TCO 279 | Strength Training

279. Irish Exit: Daniel McKenna and Peloton Part Ways Plus Our Interview With Stacy Sims

TCO 279 | Strength Training

 

  • Daniel McKenna and Peloton part ways.
  • Peloton partners with Dick’s Sporting Goods.
  • Peloton to put bikes in all Hilton Hotels.
  • Peloton settles Lululemon lawsuit.
  • In-Store instructor meet & greets are back.
  • Peloton has a Pause & Reflect scheduled for October 10-12.
  • Peloton gets The Simpsons treatment.
  • New options on Just Workout.
  • The Add-To-Calendar feature is back.
  • The Independent (UK) names Peloton the best fitness app.
  • There’s finally a new episode of On The Leaderboard.
  • Crystal has tips on how to book a class in the studio.
  • Peloton stats about how Germans are using the platform.
  • Camila Ramon is a Tread instructor.
  • Christine D’Ercole is back!
  • Jess Sims was on The Today Show.
  • Becs Gentry has a pregnancy update.
  • Chelsea Jackson Roberts has new pregnancy photos.
  • Adrian Williams joins Ashton Kutcher’s Our Future Selves.
  • Robin Arzon posted from the set of an L.A. Peloton photo shoot.
  • Logan Aldridge participated in Smile Farms’ 7th Annual Golf Outing.
  • The Daily Mail spotlights Leanne Hainsby.
  • Shape profiles Callie Gullickson.
  • PopSugar talks to Kendall Toole about her “must-haves.”
  • Susie Chan brought her dad to the studio.
  • Matty Maggiacomo brought his mother to the studio.
  • An inspirational IG post from Tunde.
  • Camila Ramon had her premiere Thread class.
  • Camila was featured on the Super Mamas podcast.
  • Kirsten Ferguson was featured on the Mom2Mom podcast.
  • Katie Wang shares her Tik Tok past.
  • Angelo has tips for fast and healthy meals for kids.
  • Fight Camp now has Apple Watch integration.
  • New features on Apple Watch make it a serious Whoop alternative.
  • The latest artist series features Bad Bunny.
  • We have past guest updates from Krissy Blackwood and CJ Albertson.
  • Peloton Apparel has a new drop from Spiritual Gangster.
  • Ben Alldis has an October Challenge.
  • Birthdays: Nico Sarani (10/3), Kirra Michel (10/10)

All this plus our interview with Stacy Sims!

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Irish Exit: Daniel McKenna and Peloton Part Ways Plus Our Interview With Stacy Sims

This is maybe the most tabs I’ve ever had opened for an episode of The Clip Out.

It’s crazy all the stuff that happened. Normally, we had four topics.

We had 4 or 5 stories that on a regular week would have been the lead story.

It’s like everything hit at once. Peloton was like, “Here, blip.”

It is a jam-packed episode.

Buckle up, kids. We got lots to talk about.

Before we get to that, we should probably talk about thanking the people who donated to Pedal The Cause that you were participating.

My goal was very modest. It was $500. I have reached the $500 goal, and people are still putting donations in, so I greatly appreciate that. Thank you so much you guys for donating. It’s a wonderful cause and everybody here in St. Louis appreciates it.

Also, I didn’t know where to put it within the guts of the episode, so I thought we talk about it right here. Our very own Dr. Jenn was on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

It’s so freaking cool. She did a teletherapy session and she got permission to post this from the woman that she interviewed. I just want to make sure everybody knows that. Some people were like, “Is this scripted?” Obviously, some reality TV can be scripted, but Dr. Jenn has this big rule. She has done her own reality TV and she’s like, “I will not do scripted therapy. That’s not how I roll.” Whatever you heard on there, that is Dr. Jenn being Dr. Jenn.

I will also say if you watch Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn versus the other show that does something similar, you can tell the difference in terms of which show is doing real stuff and which show has turned it into a game show practically.

We’re happy for her. We love Dr. Jenn and we are so proud of her. It’s great exposure for her. Go, Dr. Jenn.

Besides that, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have a cool interview with Stacy Sims. If you haven’t heard of Stacy Sims, I have to tell you that she is the forefront person in the world discussing women’s health issues specifically. She has a TED Talk and she does all this research on how women’s bodies respond to exercise, food, and everything differently. We are going to have Dr. Sims on and we are going to be talking about her newest book. I am so excited. I have the most huge girl crush on Dr. Sims. She is amazing. She lives in New Zealand and she’s so laid back. She’s killing life. You would never know.

You make it sound like she’s a murderer, “She’s killing life.”

I mean she’s excelling at everything she does, and she’s so humble about it. You would never know by having a conversation with her that she is this very high level and very highly respected doctorate doing all of this major research for women. She is changing the way that everybody views women, health, and athleticism. If you are a woman, I don’t care how old you are, you need to listen to this interview, and then you need to immediately go buy her books, which we will talk about in the interview. That’s very cool.

We have all kinds of stuff to talk about besides that. We’re going to talk about Daniel McKenna. We’re going to talk about Dick’s Sporting Goods, and how they’re going to be putting stuff in the stores. We are going to be talking about Hilton. We are going to be talking about an update to the Lululemon lawsuit. There are big things. Not to mention all of the small things that happened. That was all just the major stuff.

A lot of cool stuff was going on with all the instructors. We have to talk about that too. Tons of new things. We have a visit from Angelo at MetPro, and we talk about fast and healthy meals that even your children will eat. We have some competitor news, artist collaborations, and past guest updates. We have a couple this week. Not to mention some birthdays, so lots to cover.

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 and follow us so you never miss an episode. Maybe leave us a review. That’s always helpful. We have a new review. This is from My Secret Peloton and it says, “Contagious enthusiasm. Tom and Crystal’s genuine appreciation for Peloton makes this podcast feel like a weekly virtual meetup. It’s fun to hear the perspectives on the business side and the lighter stuff. My favorite segment is the regular person interview at the end. I’m not sure why it’s interesting to hear who some stranger’s favorite instructor is, but it’s interesting.”

I’ll tell you why. It’s because you love having those conversations with random people. That’s what we do every week.

“We would love a little alone pillow fact section. For example, Howard Stern often says that instructors have to cover their belly buttons in class. Is that true? It’s random, but he’s right. Instructors are always wearing high-waist leggings.”

I never thought about it, but it makes sense. That’s a good section to include. I like that. We may have to include that.

Also, you can find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. You can check out our Patreon if you’re so inclined. That’s Patreon.com/TheClipOut, where for a little extra money like $5, you get ad-free episodes. For a little bit more, you also get included in the bonus content. Finally, you can check out our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut, where you can watch these episodes. We also have a newsletter at theclipout.com. We throw a lot of links at you, especially on this episode. You can sign up for that and get all these links and things like that sent directly to your inbox. There’s all that. Let’s start a fistfight, shall we?

Alright, let’s do it.

In the previous episode, we were asking, where is Daniel McKenna? We didn’t have any answers. Over the weekend, we had an answer.

I got this anonymous message on Saturday saying, “I think I have your answer on where Daniel McKenna is.” I went back and forth on like, “Should I post this? Should I not post it?” I landed on I should post it because everyone was asking me. That was the top question for the past three weeks. Where’s Daniel McKenna? Two, I felt like enough time had passed that he probably wasn’t going to address it. I will explain why I feel that way in a just moment.

Both of those things combined together made me feel I should post this. Number three, for all of you out there who yelled at me, this is not an HR document. This is an internal Slack channel and there are no conversations on it. It was a search done within Slack and it came up within the Slack as a little tiny thing saying that Daniel had been off-boarded.

It’s a very binary thing. Either he is on board or off-board, and this reflects that he is off-board.

What you can’t see in the screenshot is that it elsewhere said that it was dated September 19th. I chose not to include that because there were some other things in the picture that I didn’t think were correct to include. This is my reasoning for thinking that enough time had passed. In the past when instructors have either been let go or left of their own accord, Peloton has always allowed them to come back and have the last class. At that point, it’s about two weeks.

Daniel stopped posting on all social media on September 10th, and then he was off-boarded in Slack on 9/19. That told me that he had at least been gone from Peloton since 9/19, since this was October 3rd when I saw this, it told me we had our answer and he was choosing not to ever come back and address it, which is his choice.

Just to be clear, it was October 1st when you saw this.

Thank you. Sorry.

It’s almost two full weeks since he had been off-boarded within their system, which you think there might be a lag time.

I do because it says a little priority on the screen. This is obviously some kind of bot that goes through and does activities once they’ve been flagged. That’s why this is treated as a little priority. I chose to put it out there. I feel bad for all of Daniel’s fans because some people are clearly losing their minds. There is a lot of anger coming at me because I posted this. I’m like, “This would have happened whether I posted it or not.” I didn’t create this.

It had already happened.

It had happened way in advance of me telling you.

It’s also hard to wonder or you got to wonder if they are just going to hope it went away as with Oliver Lee. We are not trying to say that this is an Oliver Lee level situation, just to be clear.

Things would’ve been very different.

They wouldn’t leave his classes up on the platform. We’ve seen that. If you want to hear that story, it’s episode 154 and it’s a good one. You got to wonder if they ever going to address it because he’s been radio silent. They’ve been radio silent. At this point, it has been almost two weeks and there had been no communication or acknowledgment of what was occurring.

