• John Mills joins us to discuss the future of The Guide.
• Peloton is having special meet-ups for Chase Sapphire Cardholders.
• Dr. Jenn – Stopping negative self-talk.
• Logan Aldridge is officially a Peloton instructor.
• Becs Gentry is pregnant.
• Christine D’Ercole’s wedding.
• Emma Lovewell was featured in an article about athlete influencers.
• Bradley Rose talks to Shape about recovering from his stroke.
• Denis Morton shows support for heart valve patients.
• Matty Maggiacomo speaks with Morgan Lee on Out Loud.
• Tunde talks to Yahoo about wellness habits.
• Kendall Toole was on the Uncut podcast.
• The studio is reopening on June 10 for a private press event.
• The new price increase started on June 1.
• The bike trade-in program has ended.
• You have a few more weeks to get $200 off accessories with in-store purchase of bikes & treads.
• Barry McCarthy discusses “customer love” at the J.P. Morgan conference.
• INC.com thinks Peloton should move beyond the bike.
• The Peloton Prophet has info about Tread+.
• DJ Khaled needs to settle down on the Tread.
• Hannah Corbin brings back her Country Happy Hour ride series.
• There was a summer apparel drop.
• Birthdays – Cody Rigsby (6/8)

All this plus our interview with Mark Steines

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Another Pregnant Instructor plus our interview with Mark Steines

Welcome back from Los Angeles. We have talked to each other since you’ve returned from Los Angeles. We should point that out. Anybody that might be tracking or sussed out when we record versus when you get back, people will be like, “What is wrong? They haven’t talked to each other.”

That would be a fair question. It’s been busy but we at least have time to talk.

It looks like you had a good time. You got to finally meet Dr. Jenn.

It was so lovely. We hung out and w chatted. We talked about Peloton. We talked to Peloton instructors. It’s so good to see her in person. In my head, she’s like 6 feet tall. That took some adjustment because she’s shorter than I am, which makes sense because she’s a gymnast in her past profession. Of course, she is tiny and petite. She always wears these giant heels in the show and that’s what I have her for in my head. It’s like the show.

They normally film from certain angles so everybody looks uniform from a height standpoint. I would have thought the same thing. As soon as you said it, I was like, “She was a gymnast.” You don’t see a lot of tall gymnasts. That tends to kill a gymnastics career, but you still were getting your runs.

I got to meet Christina Sandefur and I’m not going to say her name correctly because her leaderboard name is Kuokoa Kristina. It’s a Hawaiian term that means freedom. We went for 7 miles that started out as a run and ended up as a walk on the beach thing.

You transitioned from run to walk to pub crawl.

No drinking the entire weekend. I wanted to stay on plan and I did. I was very good. There was one small cheat. That was my favorite pic for you, Tom. Christina wanted me to take that pic. Actually, she pointed it out. She was like, “Tom would get a kick out of this.”

For the people that are not watching the YouTube channel, it’s a picture of shorts on Venice Beach and it says on the butt of girl shorts, “It ain’t going to spank itself,” which is technically accurate.

We had so much fun. We did 7 miles and we chatted the whole time. We were like little chat boxes. It was so fun. It was gorgeous, 72 degrees. It was a little chilly. It felt amazing.

The reason you made your trip out there was to go to the Thrive Cosmetics event with the You Get To Crew.

Karissa Bodnar is the owner of Thrive Cosmetics. I have to give a shout out to Coco Loco. Also, Nicole Babiak. I’m probably not saying her last name correctly because you know me with names, but it’s Coco Loco. That’s how everybody knows her. She is the one that coordinated the whole event. It was fabulous. I love Thrive Cosmetics. I think that what they do there is amazing.

I got to see so many people that I had never met. I met Jessica Minardi in real life. I met Michelle Brookman in real life. I met a whole bunch of ladies like San Diego Girl. I’ve never met them because they’re on the West Coast. There’s no meetup on the West Coast. It was fabulous and I got to meet Karissa Bodnar, the owner. That was so cool. It was a great time. Everybody had so much fun and nobody wanted it to end.

You got to meet Kate from Tonal.

We’ve tried to meet up so many times and it hasn’t worked. This was exciting. I mean literal squeals when we saw each other in the restaurant. We were those obnoxious people. I literally squealed in the middle of a restaurant very loudly. I got to meet Kate’s fiance, Morgan. It was so fun.

I stopped by the Century City store and I got to meet Danny. Danny is one of the best employees at Peloton. He told me all kinds of interesting little tidbits about the store and the area. He also makes sure that all of the people in the Beverly Hills area are taken care of. He’s a blast. If you get a chance to ever stop in the Century City store, you got to stop in and see Danny. By the way, he is willing to take orders from anywhere in the country. Don’t forget to order from the store, not online because you’re making sure these people have their commission. That is super important.

By the way, one of the most interesting things I learned about Peloton one, guess what? You can no longer get your bike exchanged. It ended. It’s over. You can no longer trade in your regular Bike for a Bike+. Also, if you do decide, “I would like to get new equipment. I want to get a new Tread. I want to get a new Bike. I want to get a new Bike+,” go to the store because you get $200 off of accessories. You can’t get that deal anywhere else. Only in store. They’re not allowed to post about it guys. Make sure that you go in and share it with everybody.

You’re not a Peloton employee. What they can do to you?

What are they going to do? Get mad at me? I love Peloton. Don’t get me wrong, but I also love the Peloton employees. I got to spread the love. That lasts until June 12th, 2022.

If anybody’s wondering, I stayed home and took care of the kids. That’s what I did.

Like I do every time you’re off gallivanting.

I go to work.

You don’t consider the podcast work? Explain, Tom. Go ahead. This is delicate for you. I feel like you might have dug a hole. Your nose is getting pink so I know I got you.

What pray tell do you have for this episode?

We’re going to chat with Dr. Jenn. She is back. We’re going to talk about negative self-talk and how to stop it. Angelo stops by and we talk about how to make meal prep a priority. We also have a visit from the Peloton Prophet who we have not heard from in a while. There’s a whole bunch of news about Peloton in general. There are lots of instructors sightings and details that we need to get out and tell everybody about. We have a new instructor to talk about. There’s so much happening.

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

You can sign up for our mailing list at theclipout.com, where we send you all the links and things in a weekly digest because we know we throw a bunch at you. If you want to go track something down and read it for yourself, you can do that via the newsletter. Finally, if you would like to watch these episodes, you can do that at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. Maybe you want to watch us because we’re interviewing Mark Steines from Entertainment Tonight. It’s actually somebody you’ve probably seen on your TV before. 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?

How is it going?

You had an interesting video about Peloton hinting at rep counting for the Guide.

I’ve heard this for a long time from the Peloton Prophet that this is happening. That’s what you’re saying, John.

It’s interesting because it’s clear that this session that they had during Homecoming was about what the Guide is. How do they design the Guide? What does it do? It was very clear to me that they were trying to sell the idea that it’s going to improve over time and that what we as a community are asking for is coming. The engineer that’s talking to all this said it twice that these things are coming. He said it in reference to how they’re going to be managing the AI and identifying what it is you’re doing. It’s clear that he’s talking about rep count. It was interesting. It was nice to hear. I think that’s awesome that it’s coming. I was still of the mind like, why don’t we have that now? It’s all good.

It’s also important to note that while rep counting is coming, form correction is not. I definitely know that the Peloton Guide is going to continue to evolve and get better. That’s awesome and I agree with you. It is important to note that right now, at least, there is no like form correction that is on the road map. Apparently, from what I’ve heard, one of the reasons that it takes a while is because they have to build this library of moves, and then each move has to have the rep counting added to it based on what the camera sees. There’s a lot of programming time that goes into it. That might be one of the reasons that it’s not there now.

That makes sense. I’m interested in seeing it though. It’s a feature that we’ve all been saying for a long time based on the fact that all the players in the space tend to have something like that, and for another reason. What do you call that thing like a teardrop? I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s either not filling up. It’s not supposed to be like you’re going fast and it causes you to fill up the bag. I heard folks say, “Start going faster because I want it to fill up.”

There are all these questions about that item. In my mind, if you had reps counting, even if you kept it, you would have your answer. That’s why it did not move. If it counted the rep, then you know why it’s moving. There would be a clear identification of what’s going on with that. I don’t know the name of it, but that’s why I think rep counting is an important thing.

It is the movement tracker.

