• Peloton slashes pay of showroom staff.
• Replacement seat posts have started to arrive.
• We’ve found a price hack to help certain app users with new pricing.
• Peloton and USO partnered for a Memorial Day Message.
• Lifehacker reviews the Peloton rebrand.
• Nine.com.au reviews the Tread.
• Women.com has tips for Peloton and Whoop.
• EVEN Hotel Sweetwater adds Pelotons.
• CNET spotlights summertime workouts.
• Dr. Jenn –  Caring for ill parents without losing focus on yourself.
• Selena Samuela drops out of Iron Man.
• Jenn Sherman mentions her hangover and causes uproar.
• Mara Thoner (aka Matty Maggiacomo) to host Pride event at Zou Zou’s.
• Cody Rigsby to participate in a Pride event at Stonewall.
• Emma Lovewell is heading to London to teach two classes.
• Emma was on the Breaking Bread podcast.
• Emma Lovewell to appear at Martha’s Vineyard Soundfest.
• Tunde learned to snorkel.
• Camila Ramon was on HolaTV.
• Ally Love to speak at the “Day To Grow” conference in Orlando.
• Angelo/MetPro – Does menopause affect your diet?
• Echelon attempts to target disgruntled Peloton members.
• Strava had tips for optimizing your Peloton Bike.
• CNET looks at the impact of AI on the future of fitness.
• AAptiv is rolling out AI workouts and people aren’t having it.
• There’s a new digital fitness platform – obe.
• Lululemon looks to a female-driven science initiative.
• Peloton Memorial Day classes are available on-demand.
• Clip Out team-member Darci reviews Peloton Gym.
• Three new programs are now available on the app.
• Pump Up The Volume strength now available.
• FYI…the studios are closed this week for maintenance. Don’t freak out.
• Birthdays –   Cody Rigsby (6/8)

All this plus our interview with Melissa Ferrara.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Peloton Slashes Pay Of Showroom Staff Plus Our Interview With Melissa Ferrara

It has been a crazy day. At one point, I realized that I now have three different attorneys. How did that happen? I didn’t do anything wrong, and I have three different attorneys. We still have custody stuff with my ex-wife for a nineteen-year-old, and then your personal injury attorney from when you got hit by the car, and then I had some issues with my other podcast where someone was trying to take our name, and now I have a trademark attorney. Maybe we’ll tell that story on the Patreon.

That’s a good idea.

At one point, I was talking to them simultaneously. I’m like, “What the hell? If you have three attorneys, you should be a criminal or a billionaire, and I’m neither.

The funny thing is we didn’t initiate any of these.

Not one of them. None of the cases, we initiated. We didn’t do anything wrong, like nothing. All of a sudden, we’re lawyered up to the bejesus. I’m like, “What the hell is happening?”

It has been a day.

We should also remind people that we will be in Orlando on June 9th.

That’s 6:00 PM at Splitsville. We will see you there.

Come out and say hello. We’d love to hang out with you. We don’t have a lane, but we do have a table.

Our experience with these things is we usually all chat. There’s no time for bowling.

We’d love to hang out. Besides that, what prey tell do you have in store for people?

Peloton has some big news in the showroom that we’re going to discuss. We’re also going to talk about the new seat posts that are coming out, the replacement ones. There are all kinds of other things including what Peloton did for Memorial Day. There are also some new Pelotons in other hotels. Hotels are going to be a big topic today. We’ll talk about that a lot.

We have a visit from Dr. Jenn. We cover the topic of caring for ill parents without losing focus on ourselves. We also talk about the instructor news because there is a ton of it. We also have a visit from Angelo at MetPro, “Does menopause affect your diet?” There’s little competition news and then In Case You Missed It.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google. Wherever you find a podcast, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and follow us so you never missed an episode. Maybe leave us a review. It’s super helpful. We greatly appreciate it. You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. You can always find us on YouTube where you can watch these episodes. That’s available at YouTube.com/TheClipOut.

We have a newsletter at theclipout.com that you can sign up for. We’ll send you the links and things like that. You can also find our Patreon. You can sign up for that. You’ll get ad-free episodes. You’ll get the episodes early when we get them early. Sometimes we don’t, but sometimes we do. When we get them early, you get them early. We also like to record bonus episodes where I’ll tell you about how someone tried to steal my other podcast.

You didn’t talk about our interview.

Our interviewee is Moms of Peloton.

That’s Melissa Ferrara, if you know her real name. There are tons of fun stuff to talk about.

You’re going to want to stick around for all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

—

We got some sad news and a Clip Out exclusive that the showrooms are about to have their pay slashed.

Peloton wanted to cut their payroll for the showrooms by at least 40%. As they did that, what they ended up doing was taking commissions from all the showroom employees. In addition to that, they moved them over to hourly employees. They gave them a slight bump.

That’s not enough to offset the loss of commission sales.

What we’re hearing is for many people, it was cutting their pay by as much of a third. Many of these people are going to have to move on to other jobs. They also indicated that they are no longer called sales associates. They are now brand ambassadors. Some people were not happy about that new title. My understanding is that this is happening to all sales associates, so inside sales and showrooms. The reason that we are highlighting the showrooms is because this is where a lot of people had their very first moment with Peloton of any kind. It’s a lot of good people that we are going to be losing, and it’s sad.

I also feel like this is getting out in front of more store closings. It feels like it’s a way to purge the payroll without having to fire people because they know when they make this adjustment, a lot of people are going to be like, “Got to go.”

They won’t replace those people.

They know that these showrooms are not long for this world. My guess is by the time this is all said and done, I bet you we probably have showrooms in the top ten markets and that’s about it. The thought process, from a purely cold and calculated business standpoint is that you can get them at Dick’s and Amazon. You can see one in real life at Dick’s if you want. There are other places to see them in real life. Peloton is so prevalent now that if you want a Peloton, chances are you have a friend who has one. You could go check it out at their house if you needed to touch it first.

It’s a very different world than it was a few years ago when they started ramping up all those retail sales rooms. I feel like the other aspect of it that not only can you still try them out, and you have other people that have them. It also goes along with a line that they’re not expecting to continue to put new hardware out.

Ultimately, there’s a finite amount of fitness equipment.

If you needed the retail sales showrooms to teach people, “This is what a tread is. This is what a rower is.”