On Monday, the 3rd, Peloton finally posted on the official Peloton Facebook page, “Daniel McKenna is no longer a Peloton instructor. His classes will remain in our library for members to enjoy. We wish Daniel all the best in his next chapter.” That is that. The longer I’m in the Peloton community and the more new people are here, the more I’m a little confused because people were upset at this message. They were upset at how dare Peloton be so cold. This is a standard message. Do you not work for a corporation? Have you never worked for a corporation? This is standard corporate speech. That is how it rolls. Sometimes corporations choose not to announce it at all. I’ve worked for corporations where they never said anything about the person leaving.

I came from radio and when a DJ left radio, it was like Soviet Russia. You never acknowledged they existed.

As a listener, that always drove me crazy. I hated that. That is one of many reasons that I chose to put this out there. If people don’t want to know secrets from Peloton before Peloton releases them, please get off my page. Please do not listen to this podcast.

That’s what we do.

That’s what we’ve always done.

Getting mad at us for telling you things before Peloton does is like canceling your subscription to Playboy because you saw titties.

I’ve never made any statement other than that. To be clear, if I had to make this decision today, even after all the crap I’ve taken in the last two days, I would do it again in a heartbeat because I did the right thing. I did what I felt was right and so I will always stay true to myself. It doesn’t mean you got to like it.

If you don’t like the idea of stories based on leaked information, then you have a problem with the abstract concept of journalism because that’s how that works. We did not do anything illegal to procure this information. The person who procured this information did not do anything illegal. They might have done something that violated company policy. We don’t work for Peloton, so we don’t know. At the end of the day, that’s not a crime. Nobody is getting arrested no matter how much you want them to.

It’s funny to me because so many people were mad about this, but nobody got mad when I posted all of the images for the rower.

People had signed NDAs about that stuff.

I didn’t sign an NDA. If I had signed an NDA, I wouldn’t have broken that NDA.

There is stuff we haven’t told you because we did sign NDAs.

We’ve been sitting on it for years.

We saw pieces of the rower back in like 2018. We feel like we are not violating the NDA anymore because it has been released. We saw them working on that back then. They took us to a room where they had to get a retina scan. You knew Ben and Leanne were a couple of months before you said anything. You didn’t say a word because that’s personal. This isn’t personal. This is professional.

I feel this is also different because I did not speculate on why he is gone. I had a lot of things sent to me that I could have shared with you all, but it was speculation. I can’t say for sure why they let him go and until somebody tells me that, I will not be saying that. I will privately say to my friends what my opinions are, but I will not be posting that on social media and I will not be sharing the screenshots that thousands of people have sent to me.

Thank you to the hundreds of people that reached out to me for support. I had so many private messages and public messages from people saying, “Keep doing what you’re doing and pay no mind,” and I will. I’m going to keep living my life and I’m going to keep doing what I do. I don’t feel bad about what I did. There is no apology for all of you that said you won’t answer because you feel bad. I didn’t answer because I’m not engaging in toxic hatred. That is what you people do. By you people, I mean the people with all caps, calling for me to be banned from Peloton and asking for me to be arrested.

Sometimes speculating about why he was gone while yelling at us for speculating, which we never did.

You all kill me with hypocrisy.

“What if it inserts personal trauma here?” We didn’t say that. You’re saying that.

Do you know what I said? “He doesn’t work there.” Do you know what that was? I was right.

Here’s something in this portion that people should know that I learned a long time ago. You don’t bet against Crystal.

People don’t know how much I vet this stuff before I post it. There was a vetting process. I’m not going to go into that because that’s my proprietary information. I didn’t say that I was sure until Peloton said, but I was sure.

To recap, Daniel is no longer with Peloton. We do not know why. We do wish him well. We’re sorry for the people who have a deep and abiding passion for his classes. We know it’s frustrating when your favorite instructor leaves.

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I still remember Steven Little.

If anybody is going to complain about how I titled this episode, because I titled the episode. When Steven Little left, it was Steven Little Chucks Peloton in the F**k It Bucket.

Steven Little would say, “Chuck it in the f**k it bucket.” He said it all the time. It was very appropriate.

He thought it was hysterical. I found out years later.

I have to say that Daniel did pull the perfect Irish exit. For any of you who don’t know what that means, Tom, because we’re Irish, we can say this.

It’s not a hate crime. I have an apostrophe in my last name.

Tell everybody what an Irish exit is.

It’s when you leave without saying goodbye to anybody.

It’s a thing at parties.

You ghost. All of a sudden people are like, “Where did Herschel go?” That’s an Irish name.

I hope someday he does feel comfortable speaking about where he’s going and what’s next for him. I hope he will be happy with whatever he does. To all the people hurting out there, I hope you find other instructors that you love. Give yourself some time. Give yourself some space and feel whatever you feel. Try not to hate me so much. Besides that, feel whatever you feel and know that it’s temporary. As I said, Steven Little, that one hurt me. That was my Daniel McKenna.

We’ve all been there. When your favorite show gets canceled, you’ll find a new favorite show. It doesn’t mean you can’t still love your old favorite show, but you’ll find another one. It will be okay. If you want to hate someone I’ve been married to, I can point you in the right direction.

You guys just hang in there and know it’s going to get better. This week will be the worst and it will get a little easier as time goes on.

It’s like the five stages of grief. Peloton announced that they are partnering with Dick’s Sporting Goods. You’ll now be able to find bikes and I guess other things.

There will be bikes. We’re wondering about the rower, but it will be the Bike, the Bike+, the Guide, and I think the Tread are all at Dick’s Sporting Goods. My understanding is you’re also going to be able to get accessories like shoes and mats. There are going to be people that are going to be specifically selling this equipment. There’s going to be a little tiny showroom.

It’s like a store within a store.

There should be somebody working there to be able to help you and you will eventually be able to order from there. I don’t know if day one, you’re going to be able to order from there but you will eventually. They’re saying that out of their 5,400 stores, hundreds are going to have them in time for holiday shopping. They are rolling it out quickly. I think this is good.

I think too. The more places you can push it out, the better. I know right now that their model has been to be in high-end stores. It’s not like Dick’s is an awful place.

There are some people that have said they had a bad experience with Dick’s Sporting Goods, but I have never had a bad experience with Dick’s Sporting Goods. People are aloof there but besides that.

I don’t know. I’ve never bought a sporting good.

I would not have thought that.

I can’t really say, but to get the footprint out there, this makes a lot of sense. It’s an inexpensive way to get more products that people can touch. That’s a huge thing for people to make a purchase like that. You want to experience it. I think that makes a lot of sense. The only way this could be better is if you can get the Affirm pricing plan there. That would be a great partnership. Who doesn’t love Affirm Dick?

I did not see that coming. I should have. I was not expecting that. A lot of people have been also saying that this means that all of the Peloton stores are going to be closing. I disagree. First of all, the eighteen stores that got the rowers are definitely good. As long as they have the rower out and it’s still a new product, they’re going to want to keep those stores open because that’s how people are trying it. When we were in New York, every store I’ve talked to that has a rower has been saying the same. Everybody is coming in to look at those rowers. People want to test things out. They want to see how it is. I think it’s a good idea. Also, for all you UK listeners, we are going to be hearing very soon when you will be getting the rower.

I guess if it is Dick’s in America, in the UK, it’s Willie’s. Is that how that works?

No.

It’s a fair thought though. Speaking of partnerships, another major partnership was announced. Peloton will be putting bikes in every single Hilton hotel.

This made me reconsider our banning of all Hilton properties.

That’s because our last two experiences with Hilton have been very thumbs down. Beyond that, I think this is again a great move. Foley used to even say that when they had bikes in hotels, it sold bikes. People would get on one and be like, “I need this at home,” end of the story. I think this is great. It’s also another way for people to experience Peloton in the wild and maybe come home and purchase one.

I totally agree. This is not a bad thing. There are so many people that hear about Peloton and they’re like, “Whatever.” They might be a business traveler or they’re just traveling for whatever reason. They go into the gym and they’re like, “I guess I’ll try it and see what this is about.” They try it and they’re hooked because the content is what’s amazing about Peloton.

We were talking off-air about this from a marketing standpoint because we’re always surprised that they didn’t push to get more bikes in hotels. For a long time, it was like no hotels, no gyms, blah, blah, blah.

Especially apartment complexes.

It seemed like low-hanging fruit. It makes me look back and question the marketing decisions of Peloton. I know this is a hard bitter pill to swallow, but did Peloton succeed in spite of its marketing department? There were so many things that seemed obvious that they would refuse to do and that we would wonder, “Why aren’t they doing that? This company is growing leaps and bounds.”

It makes you question what you know about marketing.

I’m like, “I’m just some Ruben Flyover country. I guess they know some secret magic out-of-the-box way to do it there where they got all the tall buildings.” Now I look at it and the first thing they’re doing with the regime change is they’re instituting a lot of the stuff that seemed rudimentary and fundamental. They’re pushing that stuff out there like Dick’s and Hilton. They’re pushing the Dick’s. Seriously, I am wondering if their success was because the product was so good that they couldn’t screw it up, and then they reached a tipping point. Now, they’re doing all the stuff that as a marketing guy, I’ve been sitting here for 4 or 5 years wondering why they hadn’t been.