There you go. Since we’ve been talking about this thing in my group, I thought everyone has similar thoughts as me for the most part. Lately, I have a bunch of people like one person says, “I love the movement tracker,” and then people came along like they needed that first person to say that and there was a bunch of people that are going, “Yeah.” Now I’m like, “I got to make sure that we’re being inclusive here.” There’s this whole contingent of people that love it. It helps them and inspires them to do more and finish. I got to acknowledge that.

I’ve been hearing that since the beginning. There are people that absolutely love it. I think it comes from what you’re used to and what works. It’s a good reminder that there’s no one solution for everybody or everything. To me, I would much rather use Tonal because of all the things it does for me, I don’t have to think. I show up and it does the things and I love that. Some people don’t like the way that they teach the classes, so they end up not using it and that boggles the mind. You have somebody like yourself. You prefer iron. You prefer the old school lifting. The Tonal doesn’t seem to do much. It’s not that you’re against it, but it doesn’t excite you in the same way.

I’m trying to foster this inclusive conversation constantly. Every once in a while, I’ll get these topics that you realize there are a contingent of people that are talking about one side of it. The other folks are now a little intimidated to offer their position. I don’t want that. We’re trying to have a collaborative conversation. Nobody is going to down anybody’s position. That happened with this one person who said it and a bunch of people were like, “We love this guy thing.” I’m like, “Okay. Let’s talk about that.”

I think it’s certainly more appealing with the price point. The Tonal is its own complete workout system where the Guide, I don’t feel is designed to be. It’s designed to complement a bike or a tread or theoretically, a rower. When viewed through that prism, I think that’s where people are coming around like, “It’s not a $2,000 piece of equipment. It’s something that I use in conjunction with this other thing.” People are starting to manage their expectations with it.

It’s definitely a different way of thinking.

I know I’m like a dinosaur with it. My tastes aren’t the standard and I got it. When we talk about Tonal or the Guide or even the bootcamp classes, they don’t align to my historic packed and the strength training arena that goes back to the ’70s and are related to like intimate settings with family members bare with me in these old rusted out Gold’s Gym.

You’re still drinking raw eggs and running up the stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

John, I got to say, as a person who has recently completed my personal training certificate, they have changed things a bit. I’m throwing that out there. You might want to refresh just a little bit.

You hear people talk a lot about staying on a fitness regimen. You got to be enjoying it. If you’re not, you’re probably going to fall. I’ve stuck with that paradigm. If you stick with that, you’re probably going to continue it. That is so enjoyable to me and it’s so nostalgic to me. I’m not going to let that go.

If that’s what keeps you coming back, then that’s what you do. That makes sense. I don’t blame you.

I recognize that I’m a far outlier. I accept that.

I don’t think that you are as much of an outlier as you think. There are a lot of people that look especially at Tonal with an eyebrow raised like, “I don’t know. I like my iron.”

I blame Bowflex because a lot of people look at it and they think it’s a Bowflex. They’re like, “No, I’m not doing that.”

Do you remember the Total Gym, the Chuck Norris thing? They think of it like that too. I tried to get my parents to buy a Tonal. I was going to buy a Tonal for my dad as a present. He was like, “No, I want a Total Gym.” It broke my heart to buy that thing for him.

She was like, “Tom, you need to order this. I cannot bring myself to do it.”

I cannot order it. I can not hit the button. It kills me.

While we’re talking about the Guide, Bob Treemore had an interesting tweet where he’s been tracking the numbers.

It is interesting. Yeah. He says that two months after the Guide went online, there have now been 5,000 workouts. He’s been tracking it. On 4/11 at 5:00 PM, they had been online for six hours. There were 100 workouts. On 4/12, the next day, 36 hours later, there were 500, 73 hours later, and there were 1,000. Two months later, 50 days, 5,000 workouts. Thoughts?

Many people don't know that Peloton is more than a bike. Click To Tweet

I don’t know how many guides have been sold. I don’t know how to marry that to how often people are actually using the product. The number in totality sounds like a decent number.

I’m not sure because think about a bike class. You could have 5,000 people in one class. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be necessarily working out every day on the Guide.

That’s a good point. If it’s designed to augment workouts, it’s not something that you’re going to do as frequently as the bike theoretically.

It’s an interesting yardstick. I don’t know how much we can pull out of this without knowing. Is this based on 500 units sold? Is this based on 500,000 units sold? Those are two very big differences and a lot of people bought it because it was cheap. They’re like, “You never know.”

Some are still sitting in a box. They’re like, “For that price, I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

I was thinking about it through that prism. I was thinking tread is still trying to get the bike numbers, and they struggled for a while as well. I was looking at it through that prism. I don’t know how to gauge that. If I knew how many units they had sold and then could compare it to that number, I might have a deeper opinion, but I’m not sure whit that.

Do I understand this right? The 5,000 for 50 days, that’s how many total workouts have been done on the Guide platform. I’m just making sure I was comprehending that properly. We have better numbers in the Guide.

It doesn’t mention numbers taken on the Guide platform because it wouldn’t matter if they were taking content that wasn’t exclusive.

This is the first Guide exclusive class that he’s tracking. It’s not all classes. I needed to clarify that. My bad, sorry. That’s one class.

I don’t think that’s bad.

I wonder how many of those are people that took the hack work around?

That’s a good question because once you have the link in your history, it’s so easy to get. Anybody can get it. It’s not difficult. That’s a good question.

They just drop those in some of the bootcamps.

The four bootcamps there. I’ve been hearing about them all day because I talked to so many clients that do Peloton for MetPro for my day job. I talked to so many people that do Peloton all day. It has been a buzz about the four bootcamps. Everybody is like, “I’m so excited to take them.”

I feel like the reaction to the Guide is getting much better than we thought it was going to be at first. The more that it gets into the marketplace, the greater success it will have long term.

It is certainly not something we can say is a big fail.

That’s the impression I’m getting now. It’s spinning on me. I’m having a spin.

That’s nice. It has been a little bit since Peloton had something that they turned around. The people at first were like, “What’s the point of this?” Now as more people get it, they’re singing its praises. Credit where credit is due.

That’s a positive Peloton story.

In different news, you had an interesting post.

Ariel Brockwell was in the Run, Lift and Live group.

Peloton has these special meetups for Chase Sapphire card holders.

I thought this was funny. I’ve seen this in other places, but I couldn’t remember where. I’m glad you pulled this up because then we can talk about it because I kept forgetting. It has to be a Chase Sapphire Reserve and there are only three of them listed. It’s all on June 2nd and two of them are not sold out. One of them is sold out, the New York City one.

The instructors aren’t actually going to be there. It’s virtual. You go to the store in real life. You hang out with other people, and then the instructor engagement, which I think was Rad Lopez, is done virtually.

I saw two distinct things if I’m quoting this right. The Peloton apparel launch party thing and then this ability to do that virtual meetup with Rad. I thought those were two distinct things where you have to have the card. Hopefully, I’m saying that right. That’s how I read it. I’m away and when I saw this post, I didn’t realize it was an exclusive thing. I was like, “How come I never heard of this? How can I get into this thing? It’s in New York, that’s not too far from Virginia. I might consider going there.” That’s when Ariel was like, “John, you have to have one of these cards. You got to have a Chase Sapphire card.”

This is interesting because we talked about the fact that there are special badges that are for certain corporations. Now we’re hearing about these special parties for certain corporations. This is interesting. What happened to taking care of the OG members? What is that about?

Maybe the OG members have Sapphire cards.

You have to if you want it to be included.

They said this all along. We’re going to be giving special offers for people who actually got this card and a special discount on purchasing the bike and any connected fitness equipment, and some discount off on your membership if you have this card. They said this stuff but I was oblivious because nobody is telling me about it. I guess because I don’t have a card.

It was vague. If you had known from day one that they were going to do this and they had said, “We’re going to do this specific thing,” that might have encouraged you to buy the card. This vague promise of something we might do in the future is hard to get too excited about.

I saw someone post in the comments on your page, John, that they didn’t even make it known. There’s a page for general offers like Citibank. We have a Citi card. They have something like that. They didn’t push it out. They just log in to see like, “What other things do they have for me?” They raise Peloton stuff in there that the person would have been into but didn’t know about.

That has me thinking now if my reaction was, “Let me go sign up before they are all sold out,” other people are going, “I might need to go get this Chase Sapphire card.”

I definitely think so. The second people found out that the Guide had exclusive content for seven weeks, people were like, “Now I got to get the Guide,” myself included. You tell people that you can have this special thing, but then now you get the card. You can’t go to it because it’s going to be sold out. So then what? Do you just hope that next year they’re going to do something else again?

