Episode Description: John Mills joins us to discuss the earnings call.

• Dr. Jenn – Self-sabotaging workouts with bad food choices.
• Tunde is writing a book (and it’s already topping the charts).
• Daniel McKenna explains his absence.
• Emma Lovewell is designing jeans.
• Cody Rigsby/Dancing With The Stars update.
• Bradley Rose was in a Hallmark Christmas movie.
• Angelo helps a listener transition from intermittent fasting to regular eating.
• Peloton has a new partnership with Peloton.
• You can now do Peloton meditations on Delta flights…
• …but not everyone is happy about it.
• The Peloton blog writes about meeting friends through Peloton.
• NY Mag has the best gifts for the Peloton obsessed.
• Peloton faces a wage and hours lawsuit in Minnesota.
• Tempo beats Peloton to market with Tempo Move.
• Apple gets a design patent for Fitness+.
• Ally Love celebrates 5-years with Peloton.
• Marcel Dinkins does her first country run.
• The Jess King Experience Season 3 is announced.
• There are new pre and post-natal classes.
• Rebecca Kennedy has a new challenge.
• As does Ben Alldis.
• Clip Out listener Alissa Kolarik has a great IG post about body positivity.
• Birthdays – Chase Tucker (11/5)

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Tunde Is Writing a Book plus our interview with Michelle Konstantinovsky

Just a reminder. We’re coming to Boston. 

Assuming that our flight doesn’t get canceled.

We are attempting to come to Boston. Whether or not the airlines cooperate, we have no control over it, but our goal is to be in Boston. We’re going to Fogo de Chão. It’s a Brazilian steakhouse because you will be so famished after Thanksgiving, but you got a day off to recuperate and then you come back and you go. If you want to hang out with us, we would love to see you. If you want more details, go to The Clip Out page and/or group. There’s an event there and you can check it out.

We’d love to see you. I hope you’re there.

I’m excited about our guest, Michelle K. That’s not even about her initial. Her last name was so hard to say like she would pronounce it for people and they just go, “K.” She’s from Shape Magazine. All the Shape Magazine articles that we’ve been seeing lately or 99% of them, because somebody snuck one pastor last time. There were fisticuffs in the break room.

I keep telling you, she’s a freelance writer. There’s no break room moment.

In the freelance clubhouse, there were fisticuffs.

Whenever I post there my story, I had pictures of kitties fighting.

She’s been writing the lion’s share of them until there was apparently, some skullduggery. She’s our interview, so we’ll talk to her about everything that goes into writing one of those “How she found Peloton” and all that stuff.

We also have a visit from Dr. Jenn.

It’s about self-sabotaging your stuff with other stuff.

It’s like you are working out all the time and then you self-sabotage with food.

By eating tons of fun stuff.

We’re going to talk about all of the things that are going on with the instructors. There’s so much, including one of our instructors is in a movie. One of our instructors is creating brand new jeans. One of our instructors is writing books. You all need to listen to what is going on with everyone. We had a visit from Angelo at MetPro. He talked about some stuff too.

He’s talking about transitioning from intermittent fasting to “regular eating.” He helps a listener to make that move.

That’s a very specific little plan that he gave too. Also, Peloton has a major new deal with Spotify. We have a visit from the Peloton Prophet with some new information and a ton of other Peloton news, including a lawsuit update.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you find a podcast, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure to rate, review and follow us so you never miss an episode. We have a new review from Amy MSMA. She says, “This Peloton podcast is something I look forward to each week. I love the way Crystal and Tom interact, all of the Peloton news they share, their guest interviews, and their genuine enthusiasm for all things Peloton. I highly recommend.” Thank you very much for that.

You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. It’s where you’ll find all sorts of things throughout the week so you don’t fall behind with the information. Maybe we’ll be in your town. We do like to travel. You never know. You can subscribe to our newsletter at theclipout.com where you’ll get all the links and everything like that sent directly to your inbox, mostly weekly. Also, if listening isn’t enough to fill your Peloton hole, you can watch these episodes on YouTube.com/TheClipOut. There’s all that. Let’s dig in, shall we?

We shall.

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

I’m doing great.

Let’s dig into this earnings call. It is what a stock analyst would refer to as ugly. 

I just have to give a quick update so everybody has a little context in case you haven’t seen this news yet. We ended the day for Peloton at 86.06. That was when the market has closed, and then Peloton posted their earnings. We are now sitting at 61.06. It just went down a little bit.

If 30% is a little then I guess that’s a little.

I heard at my desk at work like, “Crashing.” I was like, “What happened?” I had to grab my phone.

After it was down 4% during the day.

It’s so bad, John Foley is now been downgraded to a gazillionaire.

In all seriousness, John sounded sad on the call. He sounded not himself.

It’s got to be a gut punch for sure.

They knew this was going to happen. It’s not like they didn’t prepare the report. They’ve been mentally preparing for it.

It’s like getting called into the principal’s office. You got a D on a paper and they send a note home to your parents and the whole walk home. You got to wait for your mom to get home from work. I might be projecting.

Jill Woodworth is Jill delivering the information. She’s the same.

She gave the same tone she always gives. You’re absolutely right.

I guess they met their revenue numbers.

If you tell people, “I exercise for five hours.” No one's going to be necessarily worried about you. They're going to congratulate you. Click To Tweet

That’s the thing. At the end of the day, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m reading your note because you summarize it very well on the Run, Lift and Live. I read the shareholder letter and it was like, “blah, blah, blah.” That’s what I’ve heard. You said that quarter one losses were more than expected. They had been $1.7 per share. That was what’s anticipated, but it came out at $1.25 per share as a loss. The guidance for the whole year was downshifted. This does hurt, $1 billion less than expected.

I’m pulling to get the positive out that they hit the revenue. I’m pulling to get that. The challenge in it all is expenses were more than they anticipated around logistics. I think also that it was clear that there were some things that they were anticipating around what was going to happen with consumer spending, and what was going to happen with the drop in the Bike price that didn’t materialize. Because of that, along with revised guidance for fiscal 2022, I think the markets are going to react.

The previous guidance for full-year 2022 was like $5.4 billion. They’ve revised that now to $4.4 billion to $4.8 billion. That’s what I was mentioning in my article. That’s a $1 billion shift. That’s pretty significant. Even as you’re listening to them on the earnings call, you can hear it. They are clearly articulating like, “We didn’t anticipate this,” or “We didn’t anticipate that. We’re having to reconsider these things because of these.” I get why there’s a reaction. It wasn’t good.

In all seriousness, sometimes I’m like, “What are they freaking out about?” I do get it. It’s probably not as bad as it looks on paper. They’re still making money. It’s not like Peloton shut their doors. This is a pretty extreme reaction. I think it will adjust in the next couple of days and go back up a little bit. I do get it that it’s different than other times when I’ve been like, “What happened?”

This isn’t the pandemic year and it’s adjusting out of that. It’s very clear now. There may have been arguments prior of what the true effect of that was going to be. Now you see it. That is impacting this and also the usage. They reported that their average usage is 16.5 workouts per month. The last time the usage was that low was back in 2019. You’ve got to think about that. I get it. It wasn’t all that great. It was not good.

When they compared it to 2020, it’s still crazy growth over 2020. It’s still a 14% increase in revenue over 2020. Don’t get me wrong. I get it that the guidance wasn’t what they thought it would be, and it is a big difference. When you step back a second, 14% growth isn’t too shabby.

They’re saying like, “We’re still on track to be profitable at the end of fiscal 2022.” They’re still saying those things, but what I also found interesting in listening was that they started talking about streamlining teams and slowing down showroom developments like they are not going to be spending in the same way. Things are going to start restructuring in how they’re spending money.

Here’s the thing. I posted an article about the salaries of Black people at Peloton and how there was a big uproar. The article went up and I immediately was inundated with messages. Some of the messages that I got made it clear that there have been changes made already. Those changes are to the retail showrooms. It had nothing to do with the article. The reaction that was sent to me was in reaction to me posting the article. Apparently, they have already cut the salaries of retail people. It was expected to have a certain amount of commission.

They came back before November. This happened at the end of October and they cut commission. It was dramatic and it’s going to affect people because the showroom people don’t make a ton of commission during the summer because that’s not when Peloton makes the sales. People skated through with the anticipation of Christmas time. Now they cut these commissions before the biggest time of the year. When they say they have levers to pull and they say they are going to change their spending, they are not messing around. They’ve already done it. It’s happening in the background.

Jill Woodworth talked to it. I didn’t know something has already happened, but it was clear to me that something was about to happen.

It’s not a good look but I think you can see the preamble to that being when they started to limit referrals. They’re starting to take the tact of, “We’re the ones selling the bike. You’re the one taking the order,” those salespeople. It’s not like a car where you got to go out there and hustle. Not that Ford and whatever doesn’t advertise, but I think Peloton is looking at it and going, “The bike sells itself at this point. Why are we paying you so much commission when we’ve done the heavy lifting to convince people they want this. By the time they walk in, the sales had been made.”

That’s not so for the Tread. Maybe that is true for the Bike but the Tread, they are still in the cycle where they need to be educating people. Maybe they need to consider having a two-tier commission structure.

You make one price selling the Tread. You make another commission selling the bike. If you do both, you get a day off. It does feel like they’re saying like, “It’s not hard to sell one. Why should we pay you as much?”

That was my initial impression but after hearing now, I don’t know that that’s the message. I think the message is, “We got to correct and we got to correct right now.” They talked about other things they’re going to be doing. I think we’re going to be hearing a lot more. There’s a lot more to come.

I think so too. I also heard something that I wasn’t clear on what Jill Woodworth was talking about. I heard Jill mentioned Apple. I think she was referencing apple as it relates to their impact on Peloton and Peloton Digital.