It is interesting to see the evolution of things. It’s like they were, for whatever reason, above some of those things. Whether they thought they were or they actually were, I don’t know. It seems that now, that has all changed. I do have a little trouble with that because I feel like they could do no wrong. I feel like that comes more from thinking about the people aspect. I think that you can be good at that and maybe not be so good at other things. It’s definitely interesting to see the evolution, and it’s interesting to see new people come in and make more traditional choices than you would see. Peloton always did things cutting edge, and now they’re reverting to traditional. Will that be better?

It’ll be interesting to see. It’ll be an interesting A/B test for Barry. For whatever it’s worth from a marketing standpoint, there are a lot of very simple rudimentary things that they should have been doing, in my opinion, that they haven’t been and that they’re starting to implement. You got to think that could only help.

I definitely do think that.

Yet another The Clip Out exclusive, the Lululemon lawsuit has been settled. Those two sides have gotten together and they issued a statement. It was weird. We had it for eight hours before anybody else.

It was weird. We’re so grateful.

That’s part of the new brilliant marketing team over there.

We are on board with you guys. Keep up the good work, marketing team and communications team. I think this was the communications team. I want to make sure we give them the proper credit. They saw the article that we had posted that they had lost the lawsuit to Lululemon. It had only been up for two hours, and they were like, “We issued a statement. It has been settled.”

It says, “Without admissions of any kind, in an effort to resolve the dispute, Peloton has agreed to phase out certain designs identified in the complaint by Lululemon.”

It’s interesting to hear people’s responses to these things because I hear that as good news and other people are like, “You were wrong the whole time.”

It says, “Without admission.” That’s how these things are settled all the time. It’s like, “We’ll stop this thing, but not this other thing.” Nobody admits any fault and no money is changing hands.

It is a weird-sounding resolution though. It does sound very like, “We shouldn’t have done that.” I once compared Lululemon Align to the Peloton pants. I can’t remember the name of the Peloton one, but I compared them side by side and there were no differences. The material was slightly different, but the actual design was the same. I don’t know how that works because it seems to me lots of companies sell the same things as that strappy bra. There are like a billion companies of that. I don’t get it.

To somebody who hasn’t come from that world, it’s hard to tell when it crosses the line and when it’s not. For whatever it’s worth, it has been resolved.

I’m very glad. Congrats to everybody involved. Maybe we can all get along now.

Yes, but I doubt it. In-store instructor meet and greets are back.

In the UK. They haven’t made it over to the US.

You got to think it’s only a matter of time.

They seem to be very busy so I don’t know. I would love to believe that but I don’t because they used to do that store opening and now they’re doing the store closings. How is that going to work? It doesn’t have the same vibe.

Here’s what they could do. At a store closing, you get to meet former instructors like Steven Little, Daniel McKenna, and Nicole Meline. This is the sort of marketing stuff that they hadn’t been doing.

They probably won’t. Anyway, over in the UK, they are having a cool instructor meet and greet. It is going to be Jermaine Johnson and Joslyn Thompson Rule. That is a very cool combo. This will have happened before we publish this episode because it happens on October 6th. If anybody gets to go, reach out. I’d love to hear how it went. I am a huge fan of the UK tread instructors. They are so much fun.

October 10th through 12th, there will be a pause and reflect.

I am going to find a news story that nobody bitched about. I am going to find it. This is for World Mental Health Day. Apparently, that’s not a good enough reason and the instructors are all pausing too much, and this is a bunch of BS. That’s the general consensus. There are a few people that are excited about it and think that it’s great that instructors get to have a day off. Not to mention the people behind the scenes get to take a day off.

I will say something that came up that I had not thought of before. People who have their birthday between October 10th and 12th never get to have a birthday ride, a live one. They can take a birthday ride, but they won’t ever get a birthday shout-out. They’ve done this for the past three years. For those of you that feel that this is new, it is absolutely not. I don’t know what else they’re doing but it’s good to take a break. I’m always happy to have a day off.

They’re having the place fumigate probably.

I don’t know. I can’t keep up with the classes and I never take live classes anymore anyway, so it doesn’t affect me. For those of you that do, I’m sorry.

Put a reminder in your phone so when there are no classes on those days, you don’t f**k yourself.

Spread the word because everybody is going to be like, “Why are there no live classes today?” That’ll be on the OPP. The next step on the OPP will be like, “Can you please stop pausing this?”

Peloton got the full Simpsons treatment, not just in appearance but a whole storyline.

It’s a whole episode. This is fun. I only saw one negative comment about this. Somebody thought the stock would go to zero because of this. I don’t even understand that. Everybody else was loving it. I think it’s great. I said officially that everyone uses Peloton, and immediately somebody was like, “Tom?” I was like, “No, not everyone.”

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The first image I saw online from it was this one where Homer and Marge are kissing in front of a Peloton. I was like, “If these two start a podcast, I swear to Christ, I’m going to lose my mind.

Even if they did, it would be just Homer going, “Dope.” Marge would be the only one that knows anything. It would be very similar.

I know. That’s why I was upset.

It would still be entertaining compared to us. This is great. I love it. I’m so excited. It has been a while since we’ve had that moment of it’s out there in the ether. It’s nice to see something happy.

We’re not going to go through it, but if you sign up for the newsletter, we’ll also send you a link that does an episode recap. If you don’t like to watch The Simpsons, you can at least skim an article that gives you a pretty thorough plot synopsis.

I thought it was fun to see it. If nothing else, it gives you several screen grabs from it. You can peruse that.

There are some new things added to the Just Workout feature.

Actually, no. I recycled this image because it’s finally live for Android users.

For Android users, there are some new things added to Just Workout.

For those of you that are like, “It’s not on my phone,” I know. It’s rolling out slowly, but it is rolling out. If you have an Android phone, you should be seeing it soon, so hang in there. Lots of cool options for you. I’m glad to see that it is finally out there for Android. For Android users, I know some of you don’t know this, but that was a pretty quick turnaround.

It used to be years. If you’re still not seeing it, then get rid of your BlackBerry

The Independent, which is a newspaper in the UK named Peloton the best fitness app.

They reminded all of us that this month, you can get 60 days of access to the Peloton app for free. That’s new members only. It’s a very cool and great read, so check it out. Peloton UK posted that one.

The Add to Calendar feature has returned.

This was posted in The Clip Out group and I hadn’t even noticed it. I can’t even tell you the last time I used this. I had no idea it was back. If you book a class and you have it on your app, now you can save it to your calendar like your Google or your Outlook. That is a very handy feature.

There is finally a new episode of On The Leaderboard.

This is episode 3, but episode 2 was like February. It was a long time ago. At any rate, it’s up. This is Denis Morton with Jessie James Decker. I believe she is a country artist, but I haven’t listened to the radio in forever because now I work from home. I never drive. If I do drive at all, it’s Spotify for like five minutes.

Maybe On The Leaderboard’s weird release schedule is a nod to the UK users because their TV seasons are like that.

That is true. Seasons here we’re like we’ve got at least thirteen episodes. Sometimes, way more.

For years, it was streaming. It was like a show had a new season. It was like 26 episodes, then it took three months off, and it came back.

I never forget when we started watching Black Mirror, I was like, “There are two seasons. What the hell is this? Four episodes?” I was so mad.

Over there, they’re like, “This is the longest-running show in Britain. It has been on the air for 57 years.” “How many episodes are there?” “Nineteen.”

It is very different from how we do TV. I haven’t gotten to watch this one yet, but you can listen anywhere you get podcasts. You can also watch these while you take classes, which is nice. I have enjoyed the Ashton Cutcher series. Maybe this is the same for people. I don’t know. I’ll have to give it a try.

You put together an interesting little article. You were recently at the New York studio. You went to book your classes. It can be like getting One Direction tickets or whatever the kids are listening to these days. You were able to successfully get your classes. You wrote a little article with tips on what you need to do to maximize your chances of getting into a live class.

I’m not going to go into it in depth because we’ve talked about it before. You can see this on my Instagram or check it out on our blog over at theclipout.com. There are a couple of things I will mention though. People have been asking, “Can you book for yourself and a spouse or a friend?” No, do not do that. You each need to log in. I know it’s practically impossible. I do get that. My understanding is that Peloton is going to go back to helping people do group bookings again in the future. They have not said when they’re going to do that. I think it’s going to be a while because they’re letting people get their first taste of the studio before they get back.

They want the mad rush out.

There’s still quite a mad rush. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t get in. If you get on the waitlist, there is a very good chance you will get into the class. As I have said before, I would not make an entire trip based on that, but it is a very high percentage rate that you will get in a class. I go into this more whenever I talk about how to navigate the studio. I will say you can sit around and once you’re in the studio, as long as you’re on the waitlist, you can get into the studio.

Once you’re there, you can keep being on the waitlist. If another opening pops up, you could go down for every class and try to get in. Once you’re there, you have a good chance of getting into a whole bunch of classes. You just have to be diligent and go check in a million times. It depends on how much you want it. I enjoyed our visit though.

We had a good time. In terms of trying to book two at once, my advice is to marry somebody that doesn’t like Peloton.

What about if you have a friend you want to take the class with?

Don’t make friends. That’s also my advice. Don’t have friends. Marry somebody who doesn’t like Peloton. Problem solved.

Be alone. Great advice Tom. I’m sure Dr. Jenn would love this advice.