It all ends on June 22nd and then you hope for the next season for something to happen. I did go look. I can’t lie. When Ariel said all this, I did go to the Chase website. I go, “They think about this?” I did do that.

Did you get the card?

I didn’t get the card but I did go to the site.

Did Erica say no? Is that why you didn’t get it?

Erica would have said no.

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

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

Thanks, John.

—

Joining us once again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and Sports Psychology consultant. She was a five-year national team member in rhythmic gymnastics and Sports Psychologist for USA gymnastics. It’s Dr. Jenn.

Hello.

We have another person in need of some help. This question comes from Shannon Burrows Campbell. She says that her brain stops her from being her best self and so does her fork. She says in all seriousness, “Fitness injuries can be a sideliner pretty quick and can last a long time. Help.”

Did she clarify at all what she meant by that? How did she put it? That she’s her own worst enemy?

Basically, her brain stops her from being her best self and so does her fork. She did not clarify.

I’m going to assume that what she means is that she has a lot of negative self-talk that ends up derailing her. She’s probably in that cycle of you feeling bad about yourself because you’re trying to self-soothe. You end up feeling bad that you ate something. Because you ate something that made you feel bad, you get into that diet mentality of, “I was bad.” You have this constant loop of I feel bad. I’ll eat and then I make myself feel bad about it, then I feel worse. You just go in circles.

If that’s what’s going on for her, the key to that is to break that cycle and to start looking at the food that she’s eating that is upsetting her differently. Typically, when we get in that cycle, we’re overeating or bingeing. What I want to encourage her to do is to look at the bingeing or overeating differently. What we tend to do in that situation is overeat, and then the next morning you go, “I was so bad. I hate myself. I can’t believe I ate these things. Today, I’m going to start myself. I got to make up for yesterday. Today is a new day. I’m going to be good today.”

The first thing I want to change in that thinking is that when you have overeat or binge, it is typically a cry for help in some way, shape or form. What it means is you’re turning to food to soothe yourself. There’s something going on that you’re not able to deal with, that you don’t have the tools for, that you are having a lot of feelings that maybe you’re trying to push down. Instead of meeting that binge with anger, hostility and negative self-talk, I encourage people to meet that with compassion, which is probably the hardest thing you can ever do.

When you’re feeling like that, the last thing that you can do is be nice to yourself. You’re mad at yourself for feeling that way. You feel betrayed by your own brain. It’s not cool.

At the same time, if you have a girlfriend who called you up and was like, “I screwed up at work today and I feel so terrible,” you wouldn’t be like, “You, stupid. I told you not to screw up like that.” We do that to ourselves. Instead, you should be talking to yourself and go, “It sounded like I needed something that I wasn’t able to provide for myself. It sounds like I’m having a hard time. What do I need now to feel better?”

Instead of starving yourself, what I encourage you to do is wait until you’re hungry for your next meal and start to honor your body more. When we binge, we’re not honoring our body, we’re stuffing things into it that it doesn’t want. If you can instead say, “I’m going to honor my body by waiting until I’m hungry for the next meal.” I’m going to ask myself, “What do I want? What would make my body feel good right now?” Sometimes the answer is steamed broccoli. Sometimes the answer is, “I ate so heavy yesterday.”

If you listen to your body, your body may want something lighter because our bodies are wise. We underestimate how wise they are when we’re merely tuned into them. The more we honor and respect our body both philosophically and in action, the more likely we are to make choices that are consistent with what our body wants to meet. I believe that when we tune into our bodies, we will have certain food cravings.

I normally hate tomato juice. I can’t stand it. When I was pregnant, I craved it constantly. I think I needed Vitamin A. When I listened to my body on a day-to-day basis, my body will tell me exactly what it needs. I’ve been doing this for decades. As you guys know, I’m someone who has recovered from an eating disorder. I’m an intuitive eater. I follow that model. I tune in and always ask myself, what do I want? How am I going to feel after the meal? How do I want to feel after the meal?

There are times when you want comfort food or you want to feel whole or you want to feel calm, heavy, lethargic, and curl up with a blanket and be cosy. A lot of the time, you want to feel lighter at the end of your meal and not bogged down and feel good and ready to move on with your day. I think that she’s got to change her relationship with food and also break her negative self-talk. The best thing for that is always therapy. I always recommend that everybody have one year of weekly therapy.

 

If money is an issue, I highly recommend checking out local health clinics, and mental health clinics, and also checking out online. There are a lot of online services now that you can get either free or get them as you’re able to pay based on their ability to pay. The other thing is bibliotherapy. It’s being able to look at what are the issues you’re struggling with self-talk and cognitive behavioral therapy books and intuitive eating books in order to conquer these issues.

Lots of great tools there. Thank you so much.

If somebody is looking for books because crackpots write books too, is there an easy way to weed out nut jobs?

I always look at credentials and then I also look at reviews of what people say. There are a lot of people who pay for reviews, but when you’re talking about thousands of reviews, it becomes a lot less likely. One book that I read is an older book from the ‘90s called Managing Your Mind. I liked that book because there are a lot of cognitive behavioral tips and tools. As you guys know, I like books that give you specifics. That’s why I write my books the way I do. I would like for readers to have specific tools to understand the background of what the studies are that make this a good tool for them. That book is a good one.

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

On all social media @DrJennMann, and also InStyle Magazine online. I have a column called Hump Day With Dr. Jenn. I answer people’s questions all about relationships and sex.

—

We have a new instructor.

Logan Aldridge joins the team. Congratulations to Logan. People have been waiting for this for so long. He’s been a consultant for adaptability programming for Peloton for quite a while. I think it was a year and now he has officially joined as an instructor. We knew it was coming but it’s so exciting to see. It’s inspiring to watch him workout and how he adapts to things. He makes it look so easy.

In the video we have, he’s doing push-ups with one arm. I can’t do them with two.

That’s why I’m laughing because he makes this look so easy and he has one arm while he’s doing a push-up and I’m struggling with two. It’s inspiring. He’s also funny and I appreciate his video and how he’s very him in the video. I’m looking forward to taking his classes. I think that he is going to be an excellent instructor. I’m very much looking forward to the addition to the team.

—

You’re probably already aware of this by now, but Becs Gentry is with a child.

It was such a fun video that she did. I shared it on social media that she did live during the class. She talked about how it is going to be different this November. Instead of the New York City Marathon, it was going to be a different marathon and a different finish line she was crossing. She said, “This time there will be three.” Her partner will be waiting for her at the finish line and going through the finish line with her.

A lot of people had thought that she must be engaged because they saw rings on her finger. She was like, “No, it’s the same ring that I always wear. Austin and I are not engaged.” I thought that was pretty cute. She gets a kick out of all of our speculating. That’s exciting. I was taking a class with her and she said that she and Jess King have the exact same due date. It’s going to be sometime in November. They’re both going to have their babies and it’s going to be very interesting.

It’s a race. We should also say that our taro card reader, Erica McLean, was remarkably prescient when it came to the idea of pregnancies. We have been in talks with her and she will be returning soon.

We’re going to do the second half of 2022 and an early look at 2023. It will be interesting to see what else she has to say. Lots of people have been asking for it. She will be on very soon.

Christine D’Ercole got married.

Several instructors were there. Several Peloton community members were there, which is wonderful. Christine is one instructor that remembers the OGs and includes them and is very appreciative of them. Personally, I am appreciative that she does that. Not all the instructors do. It’s nice that she took the time and that all the people that she invited were able to go. That was cool and very special.

SourcingJournal.com has a story about fashion brands and athlete ambassadors. Within that article, they mentioned Emma Lovewell.

You might remember a while back, she started that collaboration with Sene jeans. It’s basically jeans that are very specific to you. They are custom made for you based on your sizing. It’s not just like size 32 or size 28 or whatever. They are made to your specifications and the style that you are asking for. They talked about in this article how having her as an ambassador has been very good for their sales. I don’t feel like that’s any surprise, but I thought it was interesting to see.

Michelle K from Shape magazine sat down with Bradley Rose and talked about how he bounced back from his stroke.

He almost quit fitness. That’s the whole point of the article. Back in 2019, he had a stroke and they told him, “You’re never going to be doing fitness again.” Apparently, his wife was a huge part of the reason that he is back and he is a Peloton instructor. He is so happy because she was like, “It’s all about mindset. You don’t have to sit here and give up because the doctor said this might happen. You can still try and you can push yourself and you can see what you can get with it.” Look at him now. From April 2019 to April 2022, that’s not a very long time. That’s pretty incredible. As usual, great article by our favorite, Michelle K.