There were two times Apple got mentioned. The first time it was mentioned was in the general speech that she was doing. She mentioned that the data landscape has changed because Apple made that big change to how they let people access their data. Because of that, it has changed its marketing approach. That was number one. The second time it got mentioned was at the end during the Q&A. Somebody asked a question and they heard what you heard, which is Apple is affecting and impacting Peloton. That is not what she said but they heard it that way. That’s where the question came from. I didn’t even listen to the answer. I got distracted.

I have to go back and listen to that. When I heard it referenced, I went, “Maybe it was relative to the data.” I hope that’s all it was. That would be good.

I hope it was too. I found it fascinating that before they changed the prices on the Bike, it was a 50/50 split. They revealed in the call that after they lowered the pricing, now the split is 75/25 on the old bike. That’s 75% of purchases are going toward the old bike, not the new bike. That impacted their sales. They’re up to 6.2 million subscribers now, but people are buying at a lesser price point than they expected. Not that they’re against that, it’s just that’s not what they expect.

I think ultimately, that’s a good thing because what I read in that is if they’re selling disproportionately that many of the lesser bike. That means that they have more price-sensitive consumers than they thought. It means that if they hadn’t dropped the price of that bike, there’s a good chance that some of them wouldn’t have entered the Peloton ecosystem. They might have drifted to that $900 Echelon or the $1,200 iFit. Ultimately, it’s probably bringing in more people.

I almost can’t help but wonder, if you were seeing 50/50 before, and now it’s 75/25, does that mean you’re selling fewer Bike+ or does it mean that you’re selling more of the bikes than you would have sold otherwise? I think that that’s what it is. People that are on the fence and looking at a $1,200 bike now go, “For $200, I get an actual Peloton and I can be on the thing that everybody talks about. I don’t have to be like, ‘I take my rides with Sally Like not Ally Love.’” I think that long-term, that might benefit them.

I agree with you. I think long-term, it might benefit them. I don’t know if that’s what it was so far over this past quarter. Jill Woodworth said that this generated lots of conversions from digital, not necessarily more sales.

What does that mean? How do you convert from digital but not buy a bike? What did you convert to?

They bought a bike but they were already Peloton subscribers. They were only using digital.

They are already part of the ecosystem.

It’s not a new $40 a month. It’s an existing $40 a month that they finally pulled the trigger and bought a bike.

It’s probably an existing $12.95 but yes.

I think long-term, it will be what you said. There will be people who aren’t even in the ecosystem. They’re trying to figure out whether or not they go the Peloton route because they are dropping the price. Now they have this base.

The other thing too is if you’ve got somebody to upgrade from digital to a piece of hardware, then they’re going to be around for a while. If they already liked it enough that they were paying the $12.95 a month, and then they’re like, “iFit, you got me, I’m buying a bike,” that’s not going to be a clothes hanger. I don’t think Peloton bikes become clothes hangers the way people that don’t know anything about it think they do. For sure, it’s not going to happen to those people.

On that note, I predict that we are going to see a lot more push for badges. We’re going to see this major push for badges because they want to up our engagement rates. You’re going to see badges for everything in the next few months. They’re going to hit it hard. I don’t want to forget to hit on something else that I felt was super important that I think could get buried. That is that Precor had a lot to do with this. I know Precor is happening. I know we bought them, not that I’m part of Peloton, but you know what I mean.

I know that purchase went through and everything. I know that it’s been in progress for a while but I didn’t think about the fact that all the times we’re sitting here talking about it like, “People aren’t going back to the gym.” That’s affecting Peloton now. I didn’t think about that. To me, they were two separate things, and they’re not separate. They talked about the fact that there are a lot of companies out there, gyms that would normally be doing capital expenditure. They’re not right now because people aren’t coming back to the gym as they expected.

Those that are, because of the shortages, are getting certain components. I don’t know what those are. Those certain components actually have a shortfall. They are not able to make their orders. Now, we have logistics and we have shortfalls with Precor, and people aren’t buying it as much as they thought. At this moment, Precor is weighing Peloton down. I do not mean that to pick on them or anything like that or say it was a bad investment. I am saying, when we look at the whole picture of Peloton, it’s not just that, “Not as many people bought a bike or a tread this year as we thought we’re going to. We also need to look over at this other piece of it because that is an important piece.”

Ultimately, Precor is going to be an incredible asset for them. As it relates to the space and the time we’re in now and the challenges they have. It’s a part of the story.

In the long-term, it’s diversification. It’s smart.

We should probably talk about this article that came out. It was in Business Insider. The gist of the article is that Black Peloton employees, especially in the IT area, are making less than their White counterparts. That was problematic.

At least that’s what, that’s the perception based on what this article has gathered in interviewing some disgruntled employees.

They’re upset. I’m not saying they are lying or not telling the truth. When you’re an employee for any company, it’s not like you have the salary of every single person in your role. I know that they used a Slack channel and they were comparing salaries openly. I don’t mean that they base this off of nothing. They have real data but, is it inclusive? Is it exhaustive? Is it fair? I don’t know. As a person who used to do payroll, I don’t know how real this is. I’m worried.

I have two parts to this. One is that this could be two people that are talking to a group of 200, a couple of people that think they heard that deal. I hesitate to go too far with it. The piece that I do go to is where it talks about the lack of transparency around individuals and their range, like where they can go from a salary perspective in their role. It felt like they didn’t have a clear understanding of whether or not their salary was competitive in the market, and whether or not they’re in the middle of a range, at the higher end or at the lower end. They didn’t seem to know a lot about that. Maybe Peloton needs to clean that up.

What I heard was they’re trying to be fair from the perspective of they have all these ranges and they’re like grades. That’s how I heard it. Even within a grade, there could be quite a discrepancy between two people because you might live in two different cities. That’s real and that’s not just a Peloton thing. That’s a lot of companies. That’s most companies because a salary in New York is going to be very different than a salary in St. Louis. That’s facts even if we’re doing the exact same thing. I agree with you and where it does seem fuzzy is, how far do they have to go to get to that next pay grade? What should their raise be? What should they be looking for? One thing that concerned me was one person indicated that they got a 1.65% pay raise after being told they had done an amazing job all year. That’s concerning to me.

My thought there, not to make excuses, but I wonder because I’ve seen people run into this where I work. We have pay grades with the government and they do all that. If you maxed out your range, they would issue cost of living raises. They’re like, “This year, everybody gets 3%.” Now you have maxed out. “We’ll bring you up to the max,” but it’s 1% of whatever. That was the shocking thing to me.

John, you worked in IT, right?

Yeah, I do.

These numbers look like they were about twenty years old.

Those look like numbers from back in 1998.

That was shocking, $50,000 for an IT person in New York City. How do you live on that?

That shocked me, which is why I then started thinking if there is something to this. I’ve been in this scenario before over in my career where I found out that everyone around me was making more money. It doesn’t have to be in a scenario where everybody around me was Caucasians. I been there and then had to fight to figure it all out. If there is any credibility to it, Peloton should find some way to address it in a constructive way. I don’t know if based on this article, that’s what happened. I didn’t hear them trying to address that component of it.

They did say that they are doing an independent salary study, and they’ve made a statement in response to this. They said that these are hard questions and they appreciate the questions. They’re not trying to shut anything down. They’re like, “We’ll talk about it. Let’s get it out there.” That’s an important step because I’ve worked for places where I’ve been the only female, in a situation where I was the only one with an MBA. Yet everybody else is making $20,000 more than me. I’m like, “What the F is happening here?”

It’s the idea of that concern, especially if you’re a company that’s trying to establish yourself and pushing out a value system. Nobody is asking. You’re pushing it out. That made me go, “How do you structure this? You probably should think about that.”

It might need to be different for office workers versus people who are delivering things. That might need to look different.

Holistically, I’m not sure how to read it. It’s like the information we shouldn’t even be seeing. I don’t know all the details about it. I’m not sure how Business Insider got into the middle of this.

They are literally Insider Business, John.

It’s right there in the name. I think that people who saw this happening reached out to Business Insider because they can. Peloton is a buzzword right now. It is very easy to get traction on anything to do with Peloton. I’m not saying they’re wrong too. I want to be clear. I’m not picking on the people who have brought this up.

First off, Black or White, 45,000 to $50,000 a year in New York City, it hurts to hear that. I couldn’t live on that here.

That would be rough. It’s doable. We’ve done it but it would be rough. Certainly, there needs to be parity there. If that is accurate, then they have the right to push that out there. Hat tip to people being willing to share their salaries on that Slack channel with other people because that’s part of how employers get away with stuff like this. It’s not weird to talk about money.

I also say, not that anyone asked my opinion, but once you’re in and you have the job, it’s almost impossible to get what you want. You got to negotiate hard going in. That is something that Peloton has over all these people because we talked about how 400 people are applying for each job. It’s the it place to be. Peloton does not have to negotiate the way somebody up the street has to negotiate. That might be you’re getting paid in cool right now because will get Peloton.

A beautiful theater in St. Louis offered me a job many years ago. I want to find out what they wanted to pay me. They were like, “It’ll going look great on your resume.” I was like, “I’m 40 years old. I want to get paid in cash.” I was talking to a guy when I said this. I’ll work at someplace that’s not cool that pays me like a grownup. How about that?

That works better for me.

If Peloton is getting those number of applicants, it does allow them to artificially deflate what they pay. I hope that’s not happening. One, because it’s not right. Two, it will do them a disservice in the long run because what will happen is people will come in and they will put the cool thing on their resume, and then they’ll get the hell out of dodge.

John Foley made a statement at their company meeting. This was also in the article, not like I was there. He said in that statement that he made to the company meeting that all positions across Peloton pay in the top 10% of their fields.

I’ve read that in the article too.

The plan is that all the people in IT are going to get a raise with the money they took from the people that work in the showroom.

Speaking of which, everybody’s going to be making lots of purchases over the holiday. Spread the word, go do your purchases at the showrooms. Those people need it and they make money off of it. Don’t order online. Go to a showroom. If you need people, I have names. Call me, email me, send me a message. I will get you the names. Please, get that business in the showrooms.