She got me to workout. What more do you want? I think she’s like, “That’s all I’m asking of him.”

She said it was going to be on her epitaph.

She added it to her LinkedIn page. IMTEST.de which is from Germany has an article about how Peloton evaluates the exercise habits of its German members. Peloton got statistics on how Germans are using Peloton. It’s on a German website, but if you use Google translate, it translates the article pretty well.

It talked about the fact that they looked at all of the members in Germany, and they found out how they’re composed when people are training, and what their favorite workout song is. There’s a report saying that 72% of Germans do their workouts at home, and that Peloton has been in the market for almost three years. How has it been three years? I guess that pandemic wiped out some time for me.

Peloton members prefer to do outdoor courses on Sunday mornings between 8:00 and 10:00. Yoga and meditation have become firmly anchored in the fitness and wellness routine of Germans. Most meditations or courses are taken Sunday evenings between 10:00 and 11:00. That makes sense. They have this top workout song in this infographic, which I cannot see because it is in German. The top five artists are David Guetta, Ed Sheeran, Queen, Dua Lipa, and Elton John.

It’s interesting that there are no German artists in there.

The songs are Otherside by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blinding Lights by the Weeknd, Cold Heart by Dua Lipa and Elton John, Thunderstruck by AC/DC, and maybe this last one is German, Jubel. I do not recognize that word.

It says Klingande. That one is probably German. It’s also interesting that in the most popular songs, only one of the most popular artists is represented.

What do you mean?

That gives you the most popular artists. When it gives you the most popular songs, only one of the most popular artists has a top five song.

I always wonder about that with these statistics. How does that even work? Cycling is number one. Strength is number two. Meditation is number three, followed by stretching, and running is number five. Running is always the last one. I don’t understand that, but there you go. I thought this was a very interesting article.

I think running is the last one because obviously, Peloton sold the most bikes, and then the next three, you don’t need another piece of equipment to utilize. I know you could use the app on your own tread, but I think that it’s about equipment.

That makes sense.

Camilla Ramon is now a tread instructor.

This was announced during her Bad Bunny Two For One Ride with Cody. She’s actually doing her live-run debut. All of the instructors are all over it. I’m so happy for her. I’m so excited.

That’s going to be hard because bunnies are fast. How are you going to keep up with one of those?

I don’t know. I bet she can do it though. She’s pretty fast. Congrats to Camilla.

Christine D’Ercole is back.

It has been a rough road for Christine, so please send your love and congrats that she’s back. She had a rough time. She had an injury before Worlds was supposed to start. It has been two months. She hasn’t been able to teach any classes and I think some of that was training leading into Worlds, and of course, Worlds. She’s back Sunday, 3:00 PM Eastern, 45-minute Power Zone. I am so happy to see her back. Congrats to Christine and I know tons of people are excited to see this. I hope she has a big showing.

Jess Sims was on the Today Show.

She talked about three different strength moves that you could do to keep strong all the time. I know we talked that she was going to be on there. She did an amazing job and she looked beautiful. She was her usual bubbly self and did a great job. Congrats to Jess Sims.

Becs Gentry had a pregnancy update post.

She did, but it’s a little bit more than that. What she’s doing is she’s creating almost a journal. It’s a series of posts that she’s going to be doing in little videos called The Tuesday Trimester Truths. This is the first trimester she started with. She talks about all the things that you think are going to happen. She mentioned how she thought everybody could tell she was pregnant. Now, she thinks that’s hilarious because of how big her belly has gotten. She’s talking through all the things you think you know or you think are going to happen, and it’s totally different from that.

She also came on afterwards and did another post and said, “You all are wrong. I’m not carrying twins,” so settle and slow your roll. Except she said it funny. She also said that she does not know the sex of the baby. They are waiting until the day to find that out. It was a lovely showing. This is a fun video to watch. I highly recommend that if you know you’re expecting or you’ve just been a mom and you get a kick out of these things as I do, you will enjoy it, and of course, if you love Becs.

While we’re talking about pregnant instructors.

Chelsea Jackson Roberts must be getting close because she has been posting a lot of things about getting ready for the baby, and she was looking for advice. She was asking for people to send her advice for being a mom and first-time parent. I am scared to know what advice she got because people say crazy stuff, but she looks amazing. She’s so beautiful. The pictures that she took of herself being pregnant are gorgeous. I’m so happy for all these pregnant moms. I can’t wait to see all the new babies, and then they’re going to be running with their mom or yoga-ing with their mom on the yoga mat. It’s going to be amazing. I know yoga-ing is not a verb by the way, but it is now.

Trademarked by The Clip Out. We own it.

This video is fine. If you’re watching our YouTube channel, you can see Adrian Williams did a class with Ashton Cutcher for their Our Future Selves episode. He taught Ashton how to cut sleeves appropriately. This was so funny. He made a shirt for him, and then Ashton actually puts it on. It was Adam Davis I think that was their guest. They hadn’t shown it yet whenever this came out. I haven’t watched it, but I did watch the one with Kenny Chesney.

I tell you that to say that it was interesting. They obviously are not releasing these in the same order that they recorded them. In the episode with Kenny Chesney, Ashton actually refers to this episode with Adrian and talks about how one of the instructors helped him cut his shirt off, and that he had a farmer’s hand and he was embarrassed to put the shirt on for the class. I thought that was hilarious. I’m looking forward to taking this because I have enjoyed every single one of them.

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Robin Arzon had an Instagram post where she and several other instructors posted from a photo shoot for Peloton, but in Los Angeles.

If all the stuff had not happened with Daniel McKenna, this might have been the most asked question. Instead, this got buried. The interesting thing about this was Hannah Frankson from the UK, Jon Hosking from the UK, Alex Toussaint, and Robin Arzon are all out in LA together. It’s an interesting foursome because Hannah, Robin, and Alex are all bike instructors. Jon Hosking is a tread instructor.

Now, theories abound. This is a speculation alert. If you don’t like speculation, this would be your time to turn this off. Here is the speculation that I have come to the conclusion of, and I’m hearing other people say the same thing. Alex Toussaint is going to be a tread instructor. We don’t know that for a fact, but that would make sense because Robin teaches both on the bike and the tread.

Maybe Alex is out there because he’s doing a photo shoot for becoming a tread instructor. Jon Hosking is already a tread instructor, and maybe Hannah Frankson is about to become a tread instructor. Wouldn’t that be interesting? I would love that because I’ve always wanted to take classes with Hannah Frankson, and I’m just not into the bike these days. I would love that because it would give me an opportunity to take some classes with her. We will see. I don’t know, maybe it’s something completely unrelated. Maybe it’s something to do with the rower. Time will tell.

Watch this space. Logan Aldridge competed in Smile Farms’ seventh annual golf outing.

He was talking about the incredible work that they do, and their mission, and he had a good time out there. Can you imagine showing up for one of these events and hanging out with Logan Aldridge for the day? If you were a golfer and you didn’t expect him to be there, how cool would that be?

If you’re not a Peloton person, it wouldn’t mean anything to you.

Assuming that you were a Peloton person and you showed up to golf for the day, and then Logan Aldridge was there.

In an alternate timeline, where I’m a Peloton person and I golf. I show up at a golf outing and I see Logan.

Exactly. Are you excited?

Very cool.

That proves my point.

I’m taking back what I said about don’t bet against Crystal.

I hate this page so much.

The Daily Mail?

Yes.

They have good articles, but the ads. There’s nothing wrong with the ads. It’s just they’re everywhere and they flash at you a lot. It’s sensory overload.

From a layout standpoint, it’s gross.

They had an article about Peloton that spotlighted Leanne Hainsby.

It was talking about her first experience in the UK studio. We’ve talked about this before, so I’m not going to get into it again. I thought it was cool that somebody was writing about this, and that they were very excited to take their first class in the studio in the UK. They were huge fans of Leanne, so they enjoyed being able to take that class. It’s also interesting to me that they get to take their classes for  £25 and we pay $35.

The exchange rate might make that.

I thought it was the other way around.

It might be a situation where when that price was set, it evened the amount. The dollar is strong right now, so it’s one-to-one. When they said that price, it probably wasn’t.

That makes sense. Interesting.

Shape Magazine talked to Callie Gullickson.

She talked about her ultimate hack for staying active on the road. While traveling, in other words. This is something that people ask about all the time. As a MetPro coach, I get this question a lot. We talked about this. There are some good tips here that Callie shares for staying active on the road.

Pop Sugar talked to Kendall Toole about her must-haves.

This is so funny. From Air Jordans to a TikTok famous Tumblr. I guess that she loves the famous Tumblr that has been made famous by TikTok. I don’t know. I didn’t read this one because I could care less.

I read that and I was like, “TikTok, Tumblr, I’m out. I’m old.”

Although you have Air Jordans. You and Kendall are practically the same.

Susie Chan took her father to the Peloton Studio.

I feel like all of the instructors had like bring their families to the workday. We’ll get to that in a second. Susie posted several pictures of her and her family in the UK studio. My favorite picture is her dad sitting in the control room. I love that. That is totally something that I would get a kick out of doing if that’s my job. I just love it. The love that you see in these pictures and how fun it must be to get to share that with their families is amazing.

Not to be outdone, Matty brought his mother to the studio.