It also shows you the importance of picking the right wife. Denis Morton had a special salute to heart valve recipients.

I guess this guy is a part of heart valve surgery. He has a blog. He is a huge Peloton fan. He takes classes with all the instructors. He was taking a class with Denis Morton and he got a shout out. Not only did he get a shout out, but Denis Morton went on to talk about heart valve surgery and how important it was, and gave a big shout out to heart valve surgery. It was pretty cool and this guy was excited about it. He wrote a blog and I thought it was interesting. You don’t see a lot of little details like that.

Matty Maggiacomo has an Instagram live called Out Loud.

It’s going to be out loud with Morgan Lee and you can submit questions. It’s all in celebration of Pride month. It’s going to be amazing. Matty used to be on TV. He’s good at interviewing people. He’s a very well-spoken person. This will be a fun Instagram live.

YahooLife has an article with Tunde talking about her wellness habits.

There are five wellness habits that she wished that she had started sooner. It’s simple things like if she’s filled with anxiety, trying to pause and surrender to that moment and letting it be. It’s little things that she wishes she had been doing for a very long time. It’s a cool article and it might give you some tips on how to help your day go by better.

Kendall was on a podcast called Uncut with Jay Cutler.

You can check it out. I haven’t listened to it but she shares about her mental health and how she was borderline suicidal. She also talks about how many people are on the Peloton platform, etc. Lots of good stuff. Lots of interesting little tidbits.

—

Peloton has a studio reopening event scheduled for June 10th for the press only.

It’s press only like they do for movies. There are going to be eight classes that day. The press gets to choose which class they wanted to take. They’re all full now. They’re going to go in and they’re going to take a class and it’s basically a brouhaha. I get why they’re inviting the press but people who have been on this platform forever are like, “Peloton, really?” Do you not get what the community does? They don’t seem to understand. I am concerned about the direction of how they are dismissive of it now. You guys got to where you are because of the community. That is a fact. We talked to somebody not that long ago who joined in 2014. Just so people get an idea about how many people they brought to the platform, back then you used to get one free month of Peloton for however many people.

Every time you sold a bike, that was the referral.

There were no limits like there are now. This person never paid a bill up until a few months ago since 2014. When I say the community brought people on board, they brought people on board. I’ve gotten at least 75 people that I was given credit for, not to mention all the ones I didn’t get credit for. It’s crazy that they don’t acknowledge it. I’m not saying that people who have been around a long time should be treated differently. If you’re going to make a special thing for the press, it would be cool if you remembered where you started and gave the people like Laura Pug, the first person to get a thousand rides or the Rosenbergs or the people that have been around since day one. It would be nice if you gave them a little something.

Also, this is a good time to remind people that your price went up. That’s literally in my show notes. That’s the next topic. That wasn’t supposed to sound quite as crappy as I did. Me saying crappy things is my brand. We’re just reminding people that the membership went up to $5 a month on June 1st, which honestly makes sense.

After all this time, it’s not that big of a deal. That’s a thing.

Barry McCarthy attended the JP Morgan conference where he discussed customer love.

Not really because the customers love you. They love Peloton but Peloton doesn’t love them back. That’s my point. The customers are what has driven this company. The community is the one that created HRI. That became Homecoming for people who don’t know that. You got to remember that this started with a group of people who were so in love with the brand that they spread the word like wildfire. They were like a religion bringing people in. They started the Homecoming event. They started by coming to the studio.

They’re the ones that were like, “We want to be there even though we have this bike at home.” Peloton didn’t come up with that. The community is the one that started the Facebook group. Peloton didn’t do that. When I say that the community is the one that started it, it’s not based on how I feel. It’s based on facts. These are real things you can point to that people have done. It would be cool that instead of talking about how customers love them, he spent a little time sharing his love for the customers. He’s not the warm fuzzy guy he is, so we’re not going to get that.

That’s not who he is and ultimately not what they brought him in to do.

He’s not. He’s focused on numbers and that’s what this will be.

Inc.com has an article about how Peloton has to get off the bike.

They feel like Peloton has been taking too long to transform. They don’t want other people to make that same mistake. Basically, it’s talking about the strategy of how Peloton has waited too long. I don’t know that they actually waited too long. They did a lot of things like the tread and they have this Rower in production forever. The problem is when they came up with the ideas, those ideas took forever to come to fruition for whatever reason.

My understanding is there’s a lot of stuff in the background we know nothing about. A piece of that is what Barry McCarthy alluded to in the earnings call about the platform that the engineers use and things like that. I think those are some of it, but I think there’s a whole lot more we don’t have any idea about, and that’s a real shame. I thought the stock would have recovered a little bit by now, but it didn’t.

It’s odd because it does seem like they’re making a lot of decisions that the stock market people seem to want them to do, but it seemed stubbornly stuck in that $12 to $15 range. Honestly, it doesn’t seem to make any sense as much as we bitch about them sometimes now.

Peloton at its core, there are many people that say this and it’s true, that the content is what you came there for and the love of the community. The community is still there and the content is still great. They need more of the content but that’s a whole another day. In general though, what they provide is excellent content. I believe first best in class.

—

It’s been a bit since we’ve had a visit from the Peloton Prophet.

I know and I do not like this visit. People are not going to be happy about this. A lot of you have been asking me what is the deal with the Tread+? Just a little background for people who are new or don’t have a tread and they don’t pay attention to this stuff. The Tread+ was the first tread. The bigger one with the slats came out four years ago in December. It was recalled in November 2021 because unfortunately there was a horrible death that occurred where a child was sucked underneath it.

My personal belief is that the powers that be decided to make an example out of Peloton. They stuck it to them and made them do a recall. When they made them do that recall, they said that they had to submit a redesign and until that redesign was done, we would not be seeing the Tread+. Besides that, you had three options. You could have your Tread+ moved to a room that was secure that you could shut and lock the door. You could then have it sent back for a full refund, assuming it was in good shape. You could keep it and do nothing, and later whenever they make whatever change they’re making, then it would be retrofitted to your Tread+. Those are the three options as they occurred at the time.

This November, we have about five and a half months left and you can still return your Tread+. A lot of people have been waiting to hear what’s going to happen with the new Tread+ until they make that decision, including me. I have said since the beginning, what is the point of them coming out with the Tread+ prior to November? If you’re going to send it back, then why should they give you a new one for free? That’s pretty much what I would do.

If there’s a new one then cool. Give me my money back and I’ll go buy the new one.

They’re not going to tell us anything. They might tell us something, but there is not going to be a new Tread+ scene before November. It’s not happening. According to the Peloton Prophet, we will not see this new tread until at least May of 2023. In addition to that, I was told that there was a warehouse full of Tread+ and they were thrown away. Tom had a very interesting thought about what that could mean. At this point, we are moving to conjecture completely on our part.

Whatever they’ve done to the tread, it’s very different. It’s a complete rethink of what the Tread+ is going to look like. If it was something that they could be like, “Here’s the thing, put it on your tread,” then they wouldn’t need to get rid of a bunch of Tread+ if that is in fact accurate. That means that they’ve made changes to the Tread+ that are so significant that they’re like, “These are unsalvageable. Get rid of them.”

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To recap, the only part that the Peloton Prophet was very clear that is happening is we will not see the Tread+ redesign until at least May of 2023. Separately, they heard but have not been confirmed a warehouse full of Tread+ was thrown away. I have no confirmation that that occurred. I just want to be very clear about the conjecture we are making versus the actual report.

If you’re right, Tom and all those things are true, wouldn’t that mean that the people who had them would then get it switched out with a new one? If the thing that they said at the beginning was they were going to fix the Tread+ you already owned, and they make a fix and it’s completely different and it involves an entirely new tread, doesn’t that imply that you would then get a new Tread+ at that time?

I think it does. They’re going to need those off the market. If they told people, “We’re going to fix it,” you at least have to have a window of time where people can swap them if they want to. I would think that if there isn’t an add on that they can give you to modify the existing tread and you made your decision based on that. I would think that they would need to still let you swap it out even though the time has passed. If not, then we will see more posts in Facebook Peloton groups from class-action lawsuits.

I think they’ll succeed on that one if that were to occur. Also, my understanding is Peloton is still servicing Tread+ and they will be even beyond November. That’s my understanding.

