes, then it’s not working. In other words on the weekends, you’re taking in extra calories and extra sugars. Your body is not able to close that gap so you’re going to slowly start to drift back up and regain some weight. Don’t do that.

If you’re not gaining weight, what does that mean? There are two possible outcomes if you’re not gaining weight. That means that metabolically, your body is handling at least the amount you’re taking in which means it’s not excessive. Your metabolism is able to close that gap either because it’s running fast enough or here’s the danger. Psychologically, we tend to play a little bit of gamification with ourselves. Here’s what often happens. I don’t know that this is your case, Trish, but here’s what I would be looking for.

If you’re not gaining weight, is it because metabolically, you’re on top of it, or is it because Saturday and Sunday, you’re eating a bunch of sugar, and then Monday and Tuesday you’re hardly eating anything because we have that, “I ate all this junk and I’m going to gain weight if I eat on Monday and Tuesday.” At the end of the week, your net-zero of what you’re doing is you’re leaning into that yo-yo fad dieting routine. The longer you lean into it, the sooner you’re going to reach the point where you’re going to fall. It’s going to end up turning into a gain five, lose five, eat, starve scenario that is so easy to fall into.

From a metabolic standpoint, you want to be careful of that. One of the number one reasons that people will specifically back half of the day, struggle with sugar cravings is because the front half of the day, they didn’t get enough quality nutrition. Now our blood sugars going all wonky so we get cravings. I’m a practical person. I don’t like to sugarcoat things, look through rose-coloured glasses. We eat cookies because they taste good. Even if your blood sugar is stable, they still taste good. We can admit that, but you can defeat cravings for things that taste good much better when you’re not hungry and when your blood sugar isn’t driving you to a behavior. If something tastes good and you are ravenously hungry, and at that moment have low blood sugar, you are not going to win that battle.

Do you know how I know? I don’t win the battle and I lose it. You have to put your body into a winning state and say, “I didn’t gain weight this week because I manipulated things.” Eating a bunch of sugar on the weekend is not setting you up for success. Slide all of that over and we have two different topics here that are strictly metabolic, recounting body weights and how your body is going to perform from a metabolic standpoint. Now there’s health energy. There’s no scenario where eating a bunch of cookies on the weekend is going to make you hop up and say, “I feel great. Let’s get another exercise session.”

Long-term health, you’re going to be better off with clean eating. That doesn’t mean, “Angelo says never have cookies,” because that’s not what I want for you either. The key is everything in moderation. There are few things that human beings derive more pleasure from than good food and drink. I want you to eat and or drink things that you enjoy but do so strategically and in moderation. You’re going to do fine. Do you know how I know that you’re going to do fine, Trish? Because you’ve already taken the weight off. You’ve kept it off for a year. You’ve proven you can do it. Hold on to that progress and keep your healthy routine going.

We’re rooting for you, Trish.

Thank you so much. If people want this sort of advice customized for their own fitness journey, where can they find you?

They can come to talk to us at MetPro.co/tco.

Thank you.

—

There have been big changes with the referral program at Peloton.

This may come as a shock to many people because apparently, not everybody knew this. You have always had more than one referral code. You’ve had the main person who paid the Peloton bill, that referral code, but everybody who signed up for Peloton in your household also had a referral code. A lot of people only were able to get that code by calling Peloton and asking for it. It wasn’t listed in your account if you were a subsidiary account holder.

Peloton announced from now on only the all-access owner, the person who pays the Peloton bill for the all-access membership gets the referral. If you had four adults in your home or four people in your home previously, you could get up to 48 referrals a year because everybody’s limited to twelve. You could get 48 and then that would be it for the year. Now, your household would be limited to twelve.

Some people are losing their shit.

Some people seem to think that because they’re mommy bloggers. They should get to do this as many times as they want. Peloton gets to make these decisions. We’ve talked before that they don’t need referrals anymore.

Especially during the pandemic that they were even still doing that. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first step towards winding down this program because they don’t need it anymore.

I think this is the third step. I agree with you that that’s what this is but the guest pass was another big step. Now you get nothing for giving a 60-day guest pass to your friends. You don’t get a thing. They’re starting to be like that’s becoming normal. They’re normalizing that. Also, for a long time now, I guess it’s been about a year and a half, two years. If people have posted their codes on their podcast, Peloton goes in and they take their referral code. They don’t tell you they’re doing it. It just no longer exists. If you’ve given away too many, they don’t like that. There’s no way to get it back no matter who you ask, apparently.

People are not happy so it’s brought up a whole thing. I will say, especially for people who have had their bike a long time, it does feel like, “Thanks, we don’t need you anymore.” I had some OGs reach out to me and say that. I do get where they’re coming from on that. For those of us who have been around Peloton for a very long time, it is a very different feel now. It does feel like they don’t give us any love anymore. The original people who started it and I’m talking about people before me, the original originals. They were the kickstarter. Before there was a leaderboard, there was a dry erase board hanging in a room that they did a leaderboard on. We’re talking way back then. Those people don’t get any special love from Peloton anymore. It’s very different and it’s sad because we’ve been supporting them forever.

 

I also get that Peloton is like, “We’re selling too many. We don’t need to offer this.” I think for a while it was like, “We liked the idea of selling the clothes and now the clothes have gone,” so they don’t need to do that either.