It’s nice and convenient but find a showroom. Find a person there and get them that commission.

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

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

Thank you.

—

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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, 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.

We have a fun one that might bring us back to intuitive eating. This is from Marta. She says, “Self-sabotaging my awesome workout progress with bad food choices.” She does the Hardcore On The Floor calendar. She joined the Fall Power Zone Challenge. Even before, she rides 3 to 4 times a week and strength trains five days a week, then she’s starving and makes bad food choices. She knows she should eat more protein and not keep crap food in her house. She knows it all but if someone could constantly slap the chocolate or popcorn out of her hands, that would be much better.

Martha. I want to completely revamp your whole relationship with food. I don’t take the popcorn. I don’t want to take the chocolate. I don’t want to take any of it. What I want to do is help you have a healthier relationship with food. It sounds like you’re under-eating. It sounds like you’re letting yourself get too hungry. If you do that, you’re going to ultimately overeat. It also sounds like you’re depriving yourself too much of the foods that you love and that you haven’t found a balance. What we know and what all the studies show is that the more you deprive yourself of foods, the more you’re going to be out of control when you have them. I would not want you to take those foods out of the house.

Part of my No More Diets app that’s all about intuitive eating is about legalizing food. What we know is that when food is allowed in your house, when you can have as much of it as you want, you tend to not overeat with it. When I originally became an intuitive eater, and for those of you who don’t know my history, I was an elite level rhythmic gymnast for many years on the national team. I performed exhibitions in the ‘84 Olympics. My relationship with food was f*** up. I have an eating disorder. After ten years of that and trying everything, under-eating and overeating and having my weight fluctuate by about 70 pounds, what I ended up doing was I came across intuitive eating. I had to learn to allow myself to eat all of these foods that I had thought of as “bad” because I had this terrible, unhealthy diet mentality.

Part of what I had to do was one by one, I did the whole legalizing food process. What that looked like was there would be a food that I felt out of control. I would bring it into the house. I would bring it in quantities that were four times the most I could possibly eat. I remember the first food that I did that with was peanut butter. It was one of the first foods that I had told myself I couldn’t eat. I had to bring in all of this peanut butter. In the beginning, I found myself overeating them. Once I knew I could have as much peanut butter as I wanted, it lost its meaning and I wasn’t needing to overeat with it.

That can be a very scary process, especially if you feel out of control with food. There are a lot of dietitians and nutritionists around this country who are familiar with intuitive eating. I have an app called No More Diets that talks you through the whole process. I also know it can sound very overwhelming for someone who’s struggling the way you’re struggling. I totally get it because I’ve been there, done that. I’m now at a point in my life where I have my favorite foods in the house.

My favorite is ice cream. I’m an ice cream fanatic. I love anything that is non-dairy because I’m vegan, but it has chunks of stuff in it like Ben & Jerry’s with chunks of pretzels, donuts, cookies and whatever. I now have that stuff and it gets freeze over. Because I know I can have any time I want, and so I don’t need to eat it all the time. That’s where we want to get you. We want to get you where you have a healthier relationship with food. At the very bare minimum, you want to stop under-eating and you want to stop depriving yourself so much, and reintegrate some of your favorite foods into your life so that you don’t have to binge on them, and you don’t have to feel so out of control. You could use some help with someone who has some experience like a dietitian or a nutritionist with the intuitive eating model.

It sounds almost like beer when you’re twenty. When you’re twenty and somebody offers you a beer, it can be like a Tuesday night. You’re like, “I don’t know when I’m going to get my next beer. I’m going to drink it.” When you turn 21, you have a six-pack of Natural Light that sits there for six weeks because you can do it whenever you want.

We tend to overdo what we feel a sense of scarcity. There’s that sense of like, “I can’t have it. I need to get as much in as possible now.”

That’s wonderful advice as always. Thank you for sharing it with us. Until next time, where can people find you?

I’m on social media @DrJennMann and also InStyle Magazine, Hump Day with Dr. Jenn. I have a weekly column that is all sex and relationship advice.

Thank you.

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Tunde is writing a book.

It’s written because you can pre-order it now on her website. It’s at SpeakTunde.com or you can go out to Amazon and pre-order it there. It’s coming out on May 22nd. The book is called SPEAK. She has five key pillars that she’s talking about, surrender, power, empathy, authenticity and knowledge. I like how she says this, “You might pick up this book because you’ve taken my class or follow me on social media. Maybe a friend will give it to you or you’ll spot it unexpectedly in a bookstore and pick it up. No matter how we meet, I will do my best to give you a reason to move forward in whatever ways we can. The beauty of uncertainty after all is infinite possibility.” How amazing is that?

Part of me was surprised that it’s taking this long. Robin had a book but that predated Peloton. I’m surprised that we haven’t seen this yet, but I’m sure we will only see more of it, especially since Tunde was one of a lot of the instructors who have signed with big PR firms. That’s part of what they navigate. To show you the power of Peloton, the book is already number one on Amazon.

Isn’t that amazing?

I should also say, “And the power of Tunde.”

It’s not for nothing.

She’s out there like, “I wrote the damn thing and Peloton is getting the credit, Tom.”

I’m super excited to read this. I can’t wait. I’m hopeful that maybe I can somehow send her a copy and get it signed like I would fan girls so hard. Congrats to Tunde. That is so cool.

People might’ve been wondering where Daniel McKenna has been.

A few weeks ago he posted like, “I’m going to be gone for a while. It was a week earlier than I expected but it’s all good. Don’t worry. It’s good.” Even though he said, “Don’t worry, it’s good,” there were still people freaking out, “Where is Danielle? Why is he not on the schedule? Why was it so soon after he started?” I want to remind people that even he recently had his premiere run, he’s been working for Peloton for at least six months. It takes a long time for them to get ramped up, so soon isn’t that soon.

Perceptually for the public, it seems like he’s just been there for a cup of coffee, an Irish cup of coffee.

You can say that. I come to find out that he’s been dealing with an ongoing ear problem for about ten years and he had an operation at a New York eye and ear clinic and it’s fixed now. The operation was a success and now he needs to heal. It’s going to be a little bit longer before he’s back but he’s doing great. That’s all good news. Because I posted about this in our group, somebody said, “I wonder if he waited so long to get taken care of because this is the first time he’s had good medical insurance.”

I was thinking the exact same thing. If you’re wondering how long it takes for your benefits to kick in at Peloton, now you know.

Either way, congrats on getting that taken care of. We are so glad that it’s nothing serious and you will be back on the Tread soon. We can’t wait. I enjoy his instruction. He’s good.

You do have a soft spot for Irish guys. Vanity Fair is reporting that Emma Lovewell is now designing jeans.

There’s a cool partnership between Emma Lovewell and Sene. They are a fashion company that is rooted in technology. That’s pretty cool. Now you get to go in and have your own jeans custom made. She has a whole line of jeans and you go in. You make some choices and the jeans will then be custom made for you.

It sounds like they’re doing all the work. What is Emma Lovewell doing?

She designed the line.

If I’m designing my own jeans, I don’t know what she’s getting credit for.

She’s bringing the entire style to you. You pick from the existing line. It’s got that ‘90s look to it. It’s got the washed relaxed look. She’s bringing ‘90s to all of our houses.

I love my ‘90ss. I love my Nirvana and all that sort of stuff.

Congrats to Emma.

Normally we’ve been doing this with John Mills but we had him do the earnings call with us. We will have to tackle our Dancing With The Stars recap by ourselves, and only one of us watched it. Guess which one?

Obviously, it was me. Cheryl and Cody danced twice. The first time they danced, they always do an intro before they dance. It was Queen Week so it was all songs from Queen. They danced to You’re My Best Friend. It wasn’t the original but that’s neither here nor there. He talked about in his confessional booth that they do that it reminded him of his best friend, Oscar. I remember when this happened because I remember Matty, Cody and Travis, there’s a whole group of them that are all friends in the Peloton world. They were all heartbroken. Unfortunately, it was an overdose. Cody talked about that. It was super sad to watch. I can’t even imagine losing somebody that close to you. The song and this moment reminded him of that.

The judges felt like his performance brought out that. They could feel his connection to Oscar. He did a nice memorial to him honoring him in that dance. They ended up scoring well. They got two 8s and two 9s. At the end of the show, there were dance relays like a dance-off. That one was a quick step, then the judges at the end awarded bonus points. In this case, there were four judges. Cody and Cheryl got two points. Iman got two points, then there was the yellow couple as I call them. They got zero points.

Because of their outfit, just to be clear.

That sounds terrible. They were wearing yellow outfits. I’m so awful sometimes. I meant it in the nicest way. I didn’t know their names so I was being silly. They got zero points and I felt bad for them. They made a mistake in their little quickstep, so did Cody and Cheryl.

I saw that little stumble. I was done peeing when that happened. I walked in as there was a little stumble on Cody’s part.

They did recover very quickly. I don’t think that couples wearing yellow weren’t quite as quick on their recovery. That might’ve contributed to it. It was a big week and Cody is safe again. He will be doing the next show. There’s even more backlash coming up. Now people are saying that the judges are underscoring Cody and Cheryl. I got to say and this is going to be an unpopular opinion in the Peloton world. I don’t know that I agree with that. There are some people that have weighed in that maybe Cheryl’s choreography is not as good as it could be. I don’t feel like I am an expert enough to weigh in on whether or not her choreography is part of the problem but I see where they’re coming from.

The choreography is very simple. I don’t know if that’s by design, but it is what it is. Because it’s so simple, it’s not showing off all of Cody that it could be. I don’t think that this was their best. I feel like the last time was better. I don’t know that I agree that they didn’t get judged as well. I do think that it’s important that as Peloton fans, we keep going out and voting because the way that it works is some of the weight is from the judges, but also some of the weight comes from homes getting the votes. We keep coming and showing up, and he’s going to stay as long as we keep doing that. We got to keep doing that to keep him in.

While we’re on Cody, the LA Times had a nice write-up about Cody.