I will say that you can get a bike and almost everybody probably has a friend or an acquaintance that has a bike, but they probably don’t have a friend or acquaintance that has a tread. They almost certainly don’t have a friend or acquaintance that has a rower. I know you can get a bike at Dick’s. Can you get a tread or a rower at Dick’s? I honestly don’t know.

I think they have opened up Amazon to Bike+. I don’t remember off the top of my head. I feel like there might have been more availability at Dick’s Sporting Goods than there was at Amazon, but I could be misremembering that. I don’t know off the top of my head.

As they pivot, by their own admission, to focusing on getting app subscribers and pivoting away from the equipment, I get that the showrooms don’t matter in the way they did 3 or 4 years ago, and that sucks. It’s cool to walk into your mall and see a Peloton store. The problem is how often you walk into your mall anymore.

I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to a real store on a regular basis. Every once in a while we go to one because I have to. I don’t go to stores now. The pandemic changed that for a lot of people.

Malls are already on the decline. They were in the upscale malls that tend to be a little bit more recession-proof, but I still think it took a toll.

I think that they will stay in those markets. As you said, some of those bigger markets are going to still keep one in those nice areas. Who knows? We have learned over time with showrooms that closed first that it had a lot to do with where their leases are. It’s important to note that this change is going to take place on July 1st. If employees stay until August, then they will continue to get their commission for the next two months.

It’s also important to note that at least in the minds of people who have brought this to our attention, they feel that it is particularly bad timing considering that Barry just got a raise. If you’re looking at it from the perspective of cold hard business, he got a raise on his base pay, but his stock options have changed considerably. It’s also important to remember that he’s the one that’s turning the ship around. He’s the one that has the most risk here.

I don’t know that I’d say he has the most risk.

It’s him making a decision and it all rests on his shoulders whether it fails or it works. That’s all I’m saying by risk.

From my vantage point, if Peloton went tits up tomorrow, Barry is going to be okay.

I didn’t mean his personal finances. I meant who’s making decisions. I wouldn’t be able to make this decision. This is why I can’t be a CEO. I’m dead serious. I couldn’t if I had to lay off all these people, close all these showrooms, and change all their pay, knowing how unhappy they would be. This is why they get paid the big bucks to make these awful gut-wrenching decisions.

A lot of times you hear these stories where they lay off a bunch of people and the CEO is getting a raise in tens of millions of dollars. You could carve out a third of that and keep a good chunk of these people. He’s getting a raise of $250,000, which is not an insubstantial amount of money, but it’s not like if he gave back that $250,000, they could hire all these people back. That’s not the optics here.

For all the people that are still in this headspace of this means Peloton is going down the tubes, I think it means a different thing. It’s the exact opposite of that. This means that they are making the hard decisions to make sure that they continue the longevity. I don’t like these decisions. I hate whenever Peloton has to change, whether it be changes in where we all get together once a year or my favorite instructor leaving, or they have to change the number of people that work there.

I want to say this and I want people to hear this and spread the news because it’s important. That is Peloton is important to stay around long term. We’re going to have to sometimes make sacrifices for that. This is not a sacrifice I wanted to make. It’s not a sacrifice for me personally but for the showroom. I don’t mean that. I mean that with everything that’s changing, we have to accept if we want Peloton to be around for a long time. I am not saying that I’m making the same sacrifice that a showroom employee is.

They’re in a situation where sometimes to expand, you have to contract. They’re in the contraction phase and it sucks. The replacement seat posts are starting to pop up in people’s mailboxes if you have a big mailbox.

Maybe it’s their front porch. We have some images for those of you who are watching. If you’re not watching, you can also see our post about this at theclipout.com or you can wait until you get the newsletter. For those of you listening, I will do my best to describe it. We have two posts laying here together. For those of you looking, the top post is the old post. The one below it is the new post.

When you were like, “I will do my best to describe it,” I was like, “I’ll do it for you.” It looks like the post you got.

There are some differences.

I’m sure there must be in order for it to be the replacement part, but to the naked eye, it doesn’t look any different.

It is longer. It’s half an inch longer so there is a very obvious difference.

There’s a reason that a woman would spot that. What about its girth?

The other thing to point out is that the welds look very different. I don’t know how they are different because I don’t understand welding, but the joints look very different than the first one. There you go.

They’re starting to show up for people. Hopefully, more people get them and they can get back to running. If you are an app user and you are upset with the new tier pricing, we have discovered a price hack that could possibly work for you. To be clear, this isn’t going to work for all people. It’s not a magic bullet, but if you are in a household where multiple people could possibly use the Peloton, or maybe you’re in a relationship but you don’t live with that person and you don’t mind sharing account, this could be a solution to get more content.

We know all the app tiers, so I’m not going to go through those again. We know that there are five of them, from free to the most expensive. What you may not realize is that there’s also the Guide membership. There’s all-access for people who have a bike, a tread, or a rower. There’s also the Guide-only membership that I feel people are glossing over. Here’s the deal. You can buy a Guide for $195. They originally came out at $295. A lot of people think they’re going to go down even further during prime days. Watch for that and other sales. Let’s say you buy a Guide, whether it be the cheaper $195 or the more expensive or whatever.

Here’s the thing, if you get a Guide-only membership, it’s $24 a month. You get all of the content on the app automatically. That means if you have a different rower from a different company, you can use it. The best part is you get to share it with five people in your home. If you have the app only, any of the app tiers, and the regular app, that price is for a single person. If you are using the free option, obviously it’s free, so it doesn’t matter. If you’re using the app plus option that has all of the content, you have only yourself to share that with for $24, or you can pay $24 and share it with five other people in your home.

If you have two people in your home doing the intermediate tier, you could buy the Guide and then share it, and pay essentially the same amount of money for all the content.

Not only do you get all the content, but you also get all the Guide content, all of the Guide exclusive workouts that come out, and you have seven weeks before you get it anywhere else on the app, you’ll get it first thing. You get all of the things that come with the Guide. You get the form tracking. You get the form where you’re able to see the rep tracking. That’s what I meant to say. You are able to track all of your weights, put those in the system, and have your weight library. The best part is this works even for people who have a very small amount of space because the Guide is this big.

It’s super tiny. I know a lot of people are like, “I can’t get a tread or a rower because my house or apartment is too small.” That is not an issue with a Guide in any way, shape, or form. If you’re an app user and you look for the same money, this could be a very effective way to do it. If they go on sale again, like we think they’re going to, you could snap one up and save yourself some cash long-term.