Now they have their own brand. That actually brings up another thing because the thing is that plays into it too when you talk about the first step, that whole changing to their own brand. Think about it. Now, they don’t have to share their profit and the prices didn’t come down on those clothes. Now they’re getting rid of the referral codes. The prices didn’t get down. They’re not sharing the profit. This is part of growth, but it is sad. It’s different. It is a very different feel than the way it used to be.

Speaking of something else that might or might not be a part of their growth is, are we seeing product placements in Peloton? We’ve talked about this and they’ve been “accused” of this over the years. There was the panic at the disco episode, which turned out to be a promotional thing but not actual product placement. You’ve noticed quite a bit of reference to ABC television shows lately.

ABC happens to be Dancing With The Stars. We talked about the fact that Tunde had been talking about that new ABC show called Queens. I had somebody reach out to me and say that I should check out the 20-minute 80s run by Marcel, the US Marcel. During the song, Paul Revere, she named dropped the shows The Goldbergs, The Wonder Years, and even Hulu. She never said any network but they’re all ABC. Both of those are ABC and Disney has a stake in Hulu. It could all be a coincidence but it is fascinating.

You do have to wonder, especially since they hired a former Disney exec and those are all ABC Disney and Hulu. That’s all one big happy family over there.

Also all the wonderful Disney content we get, which I’m not complaining about but I love.

I’m in the tank for Disney. I think that everybody knows now.

You should take a Disney class on the Peloton.

No, but I do love Disney. Speaking of Peloton’s clothing line, they have partnered with Beyonce’s Ivy Park capsule.

You have to realize that Ivy Park is Beyonce but this is also Adidas. It’s a triple collaboration. It’s Adidas, Ivy Park and Peloton.

I’m not up on my athleisure.

It says it in here but that’s okay. This is an amazing capsule. There are 29 pieces of clothing and one pair of shoes. I’ve heard two different kinds of shoes that it’s going to be. I’ve heard on the one hand that it’s the Adidas Ultraboost for $180, but I’ve also heard it’s a different kind of shoes. I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I actually like this collection because it has these amazing pops of neon and it’s mixed with black. It’s very visually stunning. I am excited about this. It drops on November 11th. It will be in the Peloton boutique online. It will be on Adidas online. It will also be in select Adidas stores. I did not see if it said that it would be in any physical Peloton boutiques. I did not see anything about that. We will see if this is the last Adidas collection. It sold very quickly. I think this one might even sell faster because it has the Ivy Park attached to it.

That feels like a safe bet.

Also, there was a neon yellow cape that John Mills is rumored to be buying specifically so he can do one of his amazing videos. I hope to God, that’s a real thing.

The website, Benefit News. It’s amazing all the different places I’ve never even heard of where Peloton can pop up. There are many websites that I would have never known existed otherwise, but they had the ten companies with the best perks and benefits and Peloton made the list.

It was great, all the information they had about their benefits. At any rate, the benefits listed, Peloton pays 90% of the health insurance, the high deductible plan. We know that Peloton in general has great benefits, but 90% of premiums for its employees with high deductible health plans. Its life insurance is equivalent to two times an employee’s annual salary. Peloton added Lyra which is a mental health care app to its benefit, offering 25 sessions for free per year. One parent mentions that the company even contributes to the 529 plan, which is how you save tax-free money for your kid’s education, along with adoption assistance, which most companies do not do, and up to eighteen weeks of parental leave, not just mom leave, and subsidized child and family care. Peloton seems to consider an array of family needs.

I heard you also get the Peloton app free for 30 days.

They might be up to 60.

How did that not make the list?

I think we just assumed.

While we’re talking about benefits, we could also talk about salaries a little bit.

This was interesting. This came from the board like the shareholders’ board of directors for Peloton. This all started because of the ESG report which is economic, social and governance. Through that, we then discovered that part of that is looking at the diversity of the board of directors, which then led to the fact that there are seven directors on the board and there’s one African-American woman and one Caucasian woman. That’s it. Everybody else is a guy who’s Caucasian.

I think that you will find that will increase over time. I thought it was interesting that their salaries for those board of directors, the people that actually work at Peloton and are not just board of directors, they do not get a board of directors fee. The people who are a board of directors get a fee in shares, which is normal. That’s how it is, but they get paid very well. This report also had shown that all of the people who run the companies that your C-suite, John Foley makes $1 million a year and he has bonus options up to $1 million a year. Isn’t that fascinating?

If you’re publicly traded, that’s part of how that works. If you’re going to invest in the company, you want to know that your top guy isn’t making $300 million while your company is circling the tubes or whatnot.

That’s absolutely true. We have Mr. Foley, $1 million as a base, William Lynch, $1 million, Jill Woodworth, $750,000, Tom Cortese, $500,000 and Hisao Kushi is $750,000. They each have options of bonuses that are equal to their salary.

Good for them.

They have worked hard. Most of them have been there since the beginning. I also mentioned that they released the report. Peloton did call it the environmental, social and governance report or otherwise known as the ESG. This is the inaugural year. It’s the first time they’ve done this and they have right here some key takeaways. Peloton strives to be the best place to work by nurturing dynamic and inclusive culture, empowering team members, upward mobility, and offering best in class benefits, and attractive compensation. Based on what we saw, they have that box checked.