It’s titled, How an Unusually Approachable Fitness Guru Became One of the Pandemic’s Biggest Stars. This is another “We love Cody” article where they talk about how his humor, sayings, silliness and approachability on the bike is what got them through the pandemic. He’s very relatable to a lot of people and he brings that energy. He gets another article. His publicist is killing it.

I’m sure it’s easier than ever right now but they’re certainly striking while the iron is hot. Good for them.

Good for Cody.

If you like Christmas, Hallmark Christmas movies, and Peloton, we have a treat for you.

You need to run, not walk, to Netflix and pull up One Royal Holiday. You will see instructor Bradley Rose. He is right on the cover. You can see him in the bottom right-hand corner. That’s his little face.

Is he the Royal or the Holiday? Do we know? Is that a spoiler? Should I not say?

I don’t know. He’s got the accent to be a Royal. I don’t know.

I’m not sure what sort of accent the Holiday has.

I don’t but I think it’s cool. I feel bad because I pulled this off of somebody’s Instagram and I don’t remember who it was. I feel like I should know that. I had heard about this story but I kept forgetting to take a picture of it. This person so nicely put the cover of the movie out there, but then they added a bunch of people. If you recognize yourself as being the person who added it, I’m happy to give you credit. Let me know.

Do you think this has been in the can before he was at Peloton?

I feel like when he started working at Peloton, there was already talk of him being in Hallmark movies. That’s why I didn’t realize it was coming out in 2021. I don’t know if there are other Hallmark movies that he’s been in or if this one was already in the can and then we got to see. There you have it.

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Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro. How’s it going?

It’s great to see you, guys.

We have somebody in our community that needs your help. This question comes from Jason and he says, he’s hit his goal weight through intermittent fasting and exercise. How will he transition to a feeding program that prevents him from putting what he lost back on? In case you need to know, he intermittent fasted. Monday through Friday, he would do one meal a day. On Saturday and Sunday, he did normal eating. He exercises by strength training in the morning, cardio in the evening. He’s gone from 290 pounds in December of 2020 down to 215. He’s got his height here as 6’4” and he is 42.

Angelo has pulled out his slide rule.

He’s going to do some quick calculations for Jason.

Jason, you were 290 and you’re now 215. You’ve been eating one meal a day. I’m going to assume that’s evenings, Monday through Friday. Did he say three meals a day?

On the weekend.

First of all, awesome job. He’s wanting to transition to “normal.” You did great because you gave me all the stats that are relevant, where I can give you some strategy. Because I don’t know what you were eating, I’m going to have to make up some pretty make-believe guesses here. Hopefully, through these guesses, you’ll be able to extract the principles, Jason.

What happened here is we need to evaluate the way you lost weight was through the mechanics that triggered it. You said intermittent fasting. The mechanic that is going to be calorie restriction. It’s important to understand this. Intermittent fasting and time gating may have contributed a little, but the vast majority of your weight loss is because you radically adjusted your average weekly core intake.

We can come up with some assumptions. If on a regular day, Saturday, Sunday, you were eating 3,000 calories a day, that could easily be 500 in either direction. It can be more or less in either direction. I’m just pulling a number out of the hat. You’re 6’4” and you’re training regularly. It could easily be higher than that but let’s just say 3,000. That would stand to reason if that’s breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we cut that down to a third, that’d be 1,000, Monday through Friday. Let’s round that up to let’s say 1,200. That’s pretty low intakes. You see why the pounds did come off, especially for guys your size. If we did some math, 12 times 5, we’re going to come up with 6,000, and then 3,000 times 2 is going to be 6,000. You’re eating 12,000 calories a week.

What’s brilliant here, Jason is you told me that you used intermittent fasting, which is a caloric control methodology. You weren’t using ketogenic or you weren’t restricting carbs. You would have noted that if you were so we don’t have to traverse that. What that means is we come out to a weekly average of about 1,700 calories a day. That’s a little too low to dive in and just resume. You’d actually be starving for a guy your size with that activity level. I would say it’s probably about 2,000. Tear the band-aid off and increase it to 2,000. If you can, spread it out over five meals a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks.

If that’s a little too much food prep, go breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an afternoon snack. Make sure that each day you come out in the ballpark of around 2,000 calories or just extrapolate based on how close I was with those numbers. Were you actually at 3,500 calories and 1,500 or less? Find that approximation. The more meals a day you spread those calories out over, the more opportunity you have to use those calories in the way you want.

Here’s the bad news, Jason. You’re going to gain some weight back. You have to allow that process to happen. You’re not going to gain back to 290. You’re not going to get anywhere close to that. Here’s the choice you get to make. When you put that weight back on, does it go to body fat or muscle? If you’re not doing anything to put muscle on, you only have one bucket. When you gain weight, you’ll gain body fat. That’s the only bucket your body has available.

One of the beauties of strength training and understanding where it fits into a weight loss model is when you get to the point where you are revving your metabolism and putting calories back in, you want to give your body that second bucket. Now when you eat more than your body can burn, it doesn’t automatically mean you’ve gained body fat. You may be able to catch a large amount of it as lean muscle mass. I would keep some cardio going. I would slow down the resistance training. It sounds like you’re already doing the right things, but I would just spin the dial slightly towards resistance training for the first 3, 4 weeks of this.

Get your body used to spreading out your intake. Hopefully, you can minimize the weight gain to 5, 6 pounds of muscle and maybe 1 or 2 pounds of body fat. That would be a great spot. By the way, that’s not a death sentence. That’s not that’s it for the rest of your life. You’re going to increase. If you’re at 2,000 calories a day, you’re going to slowly go up to 2,100, 2,200, 2,300 gradually over time as your body can utilize it, getting yourself all the way back up to ideally 3,000 plus calories a day if you’re that active. You then have the option to do another cutting cycle

In your next cutting cycle, keep all the meal frequency in place and just decrease the calories. You’ll still be effective. You can bring yourself down to any weight you want to be and sustain that. With the information that I have at hand, that’s about as specific as I can be. Hopefully, you can extract a little bit of value from that principle, or just hit us up at MetPro. I’ll personally talk you through it, Jason, if you ever want.

That’s the microcosm of what you’ve been doing with me. It’s almost identical except I eat the same stuff every day because I’m weird, but you have to.

If you take away the weirdness, yes.

You’re like the same people.

It is effective and fascinating. I’ve been this weight before but I haven’t looked like this before.

It’s very different when you add in the lean muscle.

Thank you very much for sharing that very detailed information. I feel like you’re giving away you’re trade secrets and you’re going to call us later and be like, “Don’t publish that. What was I thinking? I told them all eleven herbs and spices. I was drunk.” If people would like something like that tailored for themselves, where can they find you?

MetPro.co/tco, check us out.

Thank you.

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Peloton has a new partnership with Spotify.

This is part one for the week. What they did is they have five major stations that people listen to their most popular. One of them is Today’s Top Hits. There’s one that’s like Indigo Country, and then Baila Reggeaton, which I believe means dance reggae. There’s LO-FI Beats, which I listened to this one all the time. It’s great background music at work. There’s one more, Door Knockers, which are classics from trailblazing women in hip hop.

Peloton has teamed up with Spotify so that there’s going to be eleven classes set to these five playlists. Hannah Frankson is doing the Door Knockers. Camila Ramon is doing the Reggeaton. Nico Sarani is doing LO-FI Beats, and so is Chelsea Jackson Roberts. There is a ride from Indigo with Denis, and the run is with Matt Wilpers. Both of those are Indigo Country. For Today’s Top Hits, there’s going to be yoga with Anna Greenberg, a ride with Leanne Hainsby, a run with Kirsten Ferguson, and strength with Olivia Amato. How cool is that? That was part one of the Spotify news.

The other big Spotify announcement.

This is cool. Peloton and Spotify teamed up again. If you don’t know this, there’s a workout hub within Spotify. You can go there and find workout music. I go there often for my outdoor runs, especially before Peloton gave Android any Peloton capabilities, before I switched to iPhone. Now there is a whole Peloton list. There’s Robin Arzons playlist, Ally Love’s playlist, Adrian’s playlist, Matty’s playlist. You can go out there and you can find the different playlists that you want to listen to the most.

There’s going to be a whole shelf within their seven playlists from their instructors. They include Running by Peloton, Tunde’s playlist, Strength by Peloton and more. I got the impression that there are a ton of these coming. They accidentally posted one that had almost all of the instructors having these playlists. They took it all down, and then they put it back up with this news article. I think that over time, this is going to grow. For now, we start off with seven of them and it’s going to be very cool. Check it out and see if you can find one that matches your personality with your favorite instructor.

Don’t forget. There’s my unofficial soft rock playlist that people positively adore.

They do actually. You got a lot of followers on that, for Spotify.

There are 75 people or something that follow that playlist. It’s Spotify but it’s pretty cool for mentioning it a couple of times. If teaming up with Spotify wasn’t enough, Peloton is now on Delta flights. I don’t understand, I can barely fit my legs in there and I’m 5’6”, I don’t know how they’re going to get bikes in there.

You’re not going to get bikes in there because it is meditation and stretching. That’s all. They are 5 or 10-minute classes. It’s not like somebody is going to be sweating in the seat next to you. If they get that sweaty doing a stretch, then they might want to see a doctor. This was actually announced. It was weird because Hannah Corbin was posting about this on Instagram. I saw this, then I totally forgot about it because who flies Delta? I never fly Delta.

It depends on where you live. From where we live, Delta doesn’t go anywhere. If it does, there are nine stops to get there like taking a school bus.

To be fair, we have a crappy hub. That’s a major part of it. We used to have a good one, but those days are long gone. Anyway, the point is I totally forgot about it, then I saw that Peloton put articles out about it. They talked about this but isn’t one of the other articles we have in here is like there are people already complaining about it? Travelers aren’t outraged according to The Sun over in the UK. They say that this is not a good idea. There’s not even enough room to sit in a seat, let alone stretch. How are you going to do that?