That is good because I know you love yours.

I do. I don’t want it to go away. I love it.

—

Every week we reach out to the community. They give us questions about nutrition and then we invite Angelo on and subject him to me to answer your questions, so here he is from MetPro.

It’s a trade-off.

It’s a small price to pay.

Thanks, Angelo. This question is from two people because they both said almost the exact same thing word for word. Amanda and Diane both want to know about meal prep. They know they should be doing it because it will help them not have to figure out what to do after they get home from work, but they don’t enjoy it so it tends to slip.

Amanda and Diane, do your meal prep. The best I can do is make a passionate plea for the value of meals if you want to achieve a goal. Most people are like, “I want to lose a few pounds. I want to tone up. I want to lean out or I want to perform better.” The single most relevant action you can take that will impact that is not your workout tomorrow. It’s not what you order for dinner tonight. It’s a routine of meal prep and it does not have to be cumbersome. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to focus on lunches and snacks or even lunch and one snack.

A lot of people make it out to be a lot larger ordeal. Every one of the clients that work with me is going to meal prep. I know this because before they hire me, they tell me, “I played football in college. I ran track in high school. I did this and that. I eat this and that. I liked this food. I don’t like that food.” I’m going to stop you right there. I have one question for you. If we work together, I’m going to ask you to prepare your lunches and your snacks in advance. You do not need to eat them 100% of the time. Life happens. I get that.

As a general rule, can you follow a routine of predetermined lunches and snacks? If they answer yes, we work together. I know I can get results from that person because I have a routine to anchor to. I have levers and dials. I can’t talk enough about this point. When you start a simple routine of food prepping, just lunches and snacks, breakfast is never the problem. Assuming you wake up in your own house, which is usually a good thing. That means you’re not sleepwalking in the middle of the night.

You know what’s in your house. You’ve shopped. You have quality food in your house. Never have I had a client that says, “Angelo, I’m so good with lunches. I’m so good with dinners. I can’t seem to get breakfast right.” I never had that ever. Breakfast is not the problem. Here’s the deal. Dinner is not the problem either. Dinner is more of a reflection of the consistency of your day. If your day went something like this, “I got out of bed. I was rushing. I had a cup of coffee and a pastry. I didn’t have time for lunch. I grabbed a bag of chips and I haven’t eaten anything until 6:00 at night,” let me tell you how your dinner is going to go. Not good.

Eat a healthy breakfast. While you ate breakfast, packed a little bag of nuts, almonds, and some fruits. Don’t make it elaborate, just something simple. You have a little baggy for your afternoon snack. You ate a quality lunch. You had a quality afternoon snack. I can tell you that at least some of the time, you’re going to find it easier to have a quality dinner. I’ll go one step further. If you were to be a fly on the wall and listen in to one of our coaches having their early conversations with our clients, here’s the type of conversation you would be hearing, “I know, Johnny. I’m glad you lost a few pounds. That’s very good. That’s excellent. Here’s the deal. I don’t care. What I’m interested in is, did you pack your lunch? Did you pack your snacks? Yes or no?”

Here’s why your coach is going to be absolutely, line in the sand, have you have that routine. That coach knows because they have worked with and they have been in charge of helping hundreds of thousands of people lose weight before you. What they have learned is any outcome that happens in the next week or the next 30 days is meaningless if there is no routine in place to anchor to and reproduce. If we don’t establish a routine, I don’t care if my clients lose weight in their first week. What I care about is establishing a routine.

If there is a routine, I will get them to lose the weight they want to lose. I will get them to the performance they want to be or whatever that next step is, but I can’t get there if there’s no routine. You guys have heard me tell the story before. I have two clients, client A and client B. Client A says, “Angelo. I wasn’t able to pack my meals. I didn’t have anything prepared, but throughout the day, I made good choices. I stuck to my meal plan and I even lost a pound yesterday.” Client B says, “I prepared my lunch. I prepared my afternoon snack. I ate everything I was supposed to and was on schedule, but on the way home from work, I stopped at my grandma’s house and she made fresh apple pie. I caved and I had some apple pie.”

I want you to be client B, not client A. I want you to be the apple pie client. I can do something with that client because they’re not going to have apple pie every day. Whereas client A may have lost a pound and may have eaten good yesterday, but they’ve done nothing that suggests that tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now or a year from now, anything has changed.

They’re like, “I’m doing the things barely, but I did them for one day.”

Speed is king. When you are working with a professional coach, that is what they’re there to teach you. It’s to say, “No, don’t do it that way.” The way you’re doing it might not be “wrong,” but we’ve watched hundreds and thousands of people try to fit this into a back lifestyle. We know it has to be quick and convenient. If it’s not, you won’t stick with it. Speed is king and there are so many little lifestyle tricks and tips. We can’t get into them right now. We don’t have the time, but Diane and Amanda, try it. Lunches and snacks.

Try it for one week. Don’t make one at a time. Make about three at a time. Three lunches, three snacks, even if you work from home. I hear that a lot, “I work from home so I don’t need to prepare it in advance.” Still prepare it in advance. Put it in the fridge and have it ready to go. You will be amazed. You’re going to see more progress in that next week than you’ve seen in the last 2 or 3 months.

I think they need to view it as time-shifting. It feels like it’s a daunting task and it can be, but once you do it, now you’re done and you don’t have to mess with anything for the week. When you come home from work, you grab the thing and heat it. It takes you 5 minutes to make dinner instead of 40 minutes.

You don’t have to think about it until next weekend or whenever you do your meal prep.

A lot of my executives are all about the bottom line, “I can’t invest that time.” I’ll be like, “Let’s do the math. What did you do for lunch yesterday? Wait, I’m going to stop you there. What time did you get in your car? How long did it take you to drive there, order, eat and come back? Now let’s compare that against your food prep.” You will see that it’s always a winning equation there, but I have clients tell me all the time, “The first time I food prepped, it took me 50 minutes to do my food prep.” That’s normal because you’re inexperienced. You haven’t been doing it for weeks or months. Give it a few weeks. You’re going to have that 50-minute process down to 10 minutes.

It’s like when you buy your house. The first time you cut your grass, it’s two hours. You’re like, “Do I start over here? Do I start over there?” Once you’ve lived there for a few months, you get it down to 35 minutes. You’re like, “I didn’t get a chance to finish my podcasts.” Now you’re like, “Maybe I’ll eat.”

It’s like shaving. If I only do it once a month, it’s an ordeal. If I shave every day, it’s not too bad.

You do that with haircuts. I got them all at once in my 30s. I’m done now and I’m done now. Thank you so much for that wonderful advice. If people would like tips like this tailor-made for them, where can they find you?

MetPro.co/tco. Come talk to us.

Thank you.

—

We talked about how DJ Khaled was digging his Peloton tread. I guess he posted a video showing off his moves on the tread and almost wiped out. He came close.

Just to be clear though, I would never ever have the confidence to even try what he was doing. It was great. I love seeing how much fun he was having though. That’s what the classes are about. That’s the joy of Peloton.

It’s also like, “These have been recalled because they’re dangerous.”

DJ Khaled, don’t make anything bad happen.

Don’t have him take the regular tread off the market too.

Don’t forget. It was already off one.

—

Hannah Corbin is back with her Country Happy Hour series.

It starts Friday. She was asking for people’s favorite country stars and artists. As a side note, Jenn Sherman did her sod out show. That’s very cool. This stuff is coming back for the summer. I hope they bring back the Yacht Rock. Speaking of Yacht Rock, don’t forget in October.

You’re going to see a collection of Yacht Rock classics with us at the Family Arena, which is where I work. We have a private suite and there will be some food there and it’s reasonably priced. It’s $90 a person. It features Orleans. Firefall, The Babys, John Ford Coley, Walter Egan and Peter Beckett from Player. If you want to hang out with us in the St Louis area, we would love to see you. You can get information on that in The Clip Out group. There’s also a link in the newsletter that I’ll be sending out on Sunday. You can click on there and get all the info. Also, there was a Peloton apparel drop.

There was but I got to say, people are not excited anymore.

They’re so frequent now. It used to be like how much anticipation there was around apparel drops. Now it’s just a steady stream of new clothes.

I was surprised too with Pride only being three items. I guess all of our stuff will start having fewer items but no, this one had plenty. Although nothing stood out to me as got-to-haves. As we’ve talked about a million times, they should not all appeal to me. There should be a good variety.

It’s like the classes, right?

That’s right.