They also have taken meaningful steps to act on. Peloton pledge a $100 million commitment to advance anti-racism. We know and we’ve been keeping up with that. They have been checking that box as well. This one is new to me. They have developed a high-level sustainability strategy underpinned by the five priority aspirations and is activating its organization to set targets in the coming year. I’m very excited to see what they do about that. The company is also committed to operating with integrity, accountability and transparency, and to enhancing and involving its governance practices as it grows.

I will also say, back to the board report, they talked a lot about how all of those different board members have different places they govern. One of them takes accountability for let’s say they lead up auditing, and then another one takes accountability and leads up making sure that everybody’s salary is in line. One of them might lead it, but then the rest of them are on the committee and they discuss it together. I like that they have a very transparent process that they go through to make sure that their employees are being treated fairly and that they are reaching their goals.

It looks like Peloton might be adding a new logistics facility in the UK.

It was hard to tell exactly what was happening here, but it says that it’s owned by a logistics operator called Mileway. It’s a 39,000 square foot unit at the Salford industrial scheme, which they also called Raven Locks. That was interesting because this place has been built. It’s not even done yet. They’re finishing up in the next few months and they’re almost full already. To me, that was fascinating. That was worth noting that logistics is growing in the UK as well.

When I hear Raven Locks, I’m like, “Did they partner with Harry Potter?”

That is exactly what I thought of because it’s so adjacent to Ravenclaw.

The website ValueWalk sat down with Tom Cortese.

He was part of the CNBC Disruptor 50 Summit. They did an interview with him and I’m not going to go through all the details. I did want to mention it because this particular website list out the entire transcript. There was nothing like groundbreaking and brand new that you needed to know. If you’re interested in digging into the details, this is a good place to get the entire transcript.

This link will be included in the newsletter that you can sign up for at theclipout.com. Adweek put out their 2021 digital hotlist.

John Foley tweeted about this because Peloton is on it. They were listed. That’s pretty cool. It totally makes sense.

For fans of HBO’s Succession.

This was listed in the Peloton Hotels & On The Go, the group that tracks all of the different places you can find a Peloton. Jodi who runs the group, I believe she started the group. She listed this listing from the Woolworth Tower Residences in New York City, which is where part of Succession was filmed. Jodi will have to tell us if we’re right or wrong but we think this is where Ronin did a workout. They showed that here and this has a Peloton in it. All of that to say, how cool that there’s a Peloton there.

To buy the apartment was like $23 million. The monthly tax is $11,000 a month. We couldn’t afford that if you gave it to us.

That’s one thing the Midwest is good for.

Even if your eating doesn’t show in the physical sense, you still need to be concerned about diabetes or cholesterol. Click To Tweet

Robinhood Markets names Peloton marketing executive to its board. What is the importance of that? I’m asking. I’m not being shitty.

Because one of their executives is put on their board.

I don’t know what Robinhood Market is.

It’s an app that tracks your market.

It’s like trading stock.

Yeah. They put Dara Treseder on the board. That’s why it matters because she’s such a big deal over there. Now she’s on their board. You have to wonder if maybe she’ll end up on Peloton’s board at some point.

That whole world mystifies me.

You end up on one board, you often end up on another board.

Now I want to be on a board.

You wouldn’t like it.

I feel like that’s pretty unlikely. It’s best for all parties concerned.

It’s got all the things you hate, which is talking about stuff you don’t want to talk about, lots of math and sucking up to people.

That’s not my speed. CNBC wrote about how Peloton is trying to stay ahead of supply chain issues.

We know about this. They’ve spent $1 billion to improve the production supply chain in 2021, including that US-based factory that we know about. There’s Tom Cortese. It’s continuing, the disruption is still happening. They are continuing to work on it. The weight is not bad for anything. If you want a Peloton Tread, you want a Bike, you want a Bike+, all of it’s coming in pretty well. We’re going to continue to see that. This is just a rehash of information we already know and all the steps they’ve already taken. Although there are people that don’t realize they’ve taken these steps. I guess it’s not bad to hit on it again. It’s nice for CNBC to be nice to them again. They had a couple of weeks where they were a little cranky.

If you can’t get enough of supply chain discussions, Jennifer McKeehan, the SVP and Head of Global Supply Chain at Peloton was featured on a YouTube interview with something called Supply Chain Now.

People do want it right now. When they want their Peloton, they want their Peloton. Did you watch this? Is there anything in there we need to know?

Did I watch a 53-minute YouTube video about the supply chain? No, I did not.

Do me a favor and click that like button. It has one sad little like and only 24 views. We need to get Jennifer McKeehan some views. We’ll summarize that and get back to you.

—

There is a new artist collaboration and this is a big one, I assume because it’s someone I actually know. That makes an old guy feel good when I’m like, “I know this one.” It’s Sir Elton John.

A lot of people said that, Tom. It’s one that I actually know. I can get excited about this. What’s interesting is that there were Elton John classes back in the day and they’ve all been purged. All of them are gone. I’m so glad they’re getting refreshed. My girl, Jenn Sherman is going to be doing a 45-minute bike ride. I know that there were some people that felt there needed to be more of the UK instructors specifically on the bike. I have this to say about that. I think that no matter who you choose for these classes, you’re never going to be happy. There are too many instructors at this point. There are plenty of these that they’re not my favorite instructors. They’re not the people I want to see do them. You can match it up.

You’re not going to make everybody happy, but Elton John is a big one.