I do wonder how you’re going to stretch in a plane. I guess you can roll your ankles.

I don’t know. This says that there are five classes in it. There are five stretching and meditation classes that have been designed exclusively for Delta. They range from 5 to 20 minutes. You can do these exercises in your seats. The real news here is that this is the first time Peloton has allowed their classes outside of their ecosystem. Unless you’re doing these classes back to back, over and over again for the whole flight, I can’t imagine that it’s going to be that disruptive.

Especially meditation. You can sit there and think that’s okay. There’s almost enough room for that.

It depends on if you’ve got a jerk who won’t let you have the little armrest.

That’s the guy in the middle who thinks he gets to take both armrests.

Being in the middle, you get to have both armrests. If you’re in the middle, I feel like you get that. It’s already crappy that you sit in the middle. I don’t feel like there’s a twenty-minute stretch. It’s probably a five-minute stretch and maybe outrage is a bit overused these days. Congrats to Peloton. Either way, it’s a cool partnership.

The Peloton blog had an interesting article about meeting your best friends through Peloton.

The real reason I wanted to include this is because Mary and Joan were featured on it. They are such huge parts of the JSS tribe. They have been so nice to me since day one that I was on the bike. I’ve always gotten hellos from them. We’ve met them in person. It is so cool to see somebody that you’ve known from afar to be featured on the Peloton blog after all this time. Congrats to Mary and Joan who met their best friends on the bike.

Finally, for this segment, New York Magazine had an article about the best gifts for the Peloton-obsessives in your life.

I don’t feel like any of this is surprising. I guess it’s because I ride the bike.

I was scrolling through this. I was like, “These are all commonly known things. Earphones, that’s a real game-changer.” It’s out there if you want to check it out. If you can’t find it, just subscribe to our newsletter at theclipout.com.

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Another day, another lawsuit. Peloton has been hit with a lawsuit this time in Minnesota over wages and hours.

All jokes aside, it’s a serious topic. Peloton is being accused of skimping on wages owed to some hourly employees. The plaintiff is arguing that as a field technician responsible for delivering and setting up indoor cycling bikes, Peloton failed to pay him overtime premiums for any hours he worked over 40 hours but less than 48 in a workweek, which I’m confused. Why was there a problem between 40 and 48? The fitness giant, as they are called, did not pay the plaintiff for work performed during scheduled break periods resulting in less overtime pay than what they earned from September 2019 through March of 2021.

Peloton paid the plaintiff non-discretionary bonuses. Unfortunately, the complainant is accusing Peloton of failing to include those bonuses in the regular rate of pay when calculating the overtime compensation, which resulted in an underpayment. This lawsuit is seeking to certify a class. The goal here is to become another class-action lawsuit for all Minnesota hourly workers who were similarly underpaid during this state or federal liability period. They are thinking that it will be composed of more than 40 individuals, with the exact number to be determined from records maintained by the defendant.

I wonder if this is a problem that they’ve had in other states or if there’s something unique to Minnesota about it.

My gut says it’s something about Minnesota but I don’t know. I know that a lot of different states have different rules, but when it comes to calculating, it gets complex when you’re doing business in all these different states. My hope is that this was a simple calculation set-up thing and it just wasn’t done right and it will be easily resolved. That’s my hope. I hope that is all. It’s not a good look.

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Tempo announced that they are launching a new device. It’s funny because we’ve dealt for years now with people lifting from Peloton products for their own products. Now they’re doing it before Peloton gets their products out.

This thing is like Tempo originally had its own screen built-in and then it had a cabinet that stored all of its weight. This takes the screen out of the equation and you can use your iPhone that sits on top of this little cabinet. That’s about the size of a mini-fridge. The weights are then stored on the shelves of the cabinet. The idea is that you can use your iPhone with the lidar sensor to be able to do form correction and form counting the way Tempo does. It takes all of the technology that’s built into tempo and it brings it down price-wise so that all you need is an iPhone in this little cabinet. That means that you can buy this product for $395 and plug it into your phone. Here’s the thing, you got to have an iPhone.

I know there are Android phones that have that technology.

The article at the bottom says, “We know,” but this only works with iPhones for now. My guess is that will change over time. It’s a similar thing when Peloton first came out, it was only on the iPhone. The app was so different on the iPhone app as opposed to the Android app. We have a similar situation here. It’s so much easier to do. I think Tempo was in a very big hurry to get this out because they knew that Peloton was coming out with the Guide. The Peloton Guide is basically this. It’s a plug-in to your TV that is going to be able to pick up form correction and count the reps and do all those things. It’s going to be basically the exact same thing. I have no idea what price point it’s going to be. What Peloton is coming out with is going to continue to evolve from what I understand. It’s going to come out looking very similar to this but it’s going to continue to evolve over time to be a much cooler product than what this is, just for weights.

Presumably, at least the best we can tell this far is it will be bundled into your monthly payment. It won’t be an additional fee.

It would be bundled into your monthly payment.

This is $40 on its own. What I saw in the article is $39.95.

That makes sense because you’d have to pay for Tempo. If you don’t already have the Tempo software, you’d have to buy Tempo and then you still have to keep paying for your Peloton subscription. Also, breaking news, Peloton Prophet dropped by and is telling me that the Peloton Guide is coming out very soon. Assuming that the world keeps up with all of the supply chains, it will probably start shipping in January 2022. If that’s something on your mind and you see this, just wait.

This doesn’t seem like something cool enough that’s going to get anybody to go, “I’m done with Peloton. I’m switching to Tempo.”

For sure, not. I’ve been saying this for a long time and I love Peloton. Everybody knows I love Peloton, but strength is not their strength. This is not where they shine. I’m frustrated because I feel like Tempo beat them to the punch. I feel sorry for the people that have been working on the Peloton Guide for so long, and then just to get the rug pulled out from underneath them. This was a win for Tempo. It looks good. It’s right in time for Christmas and it’s the first one to the market. It’s right before Peloton does their earnings call. It hits a lot of boxes. I feel like Tempo did some real damage to Peloton with this.

I don’t know that they did damage to the bottom line but maybe egos and morale a little bit.

Even when Peloton does come out with a guide, it’s not going to be overwhelmingly amazing. Their strength stuff just isn’t. What Peloton needs to focus on is programming. There is none and they are not showing that they are interested in creating that. I hope that changes. I hope they have stuff in the background that I don’t know about, and that it will all be amazing. Right now, I don’t care who you are, Tonal is by far the best. It’s better than Tempo because it’s got all the programming. You have a personal trainer in that thing, plus all the AI. It’s hands down. It’s not even close. It’s amazing.

While we’re talking about competitors, Fitness+ got a patent. I know what patents are but I don’t know what it means.

John and I were going back and forth on this. John says that this was basically a GUI change. That’s it. They did a patent to change the GUI interface. It was an upgrade to what the system looks like. GUI interface is what the screen is going to look like. They filed a change. The design is going to feature HIIT, yoga, core, and other workouts that are taught by a specific trainer but that resemble a Peloton class. In my mind, they’re going out of their way to increase the number of products they have because they’re adding the HIIT, and they’re changing up yoga and core. They’re also trying to make it look more similar to Peloton. The reason I say this article was dumb is because they say that this is the reason the Peloton shares were down. I call it BS. I’m not buying it.

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Ally Love celebrated five years with Peloton on November 2nd.

It was the 5:00 AM ride. It was a 30-minute ride. If you didn’t get a chance to take it, you still can. You can always send Ally a belated congrats.

Marcel Dinkins had her first country run, which you enjoyed immensely.

I loved her country run because it was different country music than I typically hear on Peloton rides, runs, classes or whatever. She had some fun factoids about herself. Her very first job, she worked in Graceland. She talked about all kinds of things like how she learned about Graceland through music. My favorite thing that she said was she talked about how petty country music is. When I say petty, I know that sounds mean and snotty but no. She said it with love and admiration in all the best ways like Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats or the song that she had. She was playing at the time, I Hope. The lyrics to it is something like, “I hope you meet the woman of your dreams. I hope everything is wonderful and you buy her a ring and you spend every last dime on it, and then I hope she cheats.” It was amazing hearing her talk about that.

She also featured a couple of country Black artists. I don’t remember the man’s name but Mickey Guyton who is has been a Peloton music collaboration was talked about as well. I thought that was neat. I think it’s Blanco Brown. We met him. She played a song that was by him and Parmalee. Parmalee is a band from the ‘90s. Most people don’t know them. I just happened to have a lot of country music knowledge but they did have a few hits. They did a song together and that was the song that she played. I enjoyed it. If you haven’t gotten a chance to take Marcel Dinkins’ country run, do yourself a favor, go take it.

They announced the Jess King Experience, Season 3 is upon us.

This will be interesting because they are saying it’s going to be a rave around the world. It’s five different cities, Ibiza, Berlin, Paris, Brazil and London. Every other week, you will be experiencing a different rave and a different city. She says that you can always bank on there being bumping house beats, featuring DJs and tracks relevant to each city. DJ John Michael is part of this. He’s always been part of this but he is actually mixing the actual song, so it’s going to be fresh. This will be very cool and fun.

There are some new pre and postnatal yoga classes.

Four of them dropped. That would be November 3rd. You can check them out. Anna Greenberg dropped these. There’s going to be a prenatal focus flow for the upper body, a prenatal focus flow for the lower body, and then a postnatal focus flows as well.

Rebecca Kennedy has a challenge for everyone.

She had one in October too, but in November it’s going to be Gritty Gratitude. In October was the Killer Core. Now we’re moving into Gritty Gratitude. It’s going to be lifting weights and adding in cardio. It’s three weeks and it is tough. She’s very specific in the days you workout and the length of workouts. It’s going to be a great program. There’s going to be five days a week, two days off. Some days will have options. Weekends are going to be optional for extra cardio, outdoors, and no equipment required. That’s the best part.

Not to be outdone, Ben Alldis also has a challenge for you.