—

Finally, we have one birthday coming up this week on June 8th, Cody Rigsby.

Happy birthday to Cody Rigsby. Make sure you go tell him to keep sizzling or something like that. He’ll enjoy it.

—

Joining us is Mark Steines. How is it going?

I’m good. How are you guys doing? It’s nice to connect with some Midwestern roots. I live out here in Los Angeles. That’s my home. My peeps are back there.

It’s funny how people that moved to LA or New York are like, “It’s nice to connect with my Midwestern roots,” but nobody is ever like, “It’s not enough to go back. I’m not going to buy a house there.” If I meet somebody in passing, I’ll be a little nicer to them.

My wife came back from her class reunion at Ohio Wesleyan and they had a blast. She’s like, “It’s awesome. We slept in this barn that we rented. It was fixed up. It was wonderful. The people are so nice. I had a whole meal and including the tip, it was $11. It was great.” I go, “Are you telling me you want to move?” “No.”

That’s the problem when we think about, “Maybe we should move when the kids are older,” and then you see how much it costs in other cities compared to here. We need to start thinking of Missouri as we live in a third world country like when people moved to Costa Rica because it’s so much cheaper for retirement. That’s going to be Missouri for us.

My wife asked me about coming to Lake of the Ozarks with the people she reunited with. I’m thinking about how they’ve all connected again. She played soccer there. A bunch of her teammates and friends are like, “We need to do this every year.” They wanted to go to Lake of the Ozarks. I know people there.”

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If they want to open a casino there, don’t fall for it. Run. It was all filmed in Georgia.

He’s like, “I know all about the TV shows.”

My wife has watched the final episodes, but I have yet to see that because I’ve been busy working on a project.

You both watch the show, but you don’t watch it together. That seems dangerous to a relationship.

How do you guys navigate that?

I think it would be easier to have sex with other people. It is LA though.

She’s pretty good. She loves it. I love the show. I was going to bed super early. We have a 4-year-old and a 20-year-old, so we’ve got this scope. I’ve got two from my previous marriage, and then we have our daughter. By the time she gets to bed, we’re exhausted. I’ve been getting up at 3:30 or 4:00 to get to work when the house is quiet and still. I can think and do my thing. I would pass out and get to watch it. I’ll probably catch up on it.

I’ll be curious about your reaction to the end. I know we’ve got people here who would kill me if I said anything. We have enough issues with spoilers.

When I was at Entertainment Tonight, I remember I was in Rome doing something with The Da Vinci Code movie. I’m a photographer, so I was taking pictures on the set. They came over and they’re like, “You can’t post those. You can’t use those. You have no permission.” I’m like, “I guess you’re just going to see it on my hard drive until I die. Somebody come and find them and be like, ‘Look at this.’”

“What are you going to spoil? It’s a book. It’s already out.”

You witness all this stuff that’s going on and you cannot say anything.

You would think after the movie has been released, it would be okay, but no?

I suppose I could now probably do something with it, but who cares?

Now it’s old news.

Now it’s like, “I can watch that.” Some of the stuff we shot was in this library. It’s interesting because there’s a scene in there where they’re in this two-story library and the books were so old. The paper could go bust like that. They had these big bright lights for filming and they were hot. They had extreme precautions. They put blankets up around areas.

I assume that they brought in a bunch of fake books.

It was true and authentic. We went down deep inside in this tunnel. It was all secret and you could see this process happening. It’s all top secret. It has been a moment. I do have plenty of stories and memories. It was interesting to be in Rome, the Vatican and doing that.

How did you get to do all these fun things?

My dad worked at John Deere for many years. My mom cleaned houses.

We haven’t asked you a thing about Peloton. You mentioned that you were an OG. When exactly did you get your bike? This is a crazy story.

We will be married six years in August 2022. We got married in our backyard. It’s a big surprise wedding kind of thing. The doorbell rings and I’m like, “Can you get that?” She’s like, “I think it’s for you.” I go there and there are two guys standing with the Peloton. I had seen the bike but I can’t remember where and how. I saw either an advertisement or something like that. It will be six years this August 21, 2022, that I will have my bike. I love it. I have probably sold twenty of them by word of mouth. People are with this.

Kevin Frazier, my cohost who stepped into my shoes at Entertainment Tonight, has one. Debbie Matenopoulos, who cohosted with me on Home & Family, has one. I’m not sure if Leeza Gibbons has one or not. There are so many people in my world, even some family members. My hair and makeup team that I worked with got it. It’s just because I wouldn’t shut up about it.

I do know that feeling because you started the podcast because I would not shut up.

You’ve been trying to shut her up this whole time. I don’t get that. My wife doesn’t. She does all the yoga stuff that’s on there and core strength. I do the core stuff as well. We do some of the stretching and flexibility stuff, but she is relentless with the yoga thing. That’s hers. It’s a great platform.

Many people don’t know that Peloton is more than a bike. The word Peloton is not synonymous with the bike and that is all that it does. That’s a real area of opportunity for Peloton to educate people that they are more than the bike and that they do a lot more. They need to get that word out there a lot more than they have.

At the risk of crossing into other products, I was approached a while ago by Beachbody to do their ten-minute trainer. I was a spokesperson for them. I was trained by Tony Horton’s ghost trainer, Michael Karpenko. He is still a friend of mine. I mentioned to him, “I’m loving my bike,” and my whole thing. He goes, “They contacted me to do an infomercial when they first launched.” He sends me pictures of the actual prototype. He still had them and he’s like, “Check out if they are the ones they were looking at going through,” because they didn’t know how they were going to launch if they were going to do it through some sort of infomercial.

With that said, Beachbody did wonders in the way they spread their wings and came out with all these different products. I haven’t switched or gone back to that, but I do share that feeling like there’s so much there on that app to use and get after. I was playing football and I blew out my left knee. I had back surgery but my left knee is giving me a few issues. I can’t run, but going outside and going for a good walk. I had a tread, not the Peloton. I got rid of it for space reasons. We live in LA, so there’s never a bad day to go walking.

Unless it’s all on fire.

That is true. Now, we are facing a low water supply. We can water our yards once a week, maybe twice. It’s getting bad. We’re in a drought and then the fires will happen. The other thing that’s happening out here is people are getting their catalytic converters ripped off their cars.

Why would people do that?

Because of the precious metals, and they’ll take them out in four minutes. I watched a guy do it on a home security camera. A guy posted it and it was gone.

How do they get into your car? Do they use those little automotive dollies because you have to jack the car up? Do they jack the car up?

No. They slide underneath it. They have like a solid saw and cut it right out. Some of the people are building little cages. There are some devices that will help lock it in place. From what I understand, once you put a new one on, it has a VIN number on it. You have to go back to the DMV and get that VIN number registered with your car. It’s a pain in the butt to do. For four minutes, it could be gone. We deal with stuff like that all the time, but it’s sunny and 75.

Here it can be 75 and somehow still 100.

The high was 95 and it felt like a billion degrees. Now it’s 80 and it was beautiful outside. It’s weird how the humidity can fluctuate crazily.

I rode this bike across the country. I didn’t move an inch, but I was going through a weird health period where I was diagnosed with polymyalgia rheumatica. It’s rare. You’re put on prednisone. I was on prednisone for nineteen months and there were some things along the way because I was diagnosed before the Rose Parade started. It’s basically an inflammation in your body and you can’t bend your elbows. Your whole body can’t move at all. The prednisone clears that up right away, but there’s the moon face that goes along with it. I was doing everything I could to keep the weight off.

I decided that I’m going to ride every day as far as I can. My wife is from Boston. I always dreamt about riding a regular bike as well to ride across the country. I want to always do RAGBRAI from my state back in Iowa, and I’ve never had a chance to go. I’ve had chances. I haven’t gone because it’s done in July and nobody wants to go in July. I managed to accumulate enough miles. It is over 3,000 miles. I was there and came back a little bit. That was a goal that was a weird thing to set up for myself, but I would log in the miles. During that time, I ended up losing my hip. I had to have a hip replacement. This bike has helped me come back from a lot of stuff.

Did you do your rehab for your hip whenever you were on the bike? Could you do the rehab there?

I had twelve weeks of rehab. The procedure for the hip is remarkably easy. I went in at 7:00. They put me out at 7:20, and a little after 11:00, I walked through my front door with a walker. The thing that really hurts which laid me up for a while after the twelve weeks of that, it turned out I have a carpal tunnel in both wrists. I could not put weight on the handlebars.