I just took his class, and Matty was there with his mom and his dad. The picture is just with his mom.

His dad probably took the picture.

That could be. I actually got to meet Matty’s parents a million years ago back at the Christopher Street studio. It was when Matty just had started as an instructor. We were all there to check out the new tread studio and everything. We did a class with Matty. His mom and dad were there, and they could not have been nicer people, like the most wonderful.

They were both in this class and Matty was telling family jokes and stories the entire time, and just being Matty. Of course, he still interacted with the rest of the class and had a good time because that’s how Matty rolls. It was a lovely class. It was the ’80s run, 30 minutes. I highly recommend taking it. I love Matty’s relationship with his family. I think that they are inspiring, especially for a family where he grew up being gay, and his family treated him the way I would want to be treated in a family. I know that for some people, it’s difficult to come out. To me, they’re an inspiration for how to treat each other with love and kindness.

I’m not gay and I wish my family has this support.

I mean facts. To this day, my parents have never listened to an episode of this podcast.

Neither mine but they’re not alive, so we can’t hold it against them.

I feel like if Matty’s parents were my parents, they would totally listen.

They would send you notes after every episode.

It’s like, “This is what you should do.” I will never forget whenever Matty had his at-home classes because he stayed at his parents’ house. He had to remove a tile above the tread because he was so tall. His head was on the ceiling. It was the funniest. One time, his parents were in the backyard cutting grass while he was running. It was a good time. I love Matty’s family.

He tagged his mother in the Instagram post and I look. She has 543 Instagram followers. Go follow Matty’s mom.

You can follow her on the bike too or in classes also. On the leaderboard, she is Matty’sMom. You can find her. Elise is amazing. She’s a wonderful lady.

On Instagram, it’s @EMaggiacomo, so go follow her. Tunde had an inspirational Instagram post for people.

She was at the White House. Have we talked about that?

I think we didn’t.

She was at the White House.

That’s how busy the week has been. We forgot that Tunde went to the White House.

Brené Brown was also there. She got to meet her. She talked about meeting her and having all these imposter thoughts while she was there at the event like, “How can I be on the same level as Brené Brown?” I thought, “I feel that way all the time.”

We’re not even at the White House.

It made me feel like even people at this level feel that. I know that logically, but seeing it in action, I appreciate when the instructors are vulnerable like this and show this kind of thing. I thought it was very cool that she shared.

Camila Ramon was on Super Mama’s podcast.

She sure was, episode 331. She talks about self-love, Perreo, and I can’t pronounce these things. I’m butchering it. She was on this episode and you need to check it out. She’s a lot of fun on these episodes so you definitely want to make sure you hear it.

While we’re talking about podcasts, Kirsten Ferguson was on the Mom2Mom podcast.

She was talking about being a mom and how hard it is, and all the things you got to do.

That’s why I didn’t become one. I would be like, “That’s too much work. I don’t want no part of it.” New rowing instructor Katie Wang gave us a glimpse into her TikTok past.

She’s funny because she did all these makeup tricks and cat videos, and things that she did with her hair. She’s hilarious. I cannot wait for her classes to start because I’m going to have a blast. I am so excited to get my rower and take classes with Katie. She is amazing. It’s so much fun. She is a real bright light.

Joining us once again is Angelo here to answer your fitness and nutrition questions. Hello.

It’s good to see you.

The bread and butter of what perimenopausal and postmenopausal women should be doing from cardiovascular standpoint is that sprint interval or high-intensity workout. Click To Tweet

You too. I feel this next question very much, but I have given up so maybe you have some help for Stephanie Rowe. She wants to know some fast healthy meal ideas that the kids will like too because she’s so tired of cooking two different meals every night. “Are there any tried and true ones? I have four people in my house. No one agrees on anything. I’ve given up.”

Our tip is to kick them out.

I’ll let them live here, but I just buy things they ask for. I have given up.

“Merry Christmas, here’s a cookbook.”

I did that.

When I’m asked that question, usually, it’s from a client who is trying to lose weight but whose family is not. That’s where you get the mismatch. I don’t know if that’s the case for you Stephanie, but I’ll do my best in answering, assuming that could be the case. Probably one of the most effective ways of doing this is by cooking bulk by macro. Typically, what you can do is you can get the family to agree on a protein that everyone likes. That will probably work for you.

Now, vegetables, you might have to negotiate with the kids a little but ideally, you have some members of the family, and you can cook a vegetable that you all have in common. Where you might deviate is you may cook either separate carbohydrate, meal carbs macros, or if you are not going to eat one, if you’re doing mostly protein, fats and veggies at dinner, then you can cook whatever carb macro the family wants.

This is not a recommendation, but where I’m going with this is if you have a protein source that works for the whole family, you got chicken, turkey, fish, even some lean red meat, etc., that all works. You have a salad for dinner. You have some green beans, zucchini, asparagus, or whatever vegetables you like. It all works great. The family can have that, and then you get to the carbs and that’s where the kids can have some rice or some mac and cheese. You’re going to stay out of that but the kids can have it, but at least you’re not cooking fundamentally 2 or 3 separate meals, which is the common complaint or challenge that I hear.

Hopefully, that helps a little bit. Another and I don’t know if this is exactly the tips you’re looking for Stephanie, but another recommendation that I have in these cases is to come up with some creative healthy snacks that the kids can have in the house. If you can find something they like and it doesn’t come out of a box, it doesn’t have a wrapper on it, that’s going to be good for the entire family. That will work for you. It will set a good precedence for them because it’s so easy to fall into the habits of processed foods, crackers, and cookies.

I’m not saying that nobody should ever have those balanced, but kids are going to cultivate a value system around foods. Whenever you can introduce whole foods quality and eating natural foods as their nutritional culture, it’s good. Some winners that I have found in that department are things like yogurt and berries. I can give you a little recipe that a lot of my clients like doing like Greek yogurt, strawberries, and a little Truvia or an all-natural sweetener that you like. For the kids, even honey would work. Honey is not ideal for somebody trying to cut calories or carbs or trying to lose weight, but for the kids, it’s certainly a great source.

Put it in the blender, and chill it in the freezer for a few minutes. It’s a great snack if you want something savory, slice up some apples, put some low-fat mozzarella cheese, bake it, and put a little bit of garlic salt on it. It’s actually good. If you want it sweet, you can do the same recipe, some sliced apple with some cheese but instead, put an all-natural sweetener on it. Put it in the oven. It turns into these crisps and good wraps.

Sometimes you’ll go to the dinner party and they’ll have the party tray where it’s the ham, and it has cream cheese wrapped in it like pepperoncini, toothpick. You can do that same thing using lean sliced deli meat and cottage cheese. Still use the olive and the pepperoncini. It actually tastes good and now you have a healthy alternative. There are some outside-the-box creative things that you might try. See what works for your kids and see what works for you. When you find something you like, at least throw it in the rotation, so it’s not always the same thing.

I’m a big fan of homemade trail mix. You can use some healthy fruits. Dried fruits are okay if weight loss is not your goal. It’s a very healthy alternative. You can go with some handpicked nuts and some organic crackers. You can make your own type of trail mix and that’s great for the kids versus opening up a box of candies, cookies, the fruit loops that kids want, and all that sort of thing.

The good stuff.

One of my friends told me about frosted mini wheat that is pumpkin spice flavored. I was like, “What? That sounds amazing, but don’t eat them.”

Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, if people would like nutritional information tailored to them for their fitness goals, where can they find you?

Thank you.

Thanks for having me, guys.

People who have FightCamp might find this interesting. They now have Apple Watch integration.

I thought this was really cool because I like being able to use my Apple Watch on all my different devices and all my different workouts. FightCamp finally has a way to do that. You can see what your heart rate is and it follows along with everything so you can see it right on your Apple Watch, and of course, on the app for FightCamp. I’m glad to see this.

While we’re talking about Apple Watch, in relation to WHOOP, apparently they’ve made some changes that make a WHOOP almost not necessary.

I’m doing some testing on this. Apparently, when the newest version of the Apple Watch software dropped, I think it’s nine, they included this thing that’s called AFib tracking. It’s weird because it goes in and gets all these AFib measurements. When it does that, it also does your heart rate variability measurements. If you have a WHOOP, you already know that means heart rate variability. For some of you out there, you may not know what the heck that means. It’s heart rate variability. It’s a long medical explanation but basically, people believe this metric allows you to see how recovered you are. If you want to know more about that, I am happy to explain it to you off-air.

Now that Apple Watch has the ability to track this, you have to go in and turn on the setting for AFib s and you have to say, “Yes, I’ve been diagnosed with an AFib event in my past,” which is weird to me. Once you’ve done that, now you’re going to get these measurements all the time. Once you do that, you can use one of the other apps listed on the screen. You got Athletic.APP, Training Today, Gentler Streak, Chipper, WorkOutDoors, HealthFit or Atlan.

The interesting thing is that I’ve already used Training Today and I don’t use that app, but Athletic is fascinating. I have been testing it for two days now. If you go in and pull your HRV readings out of Apple during the day, it makes your WHOOP and your Apple Watch the exact same recovery rate. It’s fascinating because it’s using your HRV readings. WHOOP only uses your settings at night and it’s more valuable reading. The thing is you got to go in and manually do it. Right now, I’m not sure if that’s worth it because it can dramatically change the results if you leave in your daytime ones, and you have to manually remove them.