People enjoyed the October one. This is going to be the November Cycle and Strength challenge. There’s going to be a breakdown of specific workouts. It’s four weeks, four sessions a week, but it’s the same structure every week. There’s going to be three rest and recovery days per week. Do not do Ben’s challenge and Rebecca’s challenge at the same time. Pick one because you will be doing too much. Each day is split up. He’s got it all nicely laid out for you.

One of our listeners had a nice post on Instagram about body positivity.

She’s Alissa Kolarik. I don’t know if you remember this but Alissa was the winner of our pink bike in 2020. I hope I’m remembering that correctly.

She’s a very patient woman.

This is so cool because she posted this on her own page. She was doing a run and she talked about body confidence and how in the past, she’s posted about that and fully embracing having a runners body. She ran a 306 at Boston, and that was at the end of a 70-mile training week. She talked about how she had had 1,500 grams of carbs in three days. It’s a big week. That’s what I’m trying to say. She was saying like, “This body is not the fittest, but this body is recovered.” It’s doing all these things and she’s an amazing person. She posted this struggle and how even though she’s not the fittest, she’s also the most impressed.

You don’t have to have the perfect body to be proud of your body. That is the whole point of this. She is sharing that her stomach is not perfectly flat in this picture. It took off and people are posting this everywhere. Koala Clip, which is a brand that I follow, posted this, which is how I saw it. I reached out to Alissa and I was asking her about it. She said that it’s been picked up in so many places. She was shocked because she almost didn’t post this and it’s just resonated with people. I wanted to mention it here because we are all about body positivity. I think that’s amazing that she put herself out there. That is not the easiest thing to do.

It had a happy ending but that doesn’t always. The internet can be a crappy place.

—

We only have one birthday and it’s country music superstar, Chase Tucker. Was he featured on Marcel Dinkins ride?

He wasn’t.

What an oversight.

I think we should reach out to Marcel and be like, “What’s up?”

This is an outrage. I haven’t been this outraged since somebody stretched next to me on a Delta flight.

Happy birthday to Chase Tucker. He’s not a country singer.

Peloton is very pioneer in the way that they are so careful, thoughtful, and intentional about sidestepping the junk in diet culture talk. Click To Tweet

We hope you celebrate it at the Texas Roadhouse.

—

Joining us, you have almost undoubtedly read her articles in Shape Magazine because she’s been a machine lately all about Peloton. It’s Michelle Konstantinovsky. Did I get that right?

It’s so right that I wish I had some awards for you. It was absolutely perfect because everyone is always like, “I think I got it,” then they don’t get it. They lose it at the last second.

It’s a lot of pressure in that last second. You start to second guess in that last second.

It’s fifteen letters for anyone who’s counting. I understand that there’s a lot riding on that, but you did it perfectly.

For anybody who doesn’t know, if they’ve read an article about Peloton in Shape Magazine, it is very likely yours, but how did you originally come across Peloton?

I will say, as of late, it may be mine because I think I’ve become their go-to in the last six months. Prior to that, they had great coverage as well. I just weaseled my way in. I think they’ve given up and allowed me to take the reins on that. How did I first discover Peloton? I’ve heard you guys in passing mention that commercial that everyone knows about.

As I was saying before, I’m deep-diving into the show, so I’m excited to listen to your interview with the actress from that. I do think that was my first entry into the Peloton universe and like most people, I was a little put-off and confused. I’m not sure what to make of it. This was pre-pandemic. I was going to actual classes in real life in a cycling studio.

I had heard of it, but I didn’t know much about it beyond the hoopla of that. Fast forward, the pandemic begins. My sister had got a Peloton. She and her family bought one from someone at their kid’s school who was trying to offload one. I think the first thing she said was, “This guy, Cody.” She kept talking about this guy, Cody, and on her Peloton. I was like, “Cool.” I still didn’t really get it.

When the pandemic hit, I had moved in unexpectedly with my boyfriend into his one-bedroom apartment. We definitely did not have space for any equipment. There was a yoga mat and a kitchen table. That was about it. I was going to the park to work out because I didn’t know what else to do. There was a park across the street. I was just doing YouTube workouts and whatever I could do. She tipped me off that Peloton was doing like a three-month free trial to anyone during the pandemic.

I think it extended beyond that. I feel like I didn’t get my first bill for months, which is great. Maybe I got away with it or they forgot about me. I just started doing the outdoor runs and little cardio things here and there. I was still supplementing the YouTube workouts I’d done. It started slow and then it just took off and exterminated any other workouts I was doing. I look back and I’m like, “Why was I even bothering?” The whole universe has me covered on all fronts. We can talk about it but I hacked the system for a while and I had a fake Peloton doing the app.

That’s what I love about Peloton, the flexibility. It meets you wherever you are.

I would say to anyone else like that, I would be so happy for anyone that has figured out a way. The first hack we had was amazing because I would have been doing so many of the other workouts and I always FOMO. I just started to feel like, “How could I not be doing the cycling classes?” Before we even got the Schwinn stationary bike, my boyfriend, who does not ride a Peloton or any indoor cycling and actually rides bicycles outdoors, which I don’t understand, propped his bicycle up on a trainer, which I only learned what a trainer is because of this.

I had to do the Beyoncé Two for One, Tunde and Alex, which I had such FOMO. That may have been my first class or it may have been Robin’s pregnancy announcement. I’m not sure which one it was. I was up in a huge road bike propped on a trainer. I was like, “This is ridiculous. I can’t live like this.” We got the Schwinn and then Peloton was kind enough to send me a bike plus to review. It is a loner. I will probably not be giving it back and I will be spending all my savings on it because I love it. It changed my life. That’s been my journey throughout.

You got sucked in slow and now you are all in.

It was slow, slow and then my life just as I knew it transformed. I can’t be the only one.

No, absolutely not.

Thank you. I have found my people.

Before the pandemic, you mentioned that there were in-class classes that you were taking. Do you feel like you work out more now that you have the Peloton experience at your home? Do you work out the same or less?

I might be an interesting guest for you guys because I think I have a slightly different nuanced perspective on exercise that I can go into as we talk more. Actually, this is funny timing because I just wrote an article for Vanity Fair about compulsive exercise. I don’t know if you guys have seen that show physically. It’s very hard to watch. I am probably to open up a book about this as someone who has had an eating disorder. For most of my life, it was extremely painful to watch because of how raw and real it was.

All that said, I had pitched an article to Vanity Fair about my experience with compulsive exercise. In my opinion, the last sanctioned culturally endorsed form of eating disorder behavior. If you tell people, “I exercise for five hours.” No one is going to be necessarily worried about you. They’re not going to congratulate you. All of that to say, I wrote this piece. In that piece, I was very careful. I worked with my editor to make sure that the headline did not, in any way, implicate Peloton or any other fitness brand because I don’t think these brands are to blame in any way for this phenomenon or whatever you want to call it.

That said, I’ve had a very complicated relationship to exercise erring on the side of compulsive behavior but having discovered Peloton, and I’ve told the instructors this, I always try to work in the body image angle when anytime I interview anyone, even if it has nothing to do with the topic and they’ve mercifully very kindly given me very thoughtful answers around it. I told Robin that, to me, Peloton is very pioneered in the way that they are so careful, thoughtful, and intentional about sidestepping all of that junk in diet culture talk, and that struck me pretty quickly.

They don’t equate like, “We’re burning this many calories, so you can eat a donut,” which was rampant in all of the boutique fitness classes I had taken up to this point. I’ve taken a lot given my history. It really stood out to me right away and I don’t know if that’s central to Peloton ethics and code but the instructors themselves have done such a great job about disconnecting movement and physical activity from worth and value as a human, and I appreciate that.

Another long answer to your question. I think it has helped me in a lot of ways become more flexible and open to a variety of movement methods. They are just so good. I took a fifteen-minute Cody class and he was like, “Whatever you did, it was enough.” They always say that. It sounds simple, especially for someone like me who has that history, hearing that from an instructor and a person in that position is like, “Whatever you did, it’s good. You’re fine. You’re enough.” It’s really powerful. All that to say, I think it’s helped me, but I appreciate what they do in that way.

I think that message works on a lot of levels because for people who are new to exercise and maybe don’t think it’s for them, it also sends a message of like, “You don’t have to do this a certain way for it to count. Be glad you’re here doing it.”

I do think that Peloton is thoughtful about it. Since the beginning, they have always shied away from saying, “This is a diet thing. You’re doing this to lose weight.” They’ve never said that. They always have said, “Be the best you. Be the person that you want to be. Whatever that looks like,” and they’ve always celebrated that.

I think that’s smart. In fairness, I don’t know that it’s entirely altruistic. If you approach the bike from a point of view of weight loss and a diet, then we know what happens with diets. You hit the number and then you’re done, and then the cycle goes for a lot of people. If they want to keep people using this bike long-term, they don’t want to position it. It checks both boxes.

I like deep diving on your podcast. I think you guys do such a great job of presenting fairly your opinions on the brand. It’s not necessarily a full-on cheerleader, campaign for Peloton all the time. You are very thoughtful in your critiques. That one is very relevant and makes a lot of sense to me. Given how much you guys know about the brand and I know you’ve been following it so long, I know you talked about it. Have you gone to the studios in New York?

Yes.

You’ve been to the holy land. The fact that you have been there from those early days and you can say that they’ve been consistent with that messaging, that, to me, means so much. I’m sure every brand message has multiple factors going into it and maybe they’re not all altruistic, but at the end of the day, I’m like, “Do I care?” They’re doing great work.

I don’t mean it in a crappy way. I think it works on both levels. If this company lands on saying the right thing, it’s okay.

The end result is the same. I’m just grateful. I thank them for putting that message out there outside of me and my experience. I think that we’re just not in a culture that knows how to talk about movement divorced from that diet culture on the whole. They’re doing a lot to further that conversation and to open the dialogue.

I agree. I can’t wait to read your article about that in Vanity Fair. I’m curious, especially since you watched the show Physical because we really liked that show.