It’s nice because this one has quite a few classes. It’s not just 1 or 2. There are multiple bike classes. There’s a warm-up and a cool down in there. There’s stuff on the Tread. I’m pretty sure there’s even a bootcamp in there. Lots of great ones, including a 45-minute full-body strength with Matty Maggiacomo. That is going to be awesome. We’ve got Jenn Sherman and Matty Maggiacomo and Elton John like the trifecta.

It’s good timing. I saw on the internet that Sir Elton had purchased a Peloton Tread for his pet rabbit.

You’re not joking.

“It’s a little fit bunny.” I can’t sing more, they’ll make us pay for it.

I love that song. I can’t wait to go to the actual concert.

We had tickets for three and a half years. Anytime you buy tickets to a classic rock show these days, you’re like, “I hope they live that long.” This one, we literally bought in 2019.

—

Joining us is Miss District of Columbia, which then puts her in contention for Miss America. It’s Andolyn Medina. How is it going?

How are you all doing? It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.

I know you normally ask where did you find Peloton and all that stuff but I’m going to jump in. Do you have the crown right there with you?

You can put it on easily.

Does it fall off? What if you’re going mash or something?

If I was wearing it, I would take the bobby pins and put them in there. Usually, I would secure it with four. It’s almost like clipping into the bike.

That would never be out of my reach if I was a winner. If I won an Oscar or something, I would take it with me everywhere.

It’s a fun thing.

I can’t even imagine. Do you take it everywhere?

I usually leave it in my car just because I live out in my car. That way, if anything random happens and somebody is like, “Miss DC.” I can grab it.

You can be on in a heartbeat.

That’s the crazy thing, DC is so small. When people start to know you’re Miss DC, you do always have to be on. None of my neighbors knows that I’m Miss DC and I’m planning to keep it that way.

 

Is your crown as fancy as it looks on TV?

It’s as cool as in real life. You still see the rhinestones and the sparkles. There are still some moments I see it and I’m like, “Wow. I’m Miss DC.” The Miss America crown is ten times cooler. Even though it’s a lot longer, we also have a sash. Together, it creates quite the moment.

You’re like a walking disco ball. Does everybody gasp when you walk in?

There was one moment. The Olympic Rings were in DC. I took one photo because I wanted one photo for myself. I had the crown and sash on hand and do it. The second I put it on, everybody gasped.

Are there some places where it’s better to be the winner than others? In DC, because it’s the capital, I would think there are probably a lot cooler opportunities than if you were like Miss Delaware. Can you talk some shit on Miss Delaware?

I love Miss Delaware. I can’t.

I would think that DC would offer more opportunities to show up to amazing things. It’s like, “Here’s a Senator. Here’s the President.”

You find that every single state has something unique, weird and cool about their specific state that only Delaware can do or only Kentucky can do. DC is neat in that we get to make our own year. We can make some cool appearances. Because it is the nation’s capital, there are times that I’m out in the District of Columbia because people love the nation’s capital. It does allow itself to have a fun year getting to do some neat things. I got to meet the Real Housewives of Potomac at the beginning of my year, which was so fancy.

I feel like that might be a relatively recent thing that the whole Miss America umbrella would be like, “Yes, we’ll interact with reality television.”

Several years ago, Miss America had a reality television show for a little bit. It seems to be this thing that we flirt with. We very much still want to represent and uphold the image that we’re trying to represent as being role models and making a difference. Even though I personally love binge-watching Jersey Shore, I probably would not be hanging out with the cast of Jersey Shore.

We have Snooki on the show. Does that mean you have to stop the interview?

It’s stuff like that. You flirt with the ideal celebrity. You can hang out with it but you also want to keep an image as best as you can. If you’re with Snooki, maybe preferably at a charitable event or during service and not partying.

Probably the best way to say it is you can go to the party, but maybe not the after-party.

You can tell that you’re very ladylike because you’re polite like you covered your nose. You’re adorable.

What leads up to entering something like a Miss DC competition?

The journey looks a little bit different for everybody but DC doesn’t have locals. I’m originally from Virginia so it’s Miss Chesapeake or Miss Virginia Beach. For the bigger states, they have locals that lead up to their state competitions, then they compete. For Miss DC, since we’re smaller, we audition and our auditions look like the local competition. We do our ten-minute interview with a set of judges. We also perform our talent. Mine is singing.

We get feedback on those things before we find out if we actually made it to the final round of Miss DC. In competing for Miss DC, you have the ten-minute interview, your talent, you also compete an evening down, then we all have a social impact. That’s the service area that we would like to make the most impact on during our year. For me, it’s anti-human trafficking. That is something that I am tackling as Miss DC.

How do you get to tackle it? What steps do you get to take?

For me, I’m interested in both education prevention and awareness. I’m working with a lot of local non-profits in DC, mainly FAIR Girls to do webinars, to do series where I bring that education and awareness to what’s happening in the District. I’m also planning to hopefully go to Congress and lobby. Speak to a lot of our senators and congressmen and women about laws and policies that they can enact to cause change.

You are a busy lady. I was reading all the things you’ve got going on. You’re not just walking around with that amazing crown, but you’re also a naval officer and a fourth-year doctoral student at George Washington University. How do you get any sleep?