One more thing about this is I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and be like, “You don’t know whether they’re not going to change the price.” I don’t know that. I can’t tell the future.

We don’t know that they’re not going to change the price of the bike.

What I will tell you is this. I did reach out to Peloton sales before I wrote this article and before we did this approach here.

We do research, people.

 

The salesperson indicated that there are no plans to change this. Right now, nobody has any plan to change this. It might change, but it might not. There you go.

We celebrated Memorial Day over the weekend, or I guess we should say commemorated Memorial Day. It’s for people who died serving our country so you don’t want to celebrate that necessarily.

You do not.

You’re grateful but it’s not a party. Peloton had partnered with the USO over Memorial Day. To be clear, we know what Memorial Day means, but you can’t send a message to the dead troops.

What they did is they teamed up with the USO so that you can send messages to troops who are currently serving and who have served. They’re still making a sacrifice. It’s still a great way to say, “We are grateful for what you were doing also.” It’s nice because this is a great way to celebrate what people are doing right now.

Show appreciation while people are still with us. We just gave you a hack, but Life Hacker has a review of Peloton’s new free app subscription and they actually dig it.

They said it looks pretty good actually.

They seem pleasantly surprised. They were like, “We came here to sh*t on it but it turns out.”

This is in Australia. That is important to note because one of the things Peloton is trying to do here is to get all those app subscriptions as you talked about earlier, but you got to move to other countries to be able to do that. Peloton is trying to not only get app subscriptions but also grow app subscriptions in a lot of countries. Australia is a great place to do that because they are a very fit country, and they are very open to Peloton. This is great that they had such an awesome review. That’s a huge win for Peloton.

Speaking of Australia, Nine.com.au has a review of the tread, and they also seem to dig it. There’s a lot of digging going on down there in Australia. Australia, you dig all the way to Cleveland.

They were surprised that the training is so effective on Peloton. Their original thought process was there was no way that they could ever run for eight minutes straight, then they trained with the coaches on Peloton and suddenly, they are running for eight minutes at a time. That says a lot about engagement and consistency because those are important things. Anybody that has the ability to run can go outside and run, but if you don’t stick with it and it doesn’t come naturally to you to get better, you do need some ability to be engaged and have somebody push you. That’s pretty cool.

Women.com is talking about Whoop and its compatibility with Peloton.

This was very interesting because it combines two of my favorite things, Peloton and Whoop. It’s interesting because I don’t think that I’ve ever heard anybody talk about Peloton and Whoop outside of people in the Peloton community, and we talk about different trackers. It was interesting that there was a whole article by Women.com discussing something so generically. They talk about there are other fitness trackers that you can use and why would you want to use them. There are a lot of people that don’t see the need to have Whoop, but I am not one of those people. I like to have my Whoop and I like it to track all my metrics. It’s the best around for sleep. It’s even better than Oura Ring, in my opinion.

I love its recovery metrics. I’ve tried using Athletic for certain things. You can use Athletic with Apple Watch, but Whoop continues to still have the best recovery metrics that match me. Also, it has all the strength tracker things that you can do now. It’s tracking your strength and it shows the proper strain for your strength, which is used to only track your heart rate. There is no other tracker that does that. None of them do that. That’s pretty cool. I love that they are celebrating that on Women.com.

I should say that we received no compensation for that.

There’s none. It’s just because I love Whoop.

EVEN Hotel in Sweetwater Doral, Miami is breaking ground. Their new hotels are going to have Pelotons in them. Do you think all the EVEN Hotels are getting Pelotons in them?

I don’t know. This is the first one that I’ve seen. That’s why I wanted to mention it because I thought it was pretty intriguing that we’ve started seeing these. We saw this in Hilton. We’re seeing the Hilton get bigger with that partnership. We’ve seen it happen in Westin. That partnership has grown. To be able to see another major hotel chain having Pelotons in it is awesome. This isn’t just Peloton in their gym. They have three different room classes, one of which has a Peloton in it. I thought that was pretty cool and I would absolutely stay in a hotel if I could find it where I was traveling. That would make me do that.

I have one booked for August.

You got me very excited.

I have an EVEN Hotel booked for August, but I don’t know if they have Pelotons or not.

I thought we were going to change that, but that’s a whole other story.

I don’t think they need to hear that conversation. It’s not private. It’s just boring. CNET.com gives you a list of summertime workouts that are great for the outdoors. It’s a list of things and Peloton makes the list.

We’re going to talk about Aaptiv later. They’re on this list. I want to make sure we chat about that. Peloton makes the list. A lot of different ones did. I love that they are being considered and included for things like outdoor workouts because they have amazing outdoor workouts. Someday, maybe I’ll even get to take place with them again. I’m not better.

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to Dr. Jenn. She has tips and suggestions for those of you caring for ill parents, but still being able to maintain the focus on yourself because that is still important during trying times like that. Stick around.

—

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

Hello.

We have another anonymous question. This one says, “I am so out of my routine and I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress.” I know exercise would help me tremendously, but I can’t get myself to do it. I got married a month ago. We have known my dad’s cancer is back since Christmas. They honestly don’t know if they can help him this time. Besides having a full-time job and a new husband, twice a week, I drive over one and a half hours each way if there is no snow or construction to help my parents because my mom is also showing early signs of Alzheimer’s. She can’t manage everything anymore.”

“As I said, I’ve been dealing with some stress. I listen to the podcast every week. I’ve tried Dr. Jenn‘s tips of doing a five–minute core class a few times a week or trying different types of classes like barre and shadow boxing or bike bootcamps. I’m such all or nothing person. I feel like I’m failing. Do I need to keep trying or be easy on myself knowing some of this will pass eventually, and I will fall back into a routine.” This poor woman.

I feel for her. As someone who has an ill family member who I care for and I have some similar stresses, I get this. The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Should you be easier on yourself? Absolutely. Should you continue doing that five-minute core class and try to build on it? Yes. I also think that part of what she needs to do is what has become such a cliche, but I have to say it anyway. It’s the old adage that when you’re on the airplane and you’re with a child, they say that if the oxygen mask comes down, you got to put it on the kid first before you put it on yourself because if you pass out, you’re no good use to anybody.

You’ve got to view self-care differently. It’s very hard when you are taking care of other people who you love in your family. Driving an hour and a half each way is incredibly stressful in and of itself, much less when you arrive at your parents’ home and what you have to see is so heartbreaking. I think that having some things that you do for yourself is of the utmost importance.