My editor suggested it and I was very hesitant to watch it because I had heard.

If you like that show, there’s a podcast called Decoder Ring. It’s all about weird pop culture things that you’re just like, “Why is this a thing?” They’ll be about anything. They did one about truck nuts and the Jane Fonda workout. To me, it feels like a very fictionalized version of that story because Jane Fonda lifted that workout from a boutique fitness place and was using it to fund a political cause that she was invested in. It blew up and she didn’t expect it. It’s a two-part episode, even if you don’t care about that stuff, which I think was riveting.

I’m so excited. In addition to being a Peloton junkie, I am a pop culture fanatic. I will eat up that podcast.

I think you and Tom should be friends in real life.

You mentioned Mystery Science Theater 3000. My sister raised me on it. It seems like we have a lot to talk about. We saw the movie in the theater.

One of the four. It played in theaters for one week. It failed so badly.

You have to tell her what we did.

When they rebooted it on Netflix, we did the set visit. We hung out on set for a day.

Do you have pictures of the robot?

I have a robot.

We have pictures of us on the spaceship.

With Jonah and Joel. I actually know Joel.

He’s literally Facebook friends with him in real life.

When he comes to town, he gives me free tickets and thank me from the stage a couple of times.

You guys are going to regret making contact with me because now I’m just going to bug you for so many cool introductions to people. That’s amazing. I’m going to want those pictures. That’s awesome.

We can hook you up.

We have a picture of us on The Satellite of Love with Jonah.

You guys are so lucky. Now I’m just jealous, but we can continue.

Peloton helps in a lot of ways to become more flexible and open to a variety of movement methods. Click To Tweet

You live in New York.

I live in San Francisco. I know. I’ll do you one better. I don’t even live in San Francisco anymore. We have moved to the suburbs. It’s twenty minutes outside the city. It’s not that big of a deal. People assume that because I work in media, but no, I’m on the West Coast. It makes scheduling interviews sometimes very challenging. I have definitely never been to the Peloton studios and I have never met any of these people in real life, especially pandemic aside. I’m very far from everything.

Living in California is still pretty awesome, especially compared to the St. Louis area.

We’re in Missouri.

Missouri is just a flyover. We’ve got the arch. That’s it.

I’ve heard wonderful things about that arch. I actually had to write an article once for HowStuffWorks.com, which I used to write quite a bit more about the arch. I found it fascinating.

Here’s what irritates me about the arch. It’s called the Gateway to the West. The most important thing about our city is how to leave.

No, it doesn’t work the other way. I was really trying to make a case.

That’s what we got. Thanks for passing through, America.

Panera started here in St. Louis. It used to be called St. Louis Bread Company and in St. Louis, there’s St. Louis Bread Company. Everywhere else, there’s Panera. That’s what St. Louis gets. That’s what we get.

Do I need to write an expose? It feels like I could blow the lid off on expose. This is something America deserves to know.

Why wasn’t St. Louis good enough?

I’m offended on your behalf. We’ll connect offline for my first expose about this.

She’s like, “I smell a hook.”

I’m going to pitch the New York Times on this. I’m so horrifying. I’m so sorry. I’m sure St. Louis is lovely. I’m in the Bay Area. I was born and raised in San Francisco. I’m very proud, but I feel very far from New York.

I bet. I feel far from New York, so I can’t even imagine. How did you become Shapes go-to Peloton girl? For everyone out there, those are your words. I didn’t call you that. You said that.

I bastardized what my editor used to introduce me to someone once in an email and I was like, “I guess that’s what they’re calling me now.” I will say, “I am a freelancer. I am a free agent. I am not an employee of Shape. I actually have profiled a few of the instructors for other outlets.” I profiled Rebecca Kennedy for Greatest and my California girl Kendall for Self. It’s not exclusive to Shape, but they have been very good to me and very kind. This came from me being aggressive and relentless, which is how I’ve gotten anything in my career and personal life, I would say. Some would call it annoying. I choose to frame it in another way.

It’s only annoying if it doesn’t work.

Thank you. I’m on it that way.

If you keep doing it, you never get results, then let it go.

You might want to rethink that, but it’s working.

It’s like a Robin Arzon Masterclass lesson right there. It’s only annoying if it doesn’t work. I like that. That could be lesson twelve. I appreciate that. Freelancing is not for everyone. I will say that. It requires a lot of follow-ups and abandoning any shame you have or embarrassment over following up. I’m constantly pitching.

I have a wishlist of outlets that I love. I do marketing and things on the side to pay my bills, but I love magazine writing. I’ve always loved women’s magazines in particular. My mission has been to open the dialogue in those outlets through articles like the Vanity Fair one and dismantle what people think of traditional women’s magazines, where we talk about boys and diet that has come a long way. I’ve told people I’ve written for Cosmo and I get the eye roll, but women’s media has come so hard for decades. Let’s acknowledge that.

I used to read your Glamor.

I had an article at Glamor that got killed, which broke my heart because it’s been one of my favorite magazines. I’m just constantly pitching and hoping for the best and mostly getting ignored, but try. As I was getting more and more into Peloton. I love all the instructors. I know you’re going to ask me who’s my favorite. I’m going to tell you, spoiler alert. I will not answer that. I love them all.

We’re still going to ask it because we’re relentless.

People after my own heart. You are my tribe. No, I have proof of that. I just was getting so into it. I connected to Justin’s. I loved her. I don’t know if it’s cool to say I’ve been doing the class pass. They had their own prerecorded workout things before I drove into Peloton. I recognized her from there and I had always liked her. How can you not?

She seems magic. I was vibing with all of her classes. I even did the Beyoncé Bootcamp. I don’t have a treadmill. I ran outside my damn house four times in a row. I was like, “I don’t care.” It was great but I loved her. I DMD her, I said, “I’m a journalist. I just love what you do. Would you ever be open to me pitching a profile on you?” This is twelve steps back in the process. Not only have I not pitched her yet, but I haven’t gotten approval from any outlet.

There’s no reason for her to acknowledge me at all, but she did. She wrote me back and she was like, “Let me just connect you with my team.” I connected with her team and they connected me to the Peloton PR team. I have one girl there, my contact, who has been my guardian angel and they are just such a great team. I got connected on all fronts.

I pitched it to Shape and I didn’t hear back right away. I was like, “It’s one of those things.” I got an email on a Sunday afternoon. I was at the gas station on our way somewhere. Sunday afternoon and I opened my email and I think I screamed. I was like, “What is happening?” I was so excited because I have an official sanctioned reason now to talk to one of my favorite people I’ve never met.

That started it at Justine’s profile. I got to talk with her and Sienna Grace and Shiloh were there and it was fantastic. Again, this is all Zoom. I’ve never met any of them in person, but that started it. I think I probably pitched a couple of other ones from there and now they assign me anytime anything comes through their inbox or there’s something on their radar, like the apparel launch or things like that. I’ll be like, “Give it to Michelle. She’ll handle.” I have been very lucky. It’s been great.

Doing this, we see a lot of Peloton articles. One of the things I really noticed about your articles is actually about something. I know that’s a crazy concept, but so many of them, we openly mock them because they’re just obviously clickbait and in yours actually are about things, so hat tip.

Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. I probably exceeded the assignment requirements pretty often. I don’t think I need to go into as much depth as I do, especially when it’s a profile on a person and this isn’t just exclusive to Peloton. I feel an obligation and a pressure to at least deliver some snippet of what that person’s life is about. It’s a big ask. I am never comfortable. This is why my Vanity Fair article was 5,000 words when it should have been 1,000. I have trouble being concise about topics.

Is word count as big of a deal now that it’s online and you can scroll forever?

No editor wants to read a 5,000-word draft understandably, but there is more flexibility versus print. I have written for print and the rules are a little bit more strict.

When you get to do these interviews with the Peloton instructors, are you as excited as it seems like you are when you’re writing them?

Yes and I do not try to hide it. I appreciate that you can feel that in the article. I tell them right off the bat. When Robin came on my Zoom screen, I am feeling like I am meeting the queen. I was like, “I just want you to know that this is very important to me.” They’ve all been very kind, sweet and not freaked out visibly, which is nice, at least on the outside. I’m fucking stoked. I am a professional fangirl. I have been an enthusiast of things my entire life. Dating back to my childhood Leonardo DiCaprio. I think my heart would stop. My bedroom was disgusting.

It was just Leo’s face everywhere. I made myself into a Panic! At The Disco reporter that no one assigned to me and I followed them on several tour stops and became friends with some people in their circle. I get very into stuff. I’m just very lucky to have a profession that actually pays me to do these things sometimes. It’s ridiculous because I think in any other context, I could be potentially arrested. I’m just really enthusiastic about that.

That reminds me of the Panic! At The Disco crossover event. Whenever there is the whole kerfluffle at the Peloton studio because all of the instructors started playing Panic! At The Disco songs. It was a whole thing. We have a whole episode about that.

I have to look that up.

It’s pretty old. You have to go back ways.

That combines so many of my interests. I’m definitely going to do a deep dive.

People we’re getting the vapors because they’re like, “We can’t believe that they would do a promotion like that.” We’re just like, “Grow up,” and no money was exchanged.

That’s the general statement of the internet. “Just grow up. It’s not that serious.” I think that could apply to what I’m saying.

I totally agree. I have to tell you, I enjoy all of your articles, but I especially enjoyed the article on Selena Samuela. Hearing her backstory all woven together and seeing it all laid out. She’s an amazing person.

Thank you. She is such an incredible person. I wouldn’t say she exceeded my expectations just because I already had such a high opinion of her. I love her classes. I love her energy. Again, this was a DM. I just took a risk and took a chance and DM’ed her. She had posted something else that caught my eye. I think it was body-image related. All my flashbulbs went off and I was like, “Maybe she would want to talk about that.”