I love sleep. I just don’t get a lot of it. I’ve been a busy bee since I was a little kid so I don’t know what to do being still, as weird as that sounds. I love the fast pace. I keep a calendar. I’m also really big about boundaries. The field that I’m going into is being a psychologist. I do a lot of mental work day in and day out. I know I have to time when I’m going to be on Peloton, when I’m going to be watching a movie or when I’m going to just clock out and have some me-time. Keeping organized with the schedule is one of the main ways to do it.

Do you schedule in me-time? Do you block it off?

I have it in my mind. It’s like a certain time of night, I’m not responding to emails. I’m not doing it.

As a naval officer, how does that work if you win? Do they let you put a pause on that?

Fortunately, I’m in the reserves through getting my doctorate. I applied and was accepted for the Health Profession Scholarship Program that each of the military branches does. Through being accepted into that program, I was commissioned as an intern in the Navy. My job while I’m on reserve status is going to school. While I’m doing that, the Navy is paying me a stipend. They’re covering my tuition.

In 2022, that is when I go on an internship at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. That is when I go on active duty, full-time as a Naval Psychologist. I will give the military four years back minimum as a Naval Psychologist, promoted to the rank of lieutenant before I decide whether I want to stay in or get out. If I were to win Miss America, which would be a dream, it would be a big conversation with the Navy. Since the only thing left with my commitment as of now is the internship, chances are I would probably be able to get that pushback a year, defer and start it in 2023. It’s busy.

You get the next five years mapped out. You got a plan.

The only thing I don’t know is where I’ll be stationed. That’s the only thing that’s up in the air but that’s an exciting problem to have relatively.

It is, when you’re young. I think about our lives and if we didn’t know where we were going to be living, how stressful that would be. If I could go back and do it again at that age, that would be amazing.

My parents are retired naval officers. That’s the advice that my parents have both given. They’re like, “You’re young. You don’t have kids. Live your life.” They’re like, “Go.”

I totally agree with your parents. Back to the pageant, you’re not just in the Miss America pageant, it’s the 100th pageant.

It’s really neat to be able to compete for Miss America in the 100th year. I’ll add two more things to that. The first is that DC was the very first Miss America. It’s quite a little bit of pressure. The second is that originally, I would’ve aged out. The Miss America organization has rebranded from a pageant to more of competition just to take into consideration all of the things that we have going for us. The negative stereotype is that pageants are just pretty girls with nothing more.

To challenge that, the Miss America Organization is calling itself a competition. With that, I originally was not going to be able to compete in the 100th Miss America because I would have aged out in 2020. 2020 was supposed to be my last year. The pandemic happened. Things changed and plans changed, and Miss America got canceled and pushed to 2021. Because that happened, I and several other girls that would have aged out in 2020 got to compete. Now, we are all competing in the 100th Miss America, which we were never supposed to do. For a lot of different reasons, it’s exciting.

It’s nice that they did that.

That was definitely the right call to make.

There’s a lot that goes into it.

Are you excited? Are you nervous?

I’m excited. The Miss America Pageant competition itself is December 16, 2021, and my birthday is December 19th. I’m on cloud nine. I’m telling myself it’s the best birthday gift ever. I’m there to have fun. I’m there to enjoy myself. I’m trying not to give myself too much pressure to get any nerves but I’m sure they will come.

How do they not?

It’s hard. You wouldn’t believe it.

Just enjoy the process and try to learn about the communities. Click To Tweet

I cannot even imagine. I get nervous about anything that’s public. What you do on a daily basis when you whip out that crown that you’re on would be a lot for me.

The funny thing is I’m naturally an introvert and a lot of people don’t believe that. To me, a fun time is me in my house with my dog watching some television being like a hermit. Every day as Miss DC. I’m still the same person but it’s going on another layer. Sometimes, I am exhausted after a day of it just because I’m not used to all of that interaction and being the center of attention.

You have to be on in a different way. You’re representing that organization. If you want to say something silly then it gets misinterpreted. You have to be very guarded.

That is exhausting. When you were saying you have a time that you’re like, “No more emails.” For an introvert, because I’m one too, that me-time or that downtime is so important to recharge.

Thank you all for highlighting that because it’s true. Even when people know you are Miss DC, even if you don’t have the crown, there are still so many eyes that are on you. You don’t ever get a chance to be off unless you’re at home or with people that you love, know you, care about you and aren’t going to judge you. Otherwise, you always have to be under consideration of who’s around and what you’re doing.

Especially in the age of cell phones and everybody’s got a camera in their pocket.

You couldn’t go out for a crazy night with your friends without thinking it through, could you?

Definitely not. Especially in a city like DC, where everybody knows everybody in a 10-mile radius.

That is a lot of pressure.

It’s probably why she doesn’t want to go to the gym and she got a Peloton.

How did you find Peloton? I usually start off the interview but Tom interrupted.

It’s similar to maybe a lot of people. It was the pandemic and things had evolved. Like a lot of other people, I was faced with how can I safely workout and continue to safely keep up fitness. Realizing that I didn’t want to be hit by the pandemic at a later date, I had never taken a cycling class at all but I saw the commercial. I had a lot of friends that also rode Peloton. I asked them. I was like, “Is this worth me investing?” They all agree.

They all said it was the best investment that they ever made. I talked to my parents about it. They were like, “It’s your money. If you want to do it, that’s on you.” It was my first big girl investment or purchase. Part of that was also seeing my parents’ NordicTrack from twenty years ago and them telling me they had it from twenty years ago. I was like, “If you had a NordicTrack treadmill for twenty years, I can have a Peloton bike for the next twenty years.” I have never looked back.