How did you get carpal tunnel? That’s normally something the checker at a grocery store or a teenage boy gets.

I don’t know because I’m still dealing with it. I don’t know if it is part of polymyalgia rheumatica. I’ll get cortisone shots in two fingers and this finger here. I got a trigger finger. They’ll just lock up. There are only a few things that keep me off my bike. It’s like a Burt Reynolds, “I only take this cowboy hat off for one thing,” Smokey and the Bandit and nobody knows what that’s one.

I knew exactly where that was from. I have a good autographed picture of Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit hanging on the wall of our living room. We were at Comic-Con and it was on sale. This was eight months before he died, and it was $200 framed. I was like, “That dude is not going to be alive much longer.” That’s the image. I’m like, “When he dies, that’s going to be the clip they’ll show in the in memoriam at the Oscars.” It’s the one of him in the red shirt, behind the wheel of the car, where he looks straight at the camera and just gives you that Burt Reynolds smirk, I was like, “Done, I’ll take it.” He died eight months later and we went back the next year. The similar pictures were going for $900 and $1,000.

You should put that up and see what you can get for.

Smokey and the Bandit is awesome.

He loves his autographs.

I love my ‘70s pop culture.

Every single thing we ever talk about always comes back to his pop culture. He will manage to put it into a TV show every single time.

I am fighting the urge to tell you the story of the making of Smokey and the Bandit 3. It’s a fascinating story. It was originally called Smokey is the Bandit because Burt Reynolds isn’t in it. The plot of the movie was that Jackie Gleason dresses up as Bandit and makes the run. It was bad. They hid the fact that they made it. They hired Jerry Reed to come in and film other scenes that they could drop in to try to make it better, and it didn’t. The existence of this film was apocryphal for 25 years until somebody finally found a teaser trailer of Jackie Gleason promoting not Smokey and the Bandit 3 but Smokey is the Bandit. That was the original title of the third one.

I love that kind of stuff. I l did a show on Access TV, not Access Hollywood, but the one that Mark Cuban used to have. It’s the very best of the ‘80s. It was some of the horror movies that they had, but we’ve done some of this in the ‘70s.

Tom would be excellent at being the guy that explains the stuff like he did because he does this all the time. I’m always telling him he should be a professor at a college teaching movie stuff.

I spent twenty minutes teaching my son about the Rural Purge, which is when CBS canceled all of its country-themed shows. They got rid of Mayberry R.F.D., Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and Beverly Hillbillies. They canceled them all at the same time, even though they were giant hits because they were like, “We don’t like these shows. Make them go away.” I was explaining how they canceled all those, then it led to Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. That’s what they put in its place, All In The Family.

It was like Murder, She Wrote, and then at that point, it was everybody over 95.

They targeted that same demo and kept targeting them until death. My theory for Murder, She Wrote is that Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer. She’s the person who’s killed all of these people, and then she swoops in and saves the day by finding the murderer because she has been at the scene of 300 murders.

We need a dateline to investigate that. We could put her under the scope.

The clock is ticking. You get an autographed picture of her.

I can’t believe you know all those shows.

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He knows everything, all of the show, every single show.

When I was a kid, I had a book called The Great TV Sitcom Book. It’s that thick and big. It’s like a phone book. It listed every sitcom and had an article about every sitcom ever made from 1951 until 1984, which is the year I got the book. I Love Lucy might get eight pages, but Please Don’t Eat The Daisies might get a paragraph. I read that book cover to cover multiple times when I was a kid because I was weird.

The phrase, “Jump the shark,” are you familiar with that? Do you know where that came from?

Happy Days. I know that because of Tom.

At least you’re educating her.

It’s funny because sometimes we’ll be in the middle of recording the news segment of the show and I’ll be trying to get through the actual news and Tom is over there babbling.

I went on a thing about the history of the Today Show and J Fred Muggs. People were like, “A monkey used to host the Today Show?” In my head, I’m like, “How do you not know a monkey used to host the Today Show? How could you ever forget that a monkey hosted the Today Show? How did America forget that?”

I’m curious when you talked about Peloton and you said that you used to host the Rose Parade. You mentioned that you got up at 1:30 in the morning to ride.

I still host it. Liza and I took over 7 or 8 years ago.

Do you still get up at 1:30 in the morning to ride?

Yeah, because we start early. They send a driver to pick you up. Not because they want to be nice. They just want to make sure your butt gets to the prey on time. They want to be like, “We’re going to make sure our drivers are there to get you.” I get picked up at 4:00 or 4:30. It’s a great way to shake the cobwebs out and give blood going because there’s so much that happens. I hosted KTLA and then it seemed all over the country. Many markets are picked up by that. There are millions of people around the world who tune in and we are commercial-free so there is no break.

We’re way up high. If you have to go, you’re done like just go in your pants. You have to limit your coffee intake. I’ll come here. It’s funny because I used to take a ride with Jennifer Jacobs when she was there. It’s called a Hot For Teachers, a Van Halen playlist, which is my generation. It was a 30-minute ride. It was one of those that got me going in the morning. I would show up and be like, “Hello, everybody. I just had a day with Peloton this morning.” I get up at 1:30. I take the ride probably about 2:30 because I wake up a little bit, but people are still coming home from New Year’s Eve. There was this studio garage area that I have.” I’m sure they’re like, “That’s Van Halen. They’re partying in there.” That’s my wake-up call. I love it. I’ve been doing this job for so long and it’s a way to get yourself in a performance mode.

Do you have a class that has replaced that? I realized that it doesn’t necessarily have the same music, but it has the same motivational factor for you

Sam Yo did an amazing AC/DC ride. That will probably replace that in 2022. I missed it in 2021 because I was coming off of a horrible year of injuries and everything. Sam will do it. I love watching Emma. I’m taking her rides. The whole tribe is great, from Denis to Matt Wilpers. I love the inspiration from Robin Arzón. There are many nuggets of positivity that come when you take a ride and I’m so competitive. I don’t know how you are with yours, but I need to take my FTP test again because when I did the endurance ride, I just can’t stay in the zone. I’m proud to say this and it probably sounds bragging of me, but I’m constantly anywhere from the top 0.8% to the top 5% because I’m a former athlete. Every day I want to show up and get after it.

What’s cool about Peloton is that it meets you where you are. That’s important to you. For somebody like me, I will never be at the top. It will never happen. I’ve made my peace with that. That’s why I focus so much on finding rides that are fun. They make me want to come back and do it again. That’s where I am. It’s cool that it can do that for both of us, that you can have your competitive ride and I’m like, “Close leaderboard.”

I do it because I’m fighting age and I’m like, “I’m going to win. I’m not slowing down.” That’s the way I am, “I will not let you defeat me.” I am also an endorphin junkie. I’ve run marathons. I’ve done triathlon stuff before. I love what the feeling is like when you get off the bike. It’s a good feeling. My concern is self-care because before coming here, my daughter wanted to jump in the pool. I’m in the pool but I didn’t stretch. I have to like, “I’ll stretch a little bit.” You just to take care of this. The older we get, the more mobility issues.

I tell Tom about that all the time because he does Tonal and he doesn’t stretch after. He stretches before. He does the warm-up that they do, but he doesn’t stretch after it. You got to stretch.

Then I see my wife all bendy.

I don’t like working out. I still don’t like it. Everybody talks about endorphins. I think I don’t have them because I don’t feel that way at all when I’m done. I’m like, “Thank God that’s over.”

It has been like two years and he’s still like this.

For me, it is completely transactional. I am doing this because people that are smarter than me say that maybe I’ll live longer. I guess I’ll trust them because they’re doctors and I got a Mass Communications degree at 45. I know what I don’t know. I guess I’ll do this now. I enjoy none of it. It’s like cutting the grass. I’m glad that it happened, but I would pay someone else to do it if I could.

This is how he is every time he works out.

It’s good to know what you like and what you don’t like. It’s important to take care of your health, to watch what you eat and don’t eat. In your case, vegetables and seafood. My wife is down with it. It’s not that she’s like, “I don’t want to do that,” but she does know red meat or anything like that. She’s pretty much plant-based. We’ve tried some of the restaurants and some of the plant-based meals are really good.

That is another thing about LA that you have that is a much better selection.

They’re not legal here.

You guys have a way better selection of things like that across the board.

We’re fortunate in many ways. It’s a crazy expensive though because they know they got you in advance. They’re like, “Do you want to eat healthily? Do you want to live longer? You’ll be broke.”

What is your leaderboard name?