In the course of our conversation, she was like, “I actually have this other piece of my life story that I’ve never really talked about. Would you be interested in pitching that?” I looped in the Peloton PR team just to keep everyone on the same page, but she was super like, “If it lands with the editor sign, if it doesn’t, I just want to tell it.” I can’t express to you how humbled I am that people are willing to share pieces of their lives with me like that. I shaped did, thankfully. I want that story. She blew me away and was such a kind, sweet human being who has so much to give to the world, so thank you for saying that. I love that.

I think people do that because you’re creating real content and not just churning through clickbait.

Thank you. It’s so tricky, too, as a freelancer because I have to tell people upfront I can’t control what I can’t control, but I am not an employee of these outlets. You guys said something about the Robin article that made me laugh because I had this thought. Because it was like, “Robin Arzon learns the meaning of boundaries.”

After motherhood, she’s been talking about boundaries and all of this since 1900. There’s not a new development. I will think there is so much I can control and then beyond that. That’s why it was so important to me to work with the Vanity Fair editor who I was so lucky. I had such a thoughtful, empathetic editor and I told her specifically, “I didn’t want the word Peloton in the headline because I didn’t want it to look clickbaity. I didn’t want it to be Peloton and the Rise of Compulsive Exercise.”

She was amazing and very accommodating with that, so I think they changed it to something like “On-Demand Classes.” They made it more just general, which may be in the end. Maybe I would’ve gotten more clicks if we had included that word in it. Part of me is like, “Did I really stop her there?” I control as much as I can and I try to encourage my editors. I can never tell them what to do. Clickbait makes my skin crawl, so I do my best to not participate in that.

As the person who writes the headlines for every episode, there are weeks where I’m just like, “I don’t know. That’s good enough.“

I know. I fully understand that. I’ve been an editor, too.

I forgot what Crystal and I were talking about but I was like, “It’s like they say on SNL. We don’t do the show because it’s ready. We do the show because it’s 11:30.”

Sometimes it just helps.

I fully relate to that. Sometimes it’s all you can do. I think that’s a strategy you have to fall back on.

Not necessarily Peloton-related, but what’s the story you pitched that you just really thought or hoped was going to get picked up and nobody would bite?

There are so many that I think my brain has probably blocked most of those memories out just because I think it’s a human response to make you resilient and make you keep going because if I dwelled on all the things that ever happened. I will say, going back to Panic! At The Disco. I’m still so salty about this. I pitched a profile. Panic has been around forever. I have two nephews and a niece. My oldest one, he’s graduating high school. When he was a freshman, he wanted to go to his first concert and it was Panic! At The Disco and my sister was out of town, and she’s like, “Can you take them?”

I was like, “Panic! At The Disco was still around? What?” I think it was not this last album that was the Taylor Swift era and all that. It was the one before that. I took him and this poor kid. I got obsessed. He was probably like, “My weird aunt.” This was years ago at this point. Brendon Urie, who’s the lead singer, is clearly known, but he’s not at the level you would think someone with that history in the business with that much talent. I ended up going to see him in Kinky Boots on Broadway and writing about that. My mind was blown by the fact that this guy was hiding in plain sight.

I know he has a following and he has fans but, to me, I was like, “Someone needs to blow his shit up because he deserves to be more famous than he is, frankly.” I was pitching profiles on him. I pitched one to a major men’s magazine. Usually, getting ignored by another is the worst because then I’m just left wondering like, “Did they get it? Did they see it?” But I got a thoughtful rejection that was like, “He’s not big enough for our audience,” or something like that, which I was like, “That sucks.”

About a month later, guess who ran a feature on Brendon Urie? I got probably a little too hurt by it, but I cannot disconnect my emotions from work when I’m that passionate about something. This was something I really gave a crap about and I want to be the person to tell the story. You work in the music industry. You know more than I do that there are so many levels of red tape to go through that. I’m a one-person trying to pitch a story as a fangirl. There are so many relationships in place that I can’t compete with. I’m sure they had stuff lined up.

I once spent five years begging an agency to sell me a classic rock act that they kept insisting was too small for my room. I was like, “Just take my money. I’ll make it work.” They wouldn’t do it and they finally bring this guy to town on a Tuesday in a Casino and he sells it out in four minutes and they add a second show. I emailed the agent. I was like, “Almost like I knew what I was talking about.” I was so mad.

I’m sorry that happened to you, but that’s the way that this just happens.

It’s definitely not just you.

What is your leaderboard name if you’re comfortable with sharing?

I told you guys in my email. I am probably the most anti-social social media type of user of Peloton. I think I have two followers.

It’s about to get a lot bigger.

We’ll fix that.

I think this is the piece of the Peloton world that I have not engaged with fully yet because it just still feels like my own little thing. I don’t even do live rides. I’ll do rides years ago and be as happy to be there. It’s MichelleK217, which is extremely uncreative, but that’s just my default go-to username for things when I don’t have any good ideas. 2-17 is my birthday.

I totally get it. I have a feeling you will get some followers now.

Sorry if I’m boring. I don’t know how to be exciting.

Be very open-minded and try everything. If you don't vibe with an instructor, there's 700 others with different personalities. Click To Tweet

You just get on the bike and ride. People like to high-five each other. The only time I ride live anymore is on Sunday mornings with Jenn Sherman because of the way my schedule goes. Whenever I hop on, all these people immediately high-five me and I high-five them because it’s like you walk into the cheers bar, and everybody’s like, “You’re here.”

That’s pretty cool. As a freelancer who’s home alone with my own thoughts all day, I never get that. That could be very exciting for me. Thank you.

You’re welcome.

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

I don’t read the official Facebook group per your guys’ recommendations, I don’t do that. I dipped into Reddit a little bit. I’m always just curious what people’s conversations are. I’ve seen a lot of advice for newbies and I think the piece that I resonated with was to be very open-minded, try everything, and try everybody. If you don’t vibe with an instructor, there are 700 others. Even within each instructor, each one has five personalities. Kendall has twelve genres that she aces, so you can’t really go wrong.

Just try everything. I’ve heard from a lot of people as I’ve started to write more content friends from the past or contacts being like, “This looks great, but I don’t have a bike.” I’m like, “You absolutely don’t need a bike.” Yes, the bike is awesome and the cycling classes are great, but for a year, I just did the non-bike classes. I think I got just as much out of the experience. Try it all. Try Pilates, yoga, and strength. Do it all. It’s all a good time.

Definitely good advice.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. Before we let you go, where can people find you on social media so they can get these articles shoved in their faces?

The only thing I do better than demanding an outlet to allow me to write for them is promoting the crap out of my own stuff. I am not a shameless self-promotional human.

Good for you. You’re relentless, I’ve heard.

That’s what they said. My mom is going to be so proud. She’s like, “This is how you branded yourself?” @MichelleKMedia across the board, Twitter and Instagram. MichelleKMedia.com is my website. It desperately needs to be updated.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was a lot of fun.

It’s so fun. It’s the highlight of my week. Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you.

—

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

We are going to talk to you to Teresa Diggs and it will be another enjoyable story. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the Bike and the Tread @ClipOutCrystal.

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

Important Links:

• Michelle Konstantinovsky
• Shape Magazine – Everything You Want to Know About Peloton Yoga, Including Classes and Instructors
• Vanity Fair – How On-Demand Classes, Physical, and the Pandemic Have Reshaped the Reality Around Compulsive Exercise
• Decoder Ring
• HowStuffWorks.com
• Panic! At The Disco – Previous episode
• @MichelleKMedia – Twitter
• Instagram – Michelle Konstantinovsky
• Apple Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Spotify – The Clip Out
• Google Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Facebook.com/TheClipOut
• YouTube.com/TheClipOut
• Facebook – Run Lift and Live
• Run, Lift and Live – Facebook group
• @RunLiftAndLive – Instagram
• @RunLiftAnd Live – TikTok
• RunLiftAndLive.com
• Business Insider – article
• FightCamp
• JoinFightCamp.com/clip
• Dr. Jenn Mann
• The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy
• No More Diets app
• @DrJennMann – Instagram
• Hump Day with Dr. Jenn
• SpeakTunde.com
• Amazon – SPEAK
• SPEAK
• Angelo Poli
• MetPro.co/tco
• New York Magazine – article
• Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe
• Instagram – Clip Out Crystal
• Twitter – Clip Out Crystal
• @RogerQBert – Twitter
• Facebook.com/tomokeefe
• https://www.Facebook.com/100053484252945/posts/418993133226825/?d=n
• https://Blog.onepeloton.com/we-met-our-best-friends-through-peloton/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic_social&sf153665815=1&fbclid=IwAR1ySu6AtK_ouHJN3hjU7XXq0u_fr8fMGy4BLE2erI62LXhhF2pSEewY_SI
• https://www.Instagram.com/p/CVvczQRJH0A/?utm_medium=copy_link
• https://www.Instagram.com/p/CVvXysVly-N/?utm_medium=copy_link
• https://www.LATimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-11-01/dancing-with-the-stars-cody-rigsby-peloton
• https://www.CNN.com/2021/11/01/business/peloton-delta-air-lines-partnership/index.html
• https://www.TheSun.co.uk/travel/16605916/plane-fitness-classes-exercise/
• https://www.VanityFair.com/style/2021/11/peloton-instructor-emma-lovewell-is-now-designing-jeans
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/244806246241843/permalink/914624319260029/

About Michelle Konstantinovsky

Michelle Konstantinovsky is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist/marketing specialist/ghostwriter and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism alum.

She’s written extensively on health, body image, entertainment, lifestyle, design, and tech for outlets like Vogue, Scientific American, WIRED, Medium, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, O: The Oprah Magazine, Seventeen, Slate, SPIN, Entrepreneur, xoJane, SF Weekly, 7×7 Magazine, The Huffington Post, HelloGiggles, WebMD, and a whole lot more. She has also served as the senior content writer at One Medical, the health and wellness editor at Fitbit, and the contributing editor and social media director at California Home + Design. She is an avid admirer of shiny objects and preteen entertainment.