Tom and I have talked about it before because a lot of times when we get a chance to interview people, they’re in their middle age. We’ve interviewed older people. We’ve interviewed younger people. On average, that tends to be and I know that Peloton’s fastest group of users are the younger age. You’re young. It’s not something that everybody your age can afford. It is such a big purchase. There are people my age that can’t afford it and older that can’t afford it. It’s a luxury item. You said that you considered it to be an investment. That’s been since the pandemic, do you feel like so far you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of it? Do you feel like it was a good investment?

One hundred percent and the funny thing to that point is I told my dad that buying Peloton was the first way that I realized credit matters because I’m on the Peloton payment plan. I was like, “Dad, now I see all those lessons about having good credit. It’s helping me afford this Peloton.” Even more so, because it helped, my parents get involved. My mom also purchased a Peloton bike because of me. She loves it.

Did you get the referral credit?

Yes, I did. It’s changed even that for my family dynamic. For us to work out together, to be able to bond over something new, and to see the way that it’s taken a life of its own for my mom has been incredible. It’s been such an investment for me in making fitness feel both feasible and fun. For me to be kind to myself. There are a lot of times I always want to go hard, but there’s always at least one part or segment of the class where they tell you to do what you can do. Do your best. That has been a different element that I didn’t have before that has been helpful too about Peloton.

Were you at all concerned when making a purchase like this for Peloton? It sounds like there’s going to be a lot of moving in your future like residence. Were you at all concerned about like, “Am I going to be able to lug this thing to wherever the Navy might send me?”

I should have thought about that but no. It was the peak of the pandemic. I was like, “We’re not getting out of this anytime soon. I’m not moving anywhere.” I did not think about it.

They have great resale value. Worst case scenario, you sell it and you get yourself a new one.

What about the content that you do on Peloton? Do you just do the bike? Are you doing the strength? Do you do yoga? Anything like that?

I do cycling, strength, bootcamps and a little bit of everything. I do yoga. I do the meditation. I like the sleep meditations for those days that I can’t work out, but I still want to get a blue dot. We all do that. I’ve tried some of the running ones but I’m not a huge runner. Those ones, I don’t use as much. Cycling, strength and yoga would probably be my big three.

I was about to ask if you’re going to ever look at a tread but that answered the question.

I did look at it. That’s the funny thing. When I didn’t know if I could convince my mom to buy a new bike, I was going to convince her to get a new tread. When the newer Peloton tread came out, the smaller one, I was like, “It’s been many years. Invest in yourself, mom. Get the Peloton tread,” but then the recall happened.

It’s back though.

I’m going to see. Her birthday is in December too. Maybe I can convince her.

Get another referral credit. Do you feel like you workout more now that you have the bike at home? I assume that you were doing some workouts before. You probably had to be in shape for these goals you have.

Right before I got Peloton was my second year of school. That’s the craziest year of my program. I planned for that. At the time, I was going to the gym on GWU’s campus at least two times a week. With having Peloton at home, I probably do it 4 to 5 times a week. I would say I am more active. I switch up the routines that I do but I would say it’s become a part of my weekly schedule to do Peloton.

I just had another thought for you. I’m going back to Miss America. What inspired you to try out? Is that something you’ve always wanted to do or was it like on a whim?

I am the only daughter. My mom, when I was little heard me singing, which was more screaming around the house. She also knew that I was an introvert. She wanted me to get out of my shell. She thought pageants would be a great way for that to happen. It was through my mom. My dad was like, “If she wants to quit at any point in time, she quits. She’s done. We’re not going to force her to do this.”

It helped me a lot. I learned how to sing and developed that talent more. Getting out of my shyness in that arena led me to go to an art school for high school. I’ve even got to sing for President Obama before. It opened up doors. I had a speech impediment growing up. I struggled with saying Rs. I was super shy. My mom thought pageants and being able to speak publicly or speak in an interview with strangers. She thought those would all be great skills for me to have growing up. She was right. It has benefited me. It was that that got me started.

Through continuing and watching the other girls compete, it continued to inspire me. The last ticker was that Miss America is one of the largest scholarship providers for women. When I became a teenager and competed for Miss Virginia’s Outstanding Teen, which is the little sister to Miss America, I won. When I won, I won a full-tuition scholarship for my undergraduate degree. Through competing in pageants, I’ve amassed over $100,000 that helped to pay for college and student loans, which we all know how that’s not cheap.

I didn’t realize that they had scholarship programs like that.

Winning Miss DC alone, I won $10,000 for a scholarship, which is going to go to my student loans. You have to think how many other young girls are probably just like me that want to continue their education and could benefit from it but don’t know anything that the Miss America Organization is about. That’s also part of what I’m excited to do as Miss DC is to show how necessary it is, how feasible it is for girls to do, especially now that we have gotten rid of swimsuits to be able to compete and be able to get money for their education.

Is the swimsuit competition gone completely?

It is gone. We no longer have the swimsuit competition. That was mainly because what we all know is that no matter your size physically, it doesn’t tell you how physically fit the person is. Yet, we were being judged on how skinny we were than the actual physical fitness. As Miss America, as Miss DC, I never go anywhere in just my swimsuits. The logical reasons why are we doing this. Why are we making these girls parade around in a swimsuit? Who is this for? What does it accomplish? I’m glad that they realized, “Why are we making these girls do this to be able to continue their education?” Also, realize that it doesn’t match up with what they are about.