My guess is at some point, Apple will update this so there’s going to be some way you can say, “Only look at my nighttime readings between this time and this time.” For now, you have to manually do it. It’s very interesting given how expensive WHOOP is per month. I think that this is something to keep an eye on. I wanted to let people know about it because right now, I got one of each. This could be the beginning of goodbye for my WHOOP. We will see. Stay tuned.

We referenced this earlier but there’s a new artist series as there almost always is. This time it features Bad Bunny.

This is not the first time.

I was going to say that. I thought there had been a Bad Bunny one before.

They were like, “You guys can’t get enough of it. Here’s another one.” Of course, that was the opportunity that was used to announce that Camila is going to be teaching on the tread, and it is another Bad Bunny run. I love that and it’s very appropriate for Latin Heritage Month. Are we still in Latin Heritage Month?

I think so. I think it runs from 15th to 15th.

I bet that might be a reason they chose to announce Camila’s change. Also, I don’t think I listed this separately, but while I’m here I will mention it. Happy Peloversary to Camila. It has been one year. That is very cool that she gets to move over to the tread on her one-year anniversary. She’ll still be doing rides though.

Our past guest update is from Krissy Blackwood.

It has been so long since we had Krissy Blackwood on. She has always been an inspiration to me because she picked up and started doing stuff. She had never been super athletic and then she started like, “I will now be an Ironman.” She went and did it. She is a true badass. She has been working on her marathon journey for a while, and she wanted to do all of the Worlds like all the majors.

She completed them. She did three in a row. It was like Germany, London, and another one. She did them all back to back, and now she’s done and she’s retired from marathons. I wanted to say a huge congratulations to her for doing this and thank you for inspiring me. I know without Krissy, Chris Gallant, Tracy Paulson, and that whole crew, I never would’ve become a runner. Thank you to you, guys.

Speaking of past guests and running.

CJ Albertson is aiming to reclaim his 50K world record. I hope that all of you will be cheering him on. I hope that he makes it. I am super excited for him. The dude is fast. I have never seen anybody on his easy day needing a faster treadmill. He did an entire marathon and he could have done it faster than the actual tread will go. My brain hurts when I think of that. It’s crazy. good luck to you CJ. You are an amazing inspiration as well. Go kick their ass.

There is Peloton apparel teaming up with Spiritual Gangster.

It’s Spiritual Gangster, Kendall Toole, and Peloton. We talked about this before, but it officially came out. I only got one outfit. Not all three of them. You’re welcome, Tom. The reason I wanted to show this video if you’re watching YouTube is because Kendall, during her class, Peloton gave away beanies for everybody in the whole class. Everybody got a knockout beanie. How fun is that? They then shared it on Peloton Apparel IG.

Ben Aldis has an October Challenge for you.

Through the entire month of October, he has ways for you to get stronger. It’s a four-week cross-training challenge. There’s cycling, strength, and stretching. Very good, Ben. I’m glad you got that stretching in there. He got workouts for you to do all month long. Of course, it’s not an official Peloton one. This is just a Ben Aldis one. He’s got each day what you should be doing. I love it. Day three is cycle and upper body. Day four, cycle and full body. It’s great. It’s perfectly evened out so that if you follow along, you’re going to get a great workout head to toe.

We missed one birthday last episode, Nico Sarani.

Sorry, Nico.

That was October 3rd.

Happy birthday to Nico. Send her a belated birthday, guys, if you haven’t.

Coming up is Kirra Michel’s.

Happy birthday, Kira.

That will be on October 10th.

Don’t forget, the studio is going to be closed. There will be no classes. Make sure that you reach out to Kira on social media and tell her happy birthday.

She gets her birthday off every year, I guess.

Joining us is Dr. Stacy Sims. She is a forward-thinking, international Exercise Physiologist, and Nutrition Scientist who aims to revolutionize exercise, nutrition and performance for women. She has directed research programs at Stanford, AUT University and the University of Waikato, focusing on female health and performance, and pushing the dogma to improve research on all women. Dr. Sims is the author of the 2016 bestselling book ROAR: How to Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Unique Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong, Lean Body for Life. Her latest book, Next Level: Your Guide to Kicking Ass, Feeling Great, and Crushing Goals Through Menopause and Beyond. It’s Stacy Sims. How is it going?

It’s going well. Thanks, guys.

It’s exciting. I know there are probably people out there who have not yet had a chance to read your books. I highly recommend that they do because it’s life-changing, in my opinion. I have learned so much from reading your books. I thought that it would be fun to have a conversation about what we, as Peloton users, could do to optimize our weight loss, given the Peloton offering. I know that’s a very broad subject, but that’s what I was thinking we could talk about in this episode. Having said that, is there a place where we should start in the journey? Do you know all of the different things Peloton has now? It has grown so much.

I know it has grown so much. I know some of it, but not all of it. I can do the general like you have the HIIT programs and the SIT, and you have some of the liftings that go with the cycling and stuff. If there’s anything specific, I’m going to ask, “Can you explain?”

I can. That’s fair. It’s like where we start there. They have weights, bikes, the treadmill, and all those things. They also have Pilates and stuff like that that you can do and add on. Probably the cardio and the weights are where people want to spend most of their time. From that standpoint, if a person is looking to optimize all of the different offerings, where would a person start?

It’s weight training. I’m always going to defer to that. I laugh just like you guys are laughing. For everyone who’s reading, I am a longtime endurance athlete. I race bikes professionally. I love cycling. When you look at the research across the board for women of all ages, strength training is the thing that not only helps with body composition but also helps with balance, cognition, and brain health, and as we get older, attenuating a lot of the health and comorbidities that happen. The cardiovascular part is part of the fun stuff.

Coaching is a good 20 to 25 years behind what the research is showing. Click To Tweet

It used to be the whole idea of cardio to lose weight, lose body fat, get the fat burning, and all that stuff. More research is coming out showing that we need to do less cardio. If the cardio is there, it has to be super polarized regardless of age. That means super easy or really hard. It’s either the long slow endurance stuff where you’re cruising and chatting, or it’s that SIT and HIIT stuff, but trying to stay in that middle zone. It shouldn’t be the bread and butter of what you’re doing. Strength training should be the bread and butter of what you’re doing.

When you say strength training, it’s not like a couple of pounds. You need to lift probably heavier than that.

It depends on where you are in your strength journey. If you’re just starting, it can be body weight. It can be a couple of pounds. The younger you are, the more repetitions you can do because your body is like, “I can do higher reps.” Although we know from a physiological standpoint that higher loads and lower reps are better for women across the board, especially as you get older. I always recommend to women, figure out where they are in their strength and mobility journey. Let’s work within those confines to get our bodies moving well and understand what full range of motion is within load. It can be a very light load to start. If you’re younger, we’re working with a light load and more repetitions. As we start to get into our 40s and beyond, it’s a heavier load and less repetitions.

It’s counterintuitive to what we’ve been told our whole life, I guess as we’ve learned our whole life. Whenever you were researching this, how are you finding this at a very high level?

Part of it is the connection set you have when you get into academia. You all get in, start to know each other and try to collaborate. When I got into academia and started getting more into research positions, it was like, “Who do you collaborate with?” You have the opportunity to meet people from different universities. Now that we’re all in a senior level, I look at like Brad Schoenfield. He is one of my friends and colleagues. He’s the hypertrophy muscle guy. He’s doing in-depth research on strength training. When I met him, I was like, “What are you doing about women?” He’s like, “We have a hard time recruiting women getting in to stay.” I was like, “We have to look at the language of recruitment.”

He started manipulating some of the recruitment materials to be more inclusive for women. He’s starting to get more women into this space. Let’s look at high loads versus low loads in different women and see what happens. We’re looking where it’s like hypertrophy works, but it’s not optimal for women with regard to body composition change and health. I looked in and was like, “Who else is doing this stuff? There are people doing gut microbiome, and there are people doing brain health stuff. How does resistance training or cardiovascular work into that to be able to produce what we need for brain health or brain neural growth factor?”

It’s reaching out within the big team, but because we’ve all grown up through academics, we have those connections and can reach out to each other and be like, “This is my expertise, but this is your expertise. I want to see how we can meet and match in the middle and figure out what’s going on with women when they’re in pre-menopause, perimenopause, post-menopause, and if they have PCOS or endometriosis.”

It’s a unique position to have as you get further into that research career, and you don’t have egos anymore. When you first start out, you’re like, “This is mine. I’m going to do it. No one else is going to do it.” As you get older, you’re like, “I don’t care. I just want to find the answers. If I can’t do it, then I’m going to reach out to get help from people who can answer and are also interested.” It’s the same thing. People will email me and be like, “I’m interested in this and what you find out about women.” We start building things and having conversations and putting it all together.

It’s fascinating when you talk about the language that is used to get people to participate in studies. You had to manipulate the language to get women more interested in doing a strength training study. Years ago, I did a weight loss study. They were testing how the body process glucose at different weight levels. They wanted people who were pre-diabetic. The guy running the thing was so excited when I came in because he was like, “It’s all women,” because it was a weight loss study. He’s like, “We’re not getting men in the weight loss study.” He could tell I had a weird sense of humor. He’s like, “He’s hoping you’re pre-diabetic.”