You’ve got to put gasoline in the tank in order to keep going. What you’re going through between your dad’s cancer and your mom’s Alzheimer’s, it sounds like at the very least your mom, it’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint. You’re going to need to find a way of life temporarily that allows you some self-care, otherwise, you’re going to lose it. You’re no good use to anyone if you break down.

First of all, on the days that you’re driving there, you got to give yourself a break. The most you should do is a five-minute stretch class because it’s going to hurt your back and your hips, spending three hours in the car. When you come back, you’d probably benefit from a little Chelsea’s five-minute pigeon, which we all know how I feel about that class, or a little 4 or 5-minute Chelsea or Kristin. On the other days, you should have at least 1 or 2 days where you do nothing and you can rest. On those other days, what can you do that is small? Stop judging yourself for it. I’m coming after you on this.

If you do anything, it is an accomplishment. That’s what you have to keep in mind. Also, some of your self-care may be Peloton. Maybe it’s a 5-minute class, a 10-minute class, or a 20-minute class. Also, some of it needs to be what will put gasoline in the tank. Sometimes it’s Peloton, but sometimes it is doing a crossword puzzle. Sometimes it’s watching some dumb TV that is like brain candy. Sometimes it’s reading a book. Sometimes it’s listening to this wonderful podcast. Sometimes it is doing something creative or getting on the phone with a girlfriend and bitching about how difficult life is right now.

You need to give yourself that because you’ve got to be putting fuel in the tank and using self-care, and stop judging yourself. That’s the core to getting through this and getting this on such a deep profound level personally and professionally. You’ve got to give yourself a break. You’ve got to find what will help you have energy, not things that will take away energy. Judging yourself takes away energy.

I remember when my mom passed, she was in and out of a coma for the last three months and I didn’t do anything health-related then, but I gained 40 pounds in that three months. I was at the hospital until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. On the way home, I didn’t have time to eat how I would normally eat, so I went to McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Anything she can do is going to be better than doing nothing.

Also, you were probably using food to soothe yourself. It sounds like you were turning to comfort food like fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and that stuff in order to get through a difficult time. Sometimes we do that

For sure. It’s a crappy situation. There are no two ways about that. Thank you so much for those words of wisdom. Until next time, where can we find you?

On all social media @DrJennMann.

Thank you.

—

Selena Samuela announced that she is canceling her Ironman race in July, but here’s why that’s a good thing.

Memes prompt conversations within a community. People tag their friends, they answer questions, and they are voicing their opinions. Click To Tweet

To go over the timeline, she had announced in November her intention to do an Ironman in 2023. In December, she had her son Torin. She started training after she had Torin. She found that she was not where she wanted to be physically as far as getting right back into that. She talked a couple of days ago on Instagram about the fact that it was time for her to pivot and change directions because she just now is getting to the point where she feels like she could train at a level she needs to train for. That was incredibly smart.

I was concerned about her. This is her first full Ironman. I was concerned when she announced that in November, not because she can’t handle herself. I was concerned because I know a lot of people who have done Ironmans. They have trained and trained and gotten hurt while training. It’s adding to the pressure of being a new mom. There’s already so much pressure when you’re a new mom. Everybody judges you. “Are you breastfeeding? Are you not breastfeeding? Are you giving them organic food? Are you making the food yourself? Are you using diapers that are disposable?” The list could go on for hours about everything that everyone thinks they have something to say about it.

To be a new mom and to be this high-level Peloton instructor with all these physical expectations that you have as an instructor, and then on top of all that, do the training that it takes. It’s like 27 to 37 hours a week of training for the Ironman that you have to do. That’s a lot of pressure for anybody. I personally was relieved that she decided to do this because it puts such a great example out there for women in the community. I mean anybody, it doesn’t have to be a woman.

We all put a lot of pressure on ourselves. There are so many of us in the community that are type-A personalities and we’re like, “I’m going to do this, come hell or high water, regardless of whether I get hurt, regardless of whether or not I have to put other priorities on hold and that’s going to end up messing up my life in some way.”

We tend to glorify play through the pain. There are times when that sort of grit is important to have, but there are a lot of times when people end up hurting themselves. It’s a great example for people to see that even a Peloton instructor whom a lot of people would consider the pinnacle of fitness or at least in the 98th percentile of fitness, even they can have things that they struggle with, and they need to take a step back from. There’s no shame in it.

None at all. I am so impressed with how Selena has covered her entire postpartum journey, in particular, having the guts to say this so publicly and knowing that there are going to be some people that will judge her. Most of us are applauding her and most of us say thank you for being such a positive influence, and reminding all of us that we can pivot and change goals, and the rest of your life is still in front of you. She’s going to pivot to a different race. She doesn’t say when that one was. It’ll be an appropriate time that she feels ready for, and that’s all that matters.

She also indicated that everybody who follows her classes on Peloton ought to get ready because she is ready to bring it. She is entering her major training phase at this point and she is going to kick our asses. I love this for her and I appreciate that she did this. I have nothing but wonderful warm fuzzies for Selena for doing that.

Jenn Sherman started a little bit of a kerfuffle.

In her mix tape class that she did the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, she went to a concert the night before. She had a few drinks and she was feeling it the next day. She was tired and was like, “I need to drink a glass of water. I need to stay hydrated.” When some people got ahold of that information, it turned into an intervention online. It was upsetting how people were so judgmental of her. They made it sound like she was about to throw up and that she was unprofessional. She miscued and she couldn’t do her job.

It was like when Hawkeye went into surgery hungover and Radar got all mad at him. It was a comment thread full of Radars.

She wasn’t. I took the class and that’s absolutely not what was happening. She was her usual bubbly self. She was definitely struggling. Who hasn’t where they’ve done too much the night before?

The older you get, when you go to a concert, even if you don’t drink, it can be rough the next day. How many times have we gone to a concert and not drunk and the next day be like, “I feel like I drank.”

The Lizzo concert was definitely like that for me. There was a lot of judgment about this. We want to talk about it and share our support. I’m not saying that people should constantly be talking about alcohol and showing this lifestyle like they can go partying, and giving it lots of glamour and love. I don’t think that’s healthy either.

There’s a middle ground.

She went to a concert the night before and she was an adult. She showed up and did her job, and she still did a good job.