It’s definitely a vestige of a bygone time.

To your point about that people don’t realize what Miss America is about. We grew up knowing a certain kind of Miss America. Me included, that was my assumption and it was still like that. I didn’t know that they had taken that. I knew they had changed some things. I heard that in the news but I didn’t pay that much attention to exactly what those changes are. That is a wonderful change to make.

To bring it back to Peloton, it’s also changed the way I’ve thought about fitness. I competed in Miss America with a swimsuit and after. I definitely felt more pressure. I always loved the skin and the body that I was in, but my fitness felt different. It didn’t feel like it was for me as much as it felt like it was for the 22nd moment that I was on stage. After competing, it is wholly about myself and how I feel internally and mentally. Just feeling good about seeing the little gains and the little pop of muscle that I see. Now that excites me and fuels me. It’s not necessarily about the stage or the performance. That’s a neat part of it too.

Does that change how you look at things? Does that change your approach to food or your approach to your relationship with your scale, or anything like that?

I was never much of a scale person, which is a good thing. It’s the same with eating. I eat anything. If anything, that made me become more considerate. Even if my eating doesn’t show in the physical sense, I still need to be concerned about diabetes or cholesterol. As I’m getting older, I’m trying to give some consideration to how much sweets that I’m eating or what that looks like for health reasons. I’m not a fan of the folks who after the pageant are scarfing down the pizza. They’re like, “I can finally eat the pizza.” I’m the girl that’s eating the pizza 365 days out of the year. I don’t take off.

 

I love that about you but I also hate that about you.

Are you comfortable sharing your leaderboard name or is that something you want to keep to yourself?

You guys can totally know. Before, my initials are ATM. Before my leaderboard game was ATMoneyMachine. I got some advice to change it upon winning. Now, it is MissDC2021. I’m on the leaderboard.

I love it. That’s amazing.

Hopefully, you get to change it again in December to Miss America.

That’d be crazy.

I got goosebumps for you. That’s so incredible.

It would be so cool.

Do you have a preferred instructor?

I have a top three. My top one would be Alex just because he pushes hard and I vibe with that. I also love Kendall and Cody. Cody’s on Dancing with the Stars. I’m excited to watch it.

We had to watch last night and I posted. I was like, “Everybody go vote.”

I’m so excited for him.

Do you watch Dancing with the Stars, because I have a question for you?

I have watched it in the past but I haven’t watched it.

Do they have a follow-up show the next day? How do we know what the results were from last night? When do we find out?

I don’t think you’re going to know until next week. Once it gets closer to the end, they double up the shows.

I needed to know that. I got to be ready.

I never watch it. I used to watch American Idol.

I watched So You Think You Can Dance years ago. I love those shows.

It’s so good but it makes you nervous when you don’t know. It feels similar to competing. If you guys watched Miss America, you will feel similarly nervous because the first thing they’re going to do once it starts is narrow it down to fifteen. Even though there are 51 of us that are competing, you all will only see like 15 to 10 of us based on how they break it down.

Are you scared? That would scare the crap out of me.

I will be more nervous sometimes. I got a little bit nervous but it is far away. I’m going to keep that back for a little bit.

We’ll be watching because we’ve met you or the internet met you. We got to watch because we were vested. That’s what the Peloton community does. We will be watching. We will be rooting for you.

Miss Missouri has a Peloton. She’s going to be mad.

She should have posted about it as Andolyn did.

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

I would say stick with it. I loved it immediately. The only thing I probably didn’t love at first was the seat. It’s so thin but if you stick to it, you’ll get used to it. I would say give it about a week or two. Just enjoy the process. Try to learn about the communities. The Peloton community has easily been one of the best parts of it. Another selling point for me is getting to know the different hashtag names to join and taking part in that. It makes the leaderboard way more fun and way more exciting. Even though I haven’t met nearly all of the Peloton community, I still virtually know you all. When you see each other on the board, it becomes exciting. It feels like you’re riding with friends.

What’s your favorite hashtag?

#BlackGirlMagic

Courtney Snowden, Jessica Menardy, who else did we interview from Black Girl Magic?

Danielle?

Yes, Danielle Verwey. How I did not remember? All wonderful ladies over there.

Thank you so much for taking time out of what is clearly a busy day to join us. It sounds like they’re all busy.

Thank you all for having me. It’s so exciting. I love the Peloton community. When you all reached out and said if we could do this, I was thrilled. When I won, the Peloton community was the first one I went to on Facebook to say like, “Guys, guess what happened?” The even neater part was that a former Miss America, Kim Aiken also rides Peloton. I posted like, “Guys, I’m going to Miss America.” Kim Aiken commented and was like, “Miss America here. Wishing you the best of luck.” You never know who’s in the Peloton community.

The Peloton community has easily been one of the best parts of it. Click To Tweet

Before we let you go, let everybody know where they can find you on social media. I’m assuming given what you do, you want to be found. Normally, I give people an hour but I don’t think you want it.

To follow my Miss DC reign, you can follow me on Instagram @MissAmericaDC. You can follow my personal Instagram as well @Wheres.Ando. It’s a play-off of Where’s Waldo. My family calls me Ando for short.