A lot of the time, when they’re looking at recruiting for strength studies, the language is all pulling into that aggression. We talked about this before. It’s when you walk into a gym and the cardio is for women and the strength training is for men. It’s all that aggression. We’re putting into the language of recruitment power training and all this stuff, and women are like, “Not quite me. I might interrupt the study.” It’s that hesitation.

People might come to the recruitment meeting, and then they’re surrounded by the bros. They’re like, “This isn’t me.” It’s by changing the language, the recruitment strategies, the slide show, and even the colors on the slide because a lot of times if you’re going to information sessions, they’re black and white and aggressive. You’re changing the colors and stuff. There’s a lot that goes into understanding sex differences in reactions to colors, language, and cultural nuances.

That’s got to be a difficult road to walk. There’s a lot of truth to it, but there are also a lot of stereotypes mashed up in there. You’re now like, “Am I trading one set of problems for another?” You’re right. You go into the gym and over here, it’s black and silver. It looks like the same font that KISS uses. You then go over to the cardio section, and it looks like the cover of a Trapper Keeper.

I could completely see that in the gym.

Could you also explain to the audience why it is that, as women, it’s necessary for us to change our strategy when it comes to weightlifting as we go through our life? I know it’s a complex answer, but in general terms, and then we’ll ask follow-up questions.

In more general terms, we need muscle to be able to do all the functions that we want. If we’re looking at how our lifestyles have changed, we have a more sedentary lifestyle. We’re sitting all the time. We then get up and do some exercise. People are like, “I did my exercise. I could sit some more.” We know from a health standpoint that that’s not optimal either. We have more range of motion. We have more muscles. We can turn muscles on and stimulate them. We’re being more metabolically active throughout the day. If we’re being more metabolically active throughout the day, we have better blood glucose control. We have better blood vessel compliance. We have a better capability of handling a heavy meal that we might not eat all the time.

There’s more than just the body composition aspect. It’s the active tissue and signaling that scales muscle and gives our body to be able to have better health outcomes. When we’re looking across the board at why we need this, there’s the focus on weight loss and weight on the scale, which we should do. We should not be focused on what is the weight on the scale. If you were to go to the moon, it would be different than what it would be on Mars, which would be different than what is on the State or in the US or even down here in New Zealand, wherever. It’s not an accurate measurement of body composition.

We want to be strong so that we can have a long life of injury-free and good health outcomes. For building muscle, we also know that we become more compact because muscle is very tight, and fat is not so tight. As we’re building muscle, it becomes more compact. We tend to have more aesthetic value from a perception of what society thinks we should look like. Our weight on the scale might not be changing. We have to not focus on that. We have to focus on body composition, how we feel, how our health outcomes are, what kind of blood pressure we have, and what kind of blood glucose tolerance we have. It’s all these things.

The biggest thing is when you do strength training, you also get an endorphin release which you get with cardiovascular, but you don’t get a subsequent cortisol increase. If we have a lot of cortisol increasing after our modern-intensity cardio, we end up with a signal to break down more lean mass and store body fat. If we’re doing strength training, we get the benefit of the signal to build lean mass and not store body fat. We also get that endorphin release.

It’s the same as if we do that high-intensity cardio, we still get that same response. If we get to cortisol release, we have a subsequent growth hormone response afterward. We’re looking at it across the board and across the ages. As I said, it’s the bread and butter of everything for long-term health outcomes as well as aesthetics.

Whenever you say women need to do heavier as they get older, if they’re in their twenties, that might look like a very different weightlifting session than somebody in their 50s or 60s. Does that have to do with the way that the muscles in the cortisol respond as well?

Somewhat, but it has to do with hormone preservation. We’re looking at estradiol or estrogen, which is the women’s testosterone. As we get older, it starts to flatline and taper off. When that happens, we have to find some external stress to then tell our body, “We need to still adapt to strength training.” We end up with less anabolic stimulus, so less signaling to build lean mass. We also have less signaling for muscle contraction and a strong contraction for power.

We need to look at lifting heavy because lifting heavy stimulates the muscle cell and stimulate the nervous system to create a strong contraction, whereas estrogen used to do that. When we start to lose it, we have to lift heavier in order to get adaptations and responses to keep building and performing and reaching our performance.

Do men have a similar change as they age?

No. Men age in a linear fashion because testosterone in itself is what everyone thinks about as being aggression and building lean mass. It slowly declines with age. For women, we have a discernible dropoff. We hit peri and post-menopause. In the late 40s and early 50s, it’s a completely different hormone than what men have with a slow decrease in testosterone. What happens with women in their late 40s and early 50s is equivalent to men in their late 60s and 70s with regards to the stimulus for mass. This is why I say as women start to get out of their reproductive years and get into more irregular menstrual cycles into flatlining, we have to progressively switch up the resistance training we’re doing.

People that are doing weights on Peloton should be looking for programming that is lifting heavy and has lower reps if that’s their goal as they’re aging for women.

Yeah. They can also modify the program as they go. Let’s say you love a coach. The coach is like, “We’re doing a higher rep session.” You love the session, and maybe you are doing buddy sessions. You dial in and do the same session as your buddy. It doesn’t mean you have to do the higher reps. You can pick a heavier load and do half of what the reps are. You can modify those sessions for you, but you’re still participating in that particular coach’s class.

Do you have any math or metric formula that a woman could use to figure out how much she should increase the weight versus how many reps she should add?

We look at what kind of program she’s doing. If she is more akin to doing higher reps, we look at 70% of a one-rep max, which is hard to figure out. If we’re looking at a 10 to 15 rep set, by that 15th one, you should be fatigued because you should be working to fatigue. As you get into more power training, as you get older, we’re looking at the 0 to 6 rep range. By the 6th rep on the 3rd set, you can’t do it. You’re fatigued. The goal for us as women is to work to fatigue, whether it’s higher reps or lower reps. We need that fatigue to totally deplete the signaling for muscle contraction from a central nervous system standpoint, but also to completely deplete from a fueling standpoint. It’s a strong signal for the muscle to adapt to that stress.

That’s fascinating.

Think of all the time you save.

It’s like you get to do less.

You’re not doing less though.

It’s to be more efficient.

I’m not even trying to give you trouble. That’s the mindset that sometimes stops people from doing it because they’re like, “It’s less, so it can’t be effective.”

I meant less number of lifting. You’re right. You’re going harder because you’re lifting the max. That’s true.

I’m starting a new program for lower body strength. It’s an eight-week program my friend gave me. I was like, “I love lifting, but I don’t want to spend an hour or more. I don’t have it.” She’s like, “Don’t worry. This program is 2 to 3 times a week, 20-minute sessions.” I looked at it and was like, “It’s going to be hard.” I’m like, “Sweet. I asked for that.” If you do it right, in twenty minutes, you’re completely taxed out, and your body is going to respond well.

I have a question there because I’ve been playing around with different sets and things like that. When it comes to weight lifting, there are moves that you can do. Some of them are in your book. You have them listed out like, “These are the kind of moves you can do.” If you’re trying to follow along with a program, and let’s say the trainer is doing bicep curls and tricep kickbacks, but you’re also doing squats and weighted lunges, how do you know when to do that math and when not to? I would think that for some moves, you can’t necessarily do six reps, and you’re good. Maybe because they’re smaller muscle groups is what I’m trying to say.

You can still load for six. One of the infamous things that we used to do was the Dirty 7s for the biceps. You do a set of seven reps, and then you’re like, “That’s fatigue.” You then add more weight and try to do another set of seven. You keep doing seven, so you can’t anymore. If you do it right, you can only do 3 or 4 sets.

Is the recovery time the same on a system like that?

If you’re doing heavy stuff, you want to have full central nervous system recovery. You’re looking at 2 to 4 minutes between each set. It is a full recovery. If you’re doing the 10 to 15 rep range, that’s more metabolic. You don’t need as much recovery because you’re not looking for that central nervous system. You’re looking for, “Let’s flush out. Let’s get some more ATP. Let’s get the metabolic systems going.” The goal there is to metabolically tax the muscle so that when it gets completely depleted, the signal is we need to split the muscle fiber and jam more stuff in it so that we have more available fuel to encounter that stress again.

If we’re looking at lifting heavy, the goal is to get the nerves to the muscle stimulated to be like, “We need to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible to lift this load.” It’s very taxing on the central nervous system and the nerve, so you need a longer recovery to be able to regenerate all the neuromuscular junctions. Your electrolytes and neurotransmitters that cross have to have some time to reuptake and regenerate. It’s different systems we’re trying to tax.

Would you need more recovery time in between workout days as well?

Women have more endurance, so not necessarily. It’s best to listen to your body. If you go heavy and the next day you’re like, “I can’t walk.” You know you’re going to need a little bit more recovery. Probably the next time you do a session like that, it may not be quite as heavy. We don’t want to make it so heavy that you have a good session, but then you’re down for days on end. That’s why I’m always like, “Pace in. See how your body is moving,” because we want a full range of motion through every movement. We want to make sure that the weak link is being taxed but not to the point where you get so much pain that you can’t do a full range of motion in your next session.

I’m curious. You say, “As you get older, it’s better to shift to more weights and fewer reps.” When you’re younger, is it better to do lower weights and more reps, or is it just when you’re younger, anything works?