That’s what a concert is. It’s not like she went to a bar the night before and she could have done that on a different day. The concert is when the concert is, as the guy who schedules concerts knows. That happened. Now you know about it. Mara Thonner, aka Matty Maggiacomo, will be at Zou Zou’s on June 11th to celebrate Pride.

Matty as Mara Thonnerr is doing a cool Pride brunch. I think this is fun. It’s going to be from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM and there’s going to be this three-course family-style lunch, up to two cocktails and mocktails, and you get to have a conversation with Mara Thonner. Who wouldn’t want to have an in-depth conversation with Mara Thonner? What a special event to be invited to. People received invites for this in their emails. The last I heard, there were a few left. Hopefully, people that had gotten these, snapped them up right away because what an amazing opportunity. You know I love Matty.

Emma Lovewell is heading to the UK.

I guess they’re on an exchange program now because Bradley Rose was just here. Emma is going to London.

There’s a shuttle going back and forth.

They’re taking Concord and repurposing them, and now they’re Peloton shuttles.

Do you know that “leave a penny, take a penny” thing they had at the local gas station? They have that for Peloton instructors. “Do you want Bradley Rose? Take it. You got Emma Lovewell. Leave it right here.”

She’s going to be teaching two classes while she’s in London. One of them is going to have members in it. It’s going to be a ‘90s ride. She’s going to be teaching that on June 8th at 7:30 PM How fun is that? I love it.

Speaking of Emma, she was on the Breaking Bread podcast. I guess it’s everywhere, but we have it on YouTube.

She talked about a lot of personal life stuff, not just Peloton stuff. This was a fun one to listen to. Breaking Bread with Tom.

Not me. I don’t break bread. I am very careful with my bread.

You keep it safe. Safe bread.

Finally, in our Emma trilogy, she is going to be at Martha’s Vineyard for Summer Stock Sound Fest.

They’re doing a whole bunch of stuff with a lot of different musical artists, but they also have speakers.

If they’re going to have music, they got to have speakers.

That’s a good point. It made it sound like she was one of the musicians. I know Emma’s dad is a musician. I didn’t know she was a musician, so I was a little confused. I assume she’s just speaking but I could be wrong. I don’t live on Cape Cod in case you didn’t know.

If you’re in the Cape Cod area and you’re cruising by Martha’s Vineyard as one is apt to do, you can take part in that. Tunde learned to snorkel.

I love this. She said, “Be kind in the comments.” I thought this was great because I constantly think of these instructors as so above me athletically. She feels insecure learning how to be comfortable in the water. How real is that? I love it.

It’s very real for me because I can’t snorkel. It freaks me out. Even with the big old full-on face thing like she has, it freaks me out. It is so claustrophobic for me.

It’s freeing for me. I’m like, “Let me go.” I love it so much.

Not me. I got zero interest.

I loved when I got to snorkel in St. Martin. Someday I’ll get to edit those videos and show you guys. I got to see this giant eel underwater. It scared the crap out of me and I didn’t have my camera going at that moment, and I was annoyed. Anyway, congrats to Tunde.

You go snorkel. I’ll sit on the beach and read my book. Camila Ramón was on Hola TV 2,

She was there, but it says that she was returning. That’s important to note. I didn’t know she had been on Hola TV before. We must have missed that. She wanted to do an interview where she talked about changing the dialogue in the Latino community about training to one that focuses on eliminating guilt and aesthetic pressure generating freedom and happiness. That’s smart and I like that she shared this.

Ally Love will be speaking at the Day to Grow Conference in Orlando on August 14th. It’s one of those multi-speaker motivational things. If that’s your jam, get your tickets.

It’s interesting that they call her the CEO of Love Squad Global Peloton Instructor. She’s a Peloton instructor.

They’re all technically global.

 

Isn’t that a weird word to add in there?

It is an odd thing to throw in there.

I wonder if Peloton did that. The things that make me go, “Hmm.”

Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to Angelo. We have a listener who wanted to know if menopause can affect your diet and he got answers.

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Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro here to answer all of your fitness and nutrition questions.

Thanks for having me back.

Thank you for being back. This is going to be a tough question. I’m curious to see how you handle it. Karen Smith reached out and she wants to know how she knows if menopause is affecting her diet. Specifically, she says her eating habits haven’t changed, but she’s always tired and her weight is creeping up. She had routine blood work done about a few months ago. No real changes were noted. She’s 45 and she has no idea if she’s into the change. I’m going to say that she’s at least got to be in perimenopause because that’s my feeling. Your turn, and I’ll let you answer.

I’m going to give you an answer that will have the ring of truth. It is going to be very simple and it is going to be a very aggravating answer. Karen, you don’t need to wonder. It is. There it is.

That’s the one time you don’t say, “It depends.”

This is just the deal. If you’re a female and you’re 45, it’s coming. Here’s the thing that most people don’t realize. It’s not a switch, it’s a dial. The way hormones work is you can graduate into it. Some people do have that switch effect, but most people will start feeling those effects. It can even start earlier. It can even start in your early 40s for some women gradually. A way that you’ll know that is if randomly you’re starting to experience not much change, but you’re feeling these effects and you can’t pinpoint it to something else.

There are other things, Karen, that could make you fatigued and tired, and things you should check on. I’ll give you a list of a few common offenders. Assuming there are no other things out of whack, your hormones can be having an impact. That doesn’t mean all is lost, I promise. It just means that you do want to optimize what you can for your wellness, health, fitness, nutrition, and all across the board as naturally as you can.

Karen, I’m not a doctor, but here are the things you can ask your doctor about. Iron levels. If your iron is low, you might check that out because that could be more dominant around your cycle each month. See if your iron levels are low. That’s a common one. Check on your D-vitamin. I’m confident if you’ve been to the doctor within the last decade, they’ve probably already alerted you to these things.

The next thing you want to make sure is that there aren’t obvious gaps. If somebody is confessing elusive energy issues where it’s a little unpredictable, what can happen is as you age, your body changes a little bit and you might benefit from a little bit more frequent meals. That doesn’t necessarily mean overhauling your macronutrient ratios or your calories, but you may be at a point in your life where you’re a little more susceptible to gaps. You get busy. Maybe you had a light breakfast and then pretty soon it’s 1:00 or 2:00. You get hungry. You eat your normal lunch, but then you’re still fatigued after that. You might not be realizing that that earlier gap is adding up.