I just realized I have no idea where one could watch the Miss America Pageant. Let everybody know where they can see it.

I will have to check back in with you on that. We don’t have the official channels. I don’t know yet but it will be on December 16, 2021 at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, the 100th Miss America. Once I find out the other details, I can send them all to you.

That’d be great if we get it in time.

If you don’t have it for a while. If it’s something you’re not going to get right away, please reach out to me. We do our guest follow-ups. We’ll have other episodes. In December, I will remind everyone to watch. That will be very cool. We would love to do that. I want to say that we wish you so much luck. We are so excited for you. I hope everything goes exactly the way you want it to and you have the happiest birthday ever either way.

Thank you all so much for having me. It was so great getting to virtually meet you all.

Thank you.

—

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

I am honored to say, Michelle K, the one that writes all the articles at Shape about all the instructors.

She’s going to sit down with us and talk about the world of Shape Magazine and how she talks to all of your favorite Peloton instructors. They’re all on her speed dial. Not that speed dial is a thing anymore.

It’s more like a Zoom dial.

Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on the Facebook since we’re going old. That’s at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the Bike and the Tread @ClipOutCrystal.

They can find me on Twitter at @RogerQBert or on FB.com/tomokeefe. That will work. You can also 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.

Important Links:

• Andolyn Medina
• Snooki – previous episode
• FAIR Girls
• Courtney Snowden – previous episode
• Jessica Menardy – previous episode
• Danielle Verwey – previous episode
• @MissAmericaDC – Instagram
• @Wheres.Ando – Instagram
• Peloton
• Apple Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Spotify – The Clip Out
• Google Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Facebook.com/TheClipOut
• YouTube.com/TheClipOut
• Tonal
• @RunLiftAndLive – TikTok
• Facebook group – Run, Lift And Live
• @RunLiftAndLive – Instagram
• RunLiftAndLive.com
• Run, Lift And Live – Facebook
• FightCamp
• JoinFightCamp.com/clip
• Dr. Jenn Mann
• The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy
• @DrJennMann – Instagram
• Hump Day with Dr. Jenn
• Angelo Poli
• MetPro.co/tco
• ValueWalk
• Supply Chain Now – YouTube
• Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe
• Instagram – Clip Out Crystal
• Twitter – Clip Out Crystal
• @RogerQBert – Twitter
• FB.com/tomokeefe
• https://www.GoodMorningAmerica.com/culture/story/dancing-stars-season-30-recap-kenya-moore-eliminated-80789079
• https://www.CNBC.com/2021/10/26/peloton-or-the-gym-why-decidewhat-this-means-for-fitness-companies.html
• https://www.AndroidAuthority.com/fitness-subscriptions-3039837/
• https://FB.watch/8U_KJR7EgH/
• https://FB.watch/8U_Rt3O6GN/
• https://www.VotePCA.com/tv/the-competition-contestant-of-2021?fbclid=IwAR1qyheKBvu_4pCDS-tDBHoHDo7gDxy-d13_9DTG-VxCfQlPgmxvqnfV0ps
• https://www.HuffPost.com/entry/dancing-with-the-stars-peloton-star-cody-rigsby_n_6176bcd9e4b079111a5a6a84
• https://www.Shape.com/celebrities/interviews/cody-rigsby
• https://www.InStyle.com/beauty/health-fitness/hiit-workout-dance-cardio-peloton-callie-gullickson
• https://www.ColoradoPolitics.com/nonprofits/nonprofit-register-peloton-s-robin-arzon-movement-is-medicine—-so-use-it/article_3b6502f4-337e-11ec-9830-27142ef4c7c0.html
• https://www.Shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/peloton-callie-gullickson-trader-joes-list
• https://www.Facebook.com/411962542522444/posts/1467865683598786/?d=n
• https://WeRSM.com/wersm-pinterest-creator-originals-series/
• https://WWD.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/exclusive-beyonces-ivy-park-creates-capsule-with-peloton-1234981263/
• https://www.BenefitNews.com/list/google-peloton-and-microsoft-have-some-of-the-best-benefits
• https://Investor.onepeloton.com/static-files/b4339f98-65eb-4397-96a1-f9568fa1dbb3
• https://www.PlaceNorthWest.co.uk/news/peloton-heads-to-raven-locks/ https://www.valuewalk.com/interview-with-pelotons-tom-cortese-from-cnbc-disruptor-50-summit/
• https://www.Adweek.com/media/the-2021-digital-hot-list-the-players-and-platforms-keeping-consumers-on-trend/
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/1933968463299993/permalink/4990232217673587/
• https://www.PRNewsWire.com/news-releases/peloton-releases-inaugural-environmental-social-and-governance-report-301407515.html
• https://SeekingAlpha.com/news/3756314-robinhood-markets-names-peloton-marketing-executive-to-its-board
• https://www.CNBC.com/2021/10/22/how-peloton-is-trying-to-stay-ahead-of-supply-chain-issues.html

About Andolyn Medina

I will be competing for the 100th Miss America this year as Miss DC and have used Peloton avidly throughout this year for fitness and a sense of community. Additionally, I am a naval officer and 4th year doctoral student studying clinical psychology at George Washington University and serve as a therapist and assessment provider. My hope in being on the show would be to talk about the 100th Miss America, how Peloton has helped me mentally and physically on my journey, and of course any questions you may have about me or my background. More Info @ andolynmedina.com