When you’re younger, your body is more resilient. It can bounce back a lot faster. You don’t need as much signaling for the central nervous system because the nervous system is firing. It’s ready to go. When you’re younger, it’s good to do undulating periodization. You do a block of higher reps and lower weights. You then do a block of lower rep and higher weight. You’re periodizing every 3 to 4 weeks. You’re changing it up because your body likes change. It doesn’t like to get used to one thing.

As you get old, you don’t like change anymore.

Once you get older, you don’t like change, full stop.

Shifting over to the cardio side, you mentioned HIIT and SIT. Since I’ve read your books, I know what those mean. Can you describe the difference between Sprint Interval Training and what people are used to in High-Intensity Interval Training? When is it appropriate for women to use it?

High-Intensity Interval Training is not even what people think of as a 45-minute HIIT class because that’s too long. That puts you in moderate-intensity work, which is what we don’t want to be in, regardless of age. When talking about high-intensity interval training, we’re looking at 1 to 2-minute repetition. Your working interval is 1 to 2 minutes, and then you have 2 to 4 minutes of recovery in between. We’re looking at two types of sessions. We’re looking at sustained threshold-type sessions.

When we talk about Sprint Interval Training, this is 20 to 30 seconds full on as hard as you can, and it might be even five minutes of recovery in between. The goal is to go as hard as you can for that amount of time, and fully recover to be able to go as hard as you can again. Tabata doesn’t fit into sprint interval training. We see all this Tabata workout, 20 seconds on and 20 seconds off. That’s more high intensity. Even though you’re only doing short twenty-second bursts, there’s not enough recovery between those twenty-second bursts to be sprint interval. That’s more high-intensity work.

When we’re talking about when is it appropriate for women, if we’re talking about the reproductive years, so we’re pre-menopausal, we like to have women track their menstrual cycle and plan the high-intensity interval and the sprint intensity interval stuff, and the low hormone phase. Day one is the first day leading up to ovulation, which is around day 14 on a typical 28-day cycle. We then start to pace it a bit, where we might do a couple of steady-state workouts and get into more de-load where it’s a full recovery.

When we’re talking about perimenopause and postmenopause, the bread and butter of what they should be doing from a cardiovascular standpoint is that sprint interval or high-intensity work. If they are looking to do long-flow stuff, it has to be super easy where you’re embarrassed because you’re going so slow and you feel like you’re not having a workout. You need that polarization to keep the body responding and getting metabolic and strength out of patients through the cardiovascular.

We’re looking at not being able to track menstrual cycles because our menstrual cycles are irregular or don’t have them anymore. We do a two-week block where we’re focused on 2 to 4 sprint or HIIT sessions a week, and that third week is complete recovery, where you’re doing what your body wants to do with the intensity low. If you’re doing volume, it’s super low-intensity.

It’s super fascinating. I think about all of the type-A people that are part of the Peloton community. I think about the fact that they want to do it all. I’m one of those people. You want to train for a half marathon. You want to get stronger. You want to lose weight. You want to have good aesthetics. You want to do all the things, so how can you put together a plan that does all those things and there’s still enough time in the week? It seems like there are not enough days.

There’s plenty of time in the week if you plan it right. The very bottom goal should be weight loss and aesthetics. If you’re doing the strength and the programming for a half marathon or whatever it is, the aesthetics and body comp come with it if you’re training properly. What happens is we get into this mindset and we do too much. We do too much and we can’t polarize and have these different intensities. We’re all in that mindset from the lovely 1980s of long slow fat burning, and that whole idea of the longer you go, the more calories and fat you burn.

This is not true. I want people to understand that it’s not. When you’re doing that long slow stuff, you’re putting your body under lots of stress. You have a big upsurge of cortisol. That cortisol can become a higher baseline, and this is what creates a systemic inflammation response. If we have systemic inflammation, we cannot lose body fat. What we do is we start burning through our lean mass. If we want to be able to do a half marathon and we want to be strong, we put the aesthetics and body comp at the very bottom of the list and go, “My priority is the half marathon training program. I also want to be strong for the back half of that half marathon, so I can either split or maintain the same pace. I need to put in 2 to 3 true strength training sessions a week.”

As I said, it’s twenty minutes. You can back that twenty-minute session up with a super easy 20 to 30-minute aerobic type run, especially if you’re training for a half marathon, so your whole session, which is partly hard and partly a recovery might be an hour, which is more than enough. As you’re going through, you’re like, “The other thing I need for a half marathon is some interval sessions because I know I need to work my running economy. I know I need to work on my threshold.” If you’re doing that aspect as well, you need to do a couple of strength training sessions and do some SIT on top of that instead of that long slow step.

It’s balancing. The strength is the bulk of it, and after a couple of sessions, you’re backing that strength part up with some key sessions from your half marathon. Bear in mind that long slow time on the feet stuff that people are like, “You got to do a two-hour run every weekend.” We don’t need to do that as women because we are already predisposed to being able to go long and slow. We need to get our bodies strong. We need to get our bodies the capability of going over a marathon phase or half marathon phase and coming back and recovering, so that if we have a surge or we have to go up a hill and our heart rate jacks up, then we can bring it back down and still be fine.

You can’t do that if you don’t teach your body how to do that polarization. When we’re looking at how we plan it out, there’s that 14 or 16-week half marathon program. Let’s look at the key sessions. You should have 3 key sessions a week, and 2 to 3 key strength sessions a week. You have plenty of time to have the rest of your life. If you’re paying attention to the plan and the strength, other things are going to come. As you’re planning and training right, you remain uninjured, and you also have that optimal body composition change.

Does that mean there are better ways to train for marathons than what people traditionally do?

Yes. We have to remember that coaching is a good 20 to 25 years behind what the research is showing. I say that because when we look at coaching and coaching metrics, a lot of it is grassroots where it comes to, “This is what I did, so this is going to work for you.” There are coaching certification programs, don’t get me wrong, but it’s hard to break the mentality of the base files. We then have the intensity stuff and the tape stuff. Brian MacKenzie was put off to the side about being a little bit of an anomaly because he’s all about indirect prospects and training for marathons. The ethos of what he’s bringing in, where we have the base of strength, we do some good polarized stuff and then we balance that or we complement that with a couple of long sessions.

It’s the way that people are now looking at training for a marathon. The idea of having to increase your mileage by 10% a week by doing your long slow runs on the weekend, and maybe a track session on a Tuesday is so stale with regards to how people should be training for marathons. If we take that whole stance that I told you about, let’s get the strength work and pick out key sessions, you end up doing less volume, which makes people nervous because of the mentality of, “I need a lot of volumes.” Their bodies are so resilient because they’re strong and they have been able to maintain an injury-free and illness-free status that they can nail that marathon even though the longest run they might have done is two hours.

Exercise is great. But if we do too much of it, it's an extreme that our body doesn't like, just like when we do too little of it. Click To Tweet

Is there anything else that people should focus on when it comes to Peloton offerings to be able to reach their goals that we haven’t touched? This is a ginormous subject, so I know you could talk about this all day, but is there anything, in particular, you would like to make sure people know about?

One of the big things is that when we get wrapped up in all the offerings, we forget to plan. We forget what our big end goal is. It can be an end goal for each month. It can be an end goal for six months. You have to have the idea of, “Why am I doing this?” Yes, exercise is great, but if we do too much of it, it’s an extreme that our body doesn’t like, just the same way we do too little of it.

If you’re looking at everything that’s there and you have a plan and you’re like, “For these three weeks, I’m going to focus on this.” You then go and look at all the offerings like, “That’s strength oriented.” It gives you good metrics to work within. As I said, our bodies want to have change. That’s how we can adapt a lot faster. If we keep doing the same thing over and over, we might get into that rut, “I’m going to show up to Nadine’s class because she’s a great coach. I’m going to keep doing her class because she’s a great coach,” but you don’t see any change because your body is not getting it.

Have it in your head, “What am I doing for this month? What am I doing to get to the six-month goal?” We tend to fall into whatever is there and whatever looks good on the day. Having a plan is so important. When you look at the lead athletes, they don’t just show up training on the day and do not have a plan. If we take an eye on what’s going on to maximize our time in life and minimize our worry to get maximum benefit, we have to have a plan.

It makes perfect sense.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join us. We greatly appreciate this. This has been fascinating even for a boy. Before we let you go, let everybody know where they can find your books, things and stuff.

Our website has a list of everything. There are links there to get the book. It’s DrStacySims.com. As I try to tell everyone, I’m a big proponent of supporting the little person. If you have a local bookseller, you want to go to them and ask, “Can you get these books in for me?” They’re more than happy to because, in the era of Amazon and big-box shops, people are starting to struggle more. Try to support locals as much as you can. That’s in the book. For everything else we’re doing, you can find it on social media Facebook, Instagram, and our website. You can sign up for our free newsletter that gives you insight into what we’re up to and gives you some information and something new and exciting every two weeks.

Since you’re not going to say it, I’m going to plug it for you. You’ve got that new Menopause Course coming out that I’m very excited about.

You put the word excited and menopause in the same sentence.

It’s a good change in the language.

Awesome. Thank you.

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

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

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online on Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Thank you to all the people who have joined the group. There’s quite an influx. Welcome. I make dick jokes. Thank you very much for that. Don’t forget our YouTube channel where you can watch these episodes, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

 

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