I see this a lot with my athletes, especially athletes who are training for some sort of competition or even endurance athletes, Peloton cyclists, or whatever it may be. They’re training for something. They’re getting technically adequate calories and macros based on what they’ve done before. They’re coming to me expressing, “I’m still fatigued.” My energy isn’t where it should be. My performance isn’t where it should be. How do I improve that without adding a ton of calories?”

Remember this. Calories you have not yet consumed can’t help you. Americans tend to consume about 70% of their calories in the last 30% of their day, generally. What happens is if you switch and get a little bit more of your fuel earlier in the day, that can help. If you spread those calories out over a few snacks, that can help you even further. You may be getting enough fuel, but it may be too little too late in the day, especially if you are pushing yourself and you’re exercising or training for something.

Those are a few little things you want to look for. Speak with your doctor about blood work in a panel to make sure nothing wonky is going on with your hormones. As you said, it is entirely possible to feel the influence of shifting hormones as we march through our 40s without there being a major issue or something wrong. You want to make sure your macronutrients are balanced.

There are a lot of approaches out there, and there is science behind things like low carb. There is science behind intermittent fasting. There is science behind a lot of different approaches, but approaches that aren’t balanced tend to be exposed whenever we are dealing with something like hormonal shifts. What I will typically notice is the strategies that someone may have tolerated in their 30s, 40s, or mid-40s, their body doesn’t like it as much. That’s not across the board, but that could be the case and something worth considering.

I rarely see people struggle with a balanced approach, where they’re getting an adequate balance between good slow digesting complex carbs with quality proteins, spread out fats throughout the day, and lots of vegetables for fiber. When I see things like that, rarely is that leading to energy crashes. Those are the common red flags we look for.

One last thing I’ll suggest is when we do our initial evaluation with someone, one of the first things we ask is, “How’s your energy? What time of the day are you finding energy dips?” Spoiler, everyone comes to me and says, “I have this issue, especially in the early afternoon. By then, it’s so hard to catch up.” With our clients, we take each individual scenario and previous health history into account. Typically, we want to see somebody eating 4 or 5 times a day right out of the gate.

Even if we are going to put them on fewer meals a day, we like to start there, especially if energy is one of their principal complaints. That often fixes the problem organically. A lot of times, people have inconsistent meal timing. Make sure you’re at least getting breakfast. Make sure lunch isn’t too late in the day. Make sure you have a mid-afternoon snack. Those few things can make a big difference.

Thank you so much for all of that. It’s very helpful. If people would like this sort of stuff for them, where can they find you?

Thank you.

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Echelon is attempting to target disgruntled Peloton members.

Apparently, they think that people are looking for reasons to downgrade.

People are like, “Do you know what I don’t like about Peloton? I wish my bike was crappier.”

I know there are a lot of people that use Echelon bikes out there. If that’s what you can afford and you like it, you go right ahead and use it. My issue is with the company ripping Peloton off.

I feel like we haven’t talked about Echelon in a while. If somebody has an Echelon bike and they’re now disgruntled with us, our frustration with Echelon over the years is that their attempts to emulate Peloton have bordered on trademark infringement. Didn’t they lose a suit about something? That’s our frustration with Echelon.

It’s not that you have an Echelon bike or not that you don’t have a Peloton bike. We want to be clear about that.

They’re running a Trade-In Your Bike program.

They expect you to trade in your Peloton and then they’ll give you a rebate of $1,000 on one of their bikes for free. What’s interesting about this is that Soul Cycle already tried this and it failed miserably.

Didn’t they say they got six bikes or something? I’m pretty sure it was under ten. It was bad. I think here’s Echelon’s business model. They’re like, “We’ve been stealing good ideas and it hasn’t been working. What if we stole the bad ideas?”

I thought it was funny that not only do they steal all the ideas from Peloton, then they steal the idea to try to get business from Peloton by stealing Soul Cycle’s idea to take over Peloton. Just craziness.

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If you dig your Strava, they had a team chat recently where they had tips for optimizing your Peloton bike experience.

There are a lot of people that may not even know this. You can link your Peloton bike with your Strava account. Back in the day, it was all the rage. It’s all we did. One of the cool things that they are able to do now is use your FTP to look at the power analysis that comes out of Strava. You can combine the two pieces of information together to get more data to be able to see how you are improving over time in your statistics.

You can take the FTP test on your Peloton bike and then you enter that number into your Strava profile. That’s a big deal because they never used to do that. You used to have to get a power meter. That was the only way to do it. This is a very big deal. You could guesstimate your FTP. I think they did have that, but now you can use it straight from your Peloton.

CNET had an article about AI and fitness, and how it’s affecting people’s workouts.

It’s interesting because I am hearing a lot about these things. I’m hearing about this in so many places. I hear about this at MetPro because the different coaches discuss how they use AI if they have questions that they get over and over from people to formulate their own responses. I also hear about things like Aaptiv, which is rolling out an entire technology. All of their classes are based on AI instructors. They have a whole thing. You go into your Aaptiv app and you’ve been seeing instructors. Now, all of a sudden, you have an AI instructor and it’s a little robot voice and it’s totally different.

People are freaking out about it. It’s taking over all these different areas of fitness. It’s happening everywhere. It’s fascinating. One other thing. They also talk about the AI that occurs in Tonal and how it uses algorithms to figure out the weight that you should be using. You have the AI that’s in the Guide and all the Peloton gaming. There’s a lot of AI that’s happening in fitness. That’s not a robot taking over. I want to be clear about that.

Many Peloton coaches weren’t that famous before the pandemic. There is some nostalgic sweetness looking back to it. Click To Tweet

A lot of times, you’re using AI and you might not even realize it.

This is what I was talking about the Aaptiv. As I said, they rolled out this new app and they didn’t tell anybody it was coming. Everybody is rolling along in their app and then all of a sudden, people get this download forced on them that’s like, “Here’s an update.” They open up the update and it’s like, “Now you’re using a robot.”

Aaptiv did respond and said that next week, things are going to be explained better. People were very upset that they have to wait until next week to understand why all this has happened. It sounds like a lot of massive confusion over there. I find that fascinating. That is a new one. We were replacing all of our coaches with AI.

Good luck with your PR nightmare. We have a new digital platform for fitness.