MSteines. When I rode, there was somebody that was 30. I’m trying to keep up with him. He was touch and go. It’s fun when you have an active leaderboard. Normally, the classes I take are on demand. This is weird because I’ve had my bike for so long. I haven’t reached my 1,000 rides yet, partially because I do a lot longer rides than typically people get there doing shorter rides, 10-minute or 20-minute-ride. I don’t know who I want to take for that 1,000-ride though. I hope to get a shout-out because that would be cool to take your thousand’s ride.

I feel like that’s one that should be required. If you have a 1,000, 2,000 or any thousands.

People would just start gaming the system. If you promise them something, they would definitely game the system.

There’s one song that I want to request. I don’t think people would be put off by it. Ally Love might do this because I know she does a lot of uplifting classes, but it’s Kirk Franklin and the song is Revolution.

I’m not really a gospel guy.

It’s an amazing high-energy song that I think would be good. I don’t know a lot of his catalog, but that particular song is such a great song. I think it would probably get some good responses. It’s old school but it’s still good. I may send it in as a request and see if they can fit it in somewhere because it would be fun to ride to it.

Cliff Dwenger does gospel rides on Sundays. It’s not like Sundays with Love where that happens to the season and its regular basis, but he has done gospel rides. That might be another Ally for you like another avenue.

Maybe I do so well because I’m always looking for the playlist that is from the ‘70s when everybody’s my age. I did take the one where it was a rap song. I saw ESPN did an article and they were talking about Alex Toussaint. There were some football players that did it and I was like, “Let me see.” I surprisingly did well in the class because they were talking about how athletes and some football players are using this and where they stand and how Alex is thumping them or whatever. I jumped on and took his class. That guy has a voice that is real.

I’m curious about how competitive you are. Are you the guy that during the cool-down, you keep going? Are you the guy that some people were beating you and then all of a sudden, that last minute of class, you come flying by them?

Before I answer, Tom, is she going to judge me?

Absolutely.

I’m not going to judge because I’m not at the top either way. I’m at the bottom.

By asking that question, you’ve answered it.

This is my theory on the cool-down. Whatever my average output is, that’s where I’ll stay for the cool-down because I always have a cool-down afterward. I don’t necessarily try harder. I don’t want to see points drop off my output. I would like to keep it there. I’ll stay right at the output or close to it. The answer is I guess so.

It’s reasonable because you’re doing an actual cool-down afterward. I wouldn’t judge anybody either way. I just know people get upset about it because I see it on the OPP when they’re like, “Who are these people?” They get very upset, “Who are these people doing the last minute cool-down? They got to go beat me. What does that prove?” They get mad about it, then you have the people that jump in and they’re like, “Get over yourself. Why do you care so much?” It turns into what it always turns into on Facebook.

I was taught early on when I was doing the stuff with Michael Karpenkko, a trainer. He’s like, “If you can do anything to hold yourself accountable, do it.” I share my results and I always try to put something positive with them because even if I have a sucky ride, I’ll be like, “The legs weren’t there today,” or “I haven’t been eating well,” or whatnot. You’re at least sharing that and putting it out there and letting other people know you’re doing this and just showing up. The part of it is to get your clothes on to workout and the rest is this is cake. The hard part is sometimes showing up for it.

I used to be a gym rat. All the time, I take classes and all that. I drive the Gold’s Gym whenever I find parking at Spectrum, then you’re paying and all this you’d get there. Somebody is on the weight machine. I walked down from my house. I get on the bike. I’m going to take the elliptical if I want to do that. I’ve got resistance bands. I do everything here. I don’t have to go get in a car and go drive and park somewhere. There’s no reason you can’t, other than you’re lazy and you have to face that.

That’s part of it. We’ve created a space here that also substitutes my boys. They’re down here with their instruments, recording stuff all the time and doing things. It’s also a tinkering garage space. We do it. This is where I come to sweat. It’s important to have a little sacred space in your home, whether it’s yoga and stretching or meditating, but it’s your little cubby to go to find a place to either send yourself, stretch or beat yourself up as I do. I came from that philosophy, “No pain, no gain.” I’ll be 58. I don’t want to admit that’s old.

Many people are like, “You’re getting up there.” I don’t. I have aches and pains, and there are certain things I can’t do. but like I told my wife, “My left hip is a lot younger than you.” My wife is quite a bit younger. She’s fifteen years younger than I am. We have that difference. I’ll mention certain sitcoms and she’s like, “What?” She was looking at pictures. She’s a neat freak now. I got dirty. My bedroom was in this picture when I was growing up. She’s like, “See that TV?” I go, “Yeah.” She goes, “That’s the one I grew up watching you on.” It was one of those little one tubes like, “I bet I looked great on that one.” She was the one who asked me out. It was interesting.

That’s the same with us.

I did ask you out. We only have an eight-year difference in our relationship and we met online. I found him on Match.com and he had this hilarious thing that he had written about the difference between a woman being hot and cute. It made me laugh and I was like, “I like you.”

The premise is that cute is preferable.

It didn’t hurt since I have never felt like the person who would be described is hot. I was like, “He’s not a jerk either. That’s fine.”

We met online because Julie sent me an email asking me out because she was a guest on the Home & Family show that I did after Entertainment Tonight. If you have a chance, you have to look up for therapy dog. Norbert is the cutest little thing. He has two million followers. She came on. They did a series of books. Her mom has a publishing company. They published their own books and they were awarded. They were given some high honor awards. She came on talking about the books for kids or whatever. They brought Norbert on. All I know is she got my name because they sent out pictures of the shooting of the show.

She got my email and said, “You’re not allowed to ask how I got this but dinner.” She only gave me one day and I was like, “I had plans to go to a sushi thing. I can’t make it.” She flew back to Boston and we stayed in touch. She moved out here and came for a visit. We went to the Hero Dog Awards show. She extended her stay for 3 or 4 days, went home, sell her house and moved out here in ten days. We are married a year later and pregnant 4 months after that. I knew the minute that she came out here that I was seeing her. I was like, “This is right.” Bless her heart. She had no idea what she was getting into.

It sounds like you guys have a lot of fun.

Raising a family that’s as diverse as what we have. She’s being a mom for the first time, but also being a stepmom coming in and helping raise two teenage boys at that point.

That’s not easy.

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She was good. She was also a nanny at one point. She had the chops of being a good listener and knowing the count of ten. When I was very angry at my youngest son. She’s like, “Hang on.” We were watching a movie and I couldn’t focus on the movie. She goes, “When the movie is over, you can then go talk to him.” She made me wait and by that time, I was able to put things in perspective and have a conversation with him. She brings that calmness.

Thank you very much for joining us. We’ve been talking to us forever and we greatly appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

As a former talk show host, I’m usually asking questions. You guys are really great. You have nice podcast chemistry. Keep it up. Thanks for having me.

Before we let you go, where can people find you?

I’m on social. Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, it is @MarkSteines or MSteines. You can find a bunch of pictures of my daughter because that’s what I’m posting, or my kids or Norbert. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. We really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

—

I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until next week, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter and anywhere on the Peloton leaderboard @ClipOutCrystal.

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

 

Important Links

• Facebook – Mark Steines
• The Great TV Sitcom Book
• Match.com
• Norbert – YouTube
• Instagram – Mark Steines
• LinkedIn – Mark Steines
• Apple Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Spotify – The Clip Out
• Google Podcasts – The Clip Out
• Facebook.com/TheClipOut
• YouTube.com/TheClipOut
• Run, Lift and Live – Facebook group
• @RunLiftAndLive – Instagram
• @RunLiftAnd Live – TikTok
• RunLiftAndLive.com
• Facebook page – Run, Lift and Live
• Dr. Jenn Mann
• Managing Your Mind
• @DrJennMann – Instagram
• Hump Day With Dr. Jenn
• SourcingJournal.com – FASHION BRANDS SCORE NEW CUSTOMERS WITH ATHLETE AMBASSADORS
• Shape – Bradley Rose Almost Quit Fitness for Good — Until He Joined Peloton
• YahooLife – 5 wellness habits Peloton instructor Tunde Oyeneyin wishes she started sooner
• Uncut with Jay Cutler – podcast episode with Kendall O’Toole
• Inc.com – Peloton Has to Get Off the Bike
• MetPro.co/tco
• Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe
• Instagram – Clip Out Crystal
• Twitter – Clip Out Crystal
• @RogerQBert – Twitter
• Facebook.com/tomokeefe

 

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