Not really, obé has been around a while. What’s different about it is now it’s personalized, and this is another way of using AI. This whole conversation is very well-rounded. What they do is they figure out this kind of person. They go through and they answer all these questions. The person who wants to sign up gets all this information to say, “This is what kind of person I am. This is how I exercise. This is what I like to do. This is the workouts I like to do.” Their AI over at obé looks at all their different workouts and then it puts together personalized programs for that person.

This was interesting because they actually quote Barry McCarthy in this article. It was a very old quote from 2022, where he said that the one thing that you will see people changing the most over the next year at Peloton is personalization. The person who wrote this article wondered whether we are going to see this type of thing for Peloton. I have no idea. They are doing a lot of gaming. They are doing a lot of AI. They are doing a lot of personalization.

My understanding of what Barry has always said is that personalization is more about how Netflix personalizes like, “Based on what you’re doing, this is what you’d like to see more of.” Could it be something like this? I don’t know. Will they put together programs based on what you’ve done in the past? Wouldn’t that be fabulous? Peloton definitely needs more programs.

It seems like the logical evolution. Speaking of logical evolution, Lululemon announces a trail team and female–driven science initiative with Further.

They’re doing a bunch of scientific studies. Lululemon is giving money to finance all of these scientific studies being done about female athletes. They’re going to be looking into a whole bunch of different insights. They’re a bunch of female athletes that are going to be working hard over the next nine months with the goal of a collective six-day ultrarunning experience in the Spring of 2024. It’s going to be supported by science all the way. They have a goal of breaking world records as they do it. I am interested in this. I want to see how this goes.

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Obviously, Memorial Day already occurred, but the classes that they put out are still out there and waiting for you.

They all dropped on May 29th. There were several of them. I don’t know how many. I can’t remember now, but it was several classes that they dropped that were all on-demand. Even though the studios were going to be closed, you could still enjoy sweating with your favorite instructors.

Clip Out helper bee, Darcy, put together a Peloton gym pros and cons for people wondering if it’s worth their time.

She took a couple of the classes. She went through point by point to see the best experiences. She had some cons that she put out there like it’s not the best to use. She get a caveat that she used it on her phone. It’s possible this experience might be different, but I don’t think it is because this only exists on the app right now. Here’s the thing that is a con to me. Some of the classes require equipment we haven’t seen before from Peloton, so weight benches and barbells. I even saw pull-ups being done, like a pull-up bar. Not everybody has those things.

Wouldn’t this only be available on the app? The idea is you take it with you to the gym.

Who knows if they could change it?

It would seem counterproductive for it to be on your bike because you’re not going to take your bike with you to the gym. You could have a super advanced home gym, but you probably also got an iPhone at that point.

My point is whenever you have all this equipment they’re asking for, if you’re trying to use your home gym, that may not work because they’re asking for things to be used that you might only be able to get in an actual gym.

You have to have a pretty advanced home gym to have some of the equipment at the ready.

She also went through the pros. The biggest one in her opinion is that you can follow the expert programming without having to be on screen with an instructor. There are many people that don’t have the time or the ability. They’re like, “I want to get my workout done.”

How many times do you see people being snarky like, “Can we shut the instructors up?” Now you can.

The interface is easy to use. It’s intuitive, and the navigation as well. Thank you so much, Darcy. Apparently, you were a helper bee. You put together this great article.

In the not-too-distant future, we will have a full review coming up for you. Keep an eye out for that. Three new Peloton programs showed up in the app.

Two of them were specific to the row community. There’s a You Can Row. That might have been available to everybody beforehand, but that had a rower. Now, people who are on the app can access that. That’s new to people who are on the app. There is a brand new one called Perfect Your Pace Targets. They’ve had this for the bike and they’ve had it for the running, and now they have pace targets for the rowing. That is cool. The Self-Care Retreat is an interesting one because it is totally different than anything they’ve done. It includes meditation, yoga, and other classes that are all about helping you de-stress and relax. It’s one week of classes, all taught by Anna. I love it. It’s fun that they’re still putting out this new content.

The Pump Up the Volume strength program is now available on all Peloton platforms.

This is one of the Guide exclusive programs. Now, enough time has passed so that you can get it. If you have a Peloton Guide, you would be able to have it instantly. If you’re not, now you can get it everywhere.

This is a reminder before we close out. Live classes are on hiatus this week, so don’t lose your sh*t.

One of our other helper bees, Nikki Smith, put together this cool article that she has a whole bunch of where all the instructors have been. If you’re missing all the instructors, you can follow along and see where everybody has gotten off to because they are literally all over the world.

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Finally, we’ve got one birthday. It’s Cody Rigsby’s. I think you’ve heard of him. His birthday is coming up on June 8th.

Happy birthday, Cody.

Happy birthday. Coming up after this, we’re going to talk to Melissa Ferrara. You probably know her better as Moms of Peloton. If you ever wonder how that came to be or what goes on behind the scenes, stick around because we’re going to let you find out.

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Joining us via the magic of a Zoom tube is Melissa Ferrara, but you probably know her better as Moms of Peloton. Congratulations on being possessive and plural.

Thank you. We’re doing both.

It could totally be both.

Thank you for having me here.

Thank you for being here. I know that you’ve probably answered this a billion times, but I love to go back in time and find out how people originally got into Peloton. How did it pop up on your radar and you decided, “I need to get one of those?”

I love this question because as OGs, we thrive with this with such pride. I worked a block away from the Peloton Studios. Unlike most people that bought the bike and they live across the country or wherever I started at the studio. In 2015, I walked by. I was like, “This looks good.” I was a huge fitness person. I always dabbled with different classes all over the city. I walked in and I was like, “Let me give this a shot.” My first class was Robin, and I was hooked ever since, but I worked a block away. It’s perfect.

I hate you a little bit for that.

I know. It’s weird because I was a studio rider for so many years and I didn’t get my bike until 2019.

You did studio only for that long?

Yeah because I didn’t think I could fit it in the apartment. As we know now, it literally takes up 4 feet of space, so I always rode in the studio. I then got a surprise of a lifetime from my husband in 2019. I was a studio rider first, and then I got the bike.

 

First of all, congratulations on getting the bike before the pandemic.

Well done on your husband’s part. Was this a birthday present or a Christmas present?

It’s so funny. My birthday is two days before Christmas. We celebrate Christmas, and then my anniversary is New Year’s Eve. I planned our wedding. I’m an event planner. Our wedding was like the Super Bowl. It was out of control. I love you, Anthony, but he did not do much besides giving me the names of those he needed.

Hang on. Time out. You’re an event planner. You’re planning your own wedding. I think we all know the last thing you want is that man’s input.

You know what? You’re so right. This is a bat mitzvah. This is her sweet 16, and then I had to stop myself and I kept calling it my wedding. I feel terrible saying that. I was like, “I love you. It’s your wedding too.” Tom, you are correct. I did not want any part of it, but I wanted something for it. I wanted something for all the work. It’s like a push present. It was my push present for my wedding. I needed some Spanx.

Hopefully, you had put it out there in the ether that you wanted one because ’19 is when the big commercial happened. On the heels of that, of all the controversy, to turn around and go, “You know what? I will buy my wife a Peloton. She does need to keep it tight. You make a valid point, John Foley.”

I actually love the commercial. I love the marketing between and behind it. These people get way too crazy with cancel culture and craziness. It was a trifecta present. It totally took me for a loop. I have the video on my feet and I’m frying. I thought it was a water bottle. He gave me the production case that they give you when you get the bike and got the water bottle. I’m like, “I have a million of these water bottles.” He’s like, “You’re getting the bike.” It’s the best. Have you ever been surprised with a bike? It’s the best.

It’s the best too when you think it’s going to be a bad present. You’re like, “A water bottle? I have a million of these. What were you thinking?”

There will be no better present. I’m sorry. Even jewelry, I don’t care. Peloton, Pelotoners, and people in the studio, they know. Getting a bike in your city apartment is the end all be all. It was amazing.

You said you dabbled a lot before Peloton. Are you all in on the Peloton now? Are you still cheating? What’s that looking like?

I’m tempted because there are a few cool studios in New York that have just opened. I’m all Peloton. I really am. I wish I ventured out a little bit because it is so concentrated and cult-like, but I can’t do it. I feel bad. I feel like I’m cheating. Also, I have a daughter. This morning, I jumped on an hour and she’s running around. My husband is there. It’s convenient. I would love to try something new. There’s something new like above something in New York. It’s this climbing machine that’s like a StairMaster, but you pull down on it.

Is that the one that Jay-Z bought?

That was called Climber.

It’s a climber, but it’s in a club vibe. I have no idea how long I would last on it, to be honest, because that sounds like hell climbing for 30 minutes. It sounds awful, but it sounds like a great ass burner. I need to switch it up a little bit. To answer your question, I’ve not cheated on Peloton. I’m a loyal wife to Peloton. I should but no.

She wishes she had sewed her oath a little bit before she settled down but she is not currently looking for polyamory.

New York is only so big. It’s big but the fitness world is small.

You would get found out.

They would come after me. My DMs are already insane. They’d be like, “Really?” People are intense.

Amen. You don’t have to tell us.

My DMs go from, “How do I get a studio ride?” to “This instructor cursed during this ride” to “Who’s Cody dating this week?” I’m like, “Guys, give me a second here. I need to be on top of all of that.”

“Don’t you know everything right now?”

“You need to tell me this super-deep secret that nobody else knows, and I’m a total stranger.”

It’s like, “Tell me more details about this.” Who are you? You’re brand new to me. That’s so funny. You’re alluding to Moms of Peloton on IG. People who already know are tuning in. For people who don’t know, tell us exactly how that got started. What made you decide, “This would be fun?”

As I mentioned, I’m an event planner. Because of COVID, New York and everywhere else weren’t having events. My brain felt like it took a halt. My creative brain shut down. I was like, “I need something. I need something to do on my couch.” I just had my daughter in October 2020. I thought to myself, “What can I do that’s easy and fun?” My love for Peloton, I was always making jokes about it. I loved memes and I loved the community. I was in a bunch of Facebook groups. I’m like, “I’m going to make an Instagram.” I don’t care if it’s just me doing it. It’s something to give my creative outlet somewhere to live and breathe on the internet. I created Moms of Peloton. Initially, it was more so geared toward memes for moms.

I started and then I had ten followers, which were my sister-in-law, my brother, my dad, and my family. They were like, “This is funny.” I then created a reel impersonating Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek. That got a little bit viral and picked up. I then gained some more traction. I realized that it wasn’t just moms. It was people in the community, men, women, pet owners, whoever. It then grew into what it is now, which is awesome and fun. I love it.

Before you found Peloton, what were you doing? Did you do much or was that your first foray?

No, I was doing everything. I was an Orangetheory girl. I was doing a ton of Flywheel. That was my thing. I would go Flywheel, Peloton, Flywheel, Peloton. I was going back and forth to the studios because Flywheel was on 21st Street, Peloton was on 23rd, and I was on 22nd. I’d be like, “Let me try over there at Flywheel.” It was totally different vibes for the studios. I was doing a ton of barre classes. Literally, everything that Peloton has on the app, I was doing in smaller capacities all over New York City.

They consolidated it and you were like, “No more.”

I know. Once the barre came, I was like, “You guys got me by the balls. I am so stuck.” They then did the dance cardio, which I was taking up classes 305 in the city. They just knew. They then did cardio kickboxing with Kendall and Rad. I definitely had fitness ADD. Peloton now has fitness ADD. It’s just a happy marriage. Happy wife, happy life.

When it comes to your IG, what kind of stuff do you post now? Are you sticking mostly with your memes? Are you doing videos? Are you doing a combination? How do you come up with content for it?

That’s a great question. I stick with the memes, but I feel like the memes prompt a conversation. They prompt the community. It’s not just like people tagging their friends on the memes. They’re answering questions. They’re responding with opinions and they’re voice. It’s memes plus some fun reels, but it’s always creating a conversation and getting the community to be engaged.

I do host challenges once a month. I have a challenge going on right now, which is fun. I will add some fitness elements to it, and then I’ll go live. If I go to the studio, I’m creating content for people to see what it’s like to be at an event. Emma just had her book signing, so I’m like, “You guys know I’m going live for all of you in California, England, Australia, and all over the world to get that insider glimpse.” It’s a little bit all over the place, but a fun spot for Peloton lovers for sure.

What was the turnout there like? I’m curious.

It was definitely a very cool venue. It was large. I would say the balcony wasn’t totally full, but the floor was filled. Two rows of it were Peloton instructors. I saw you guys at Logan’s fashion show. It was a similar crowd to that. There were about maybe fifteen instructors. There was more at Emma’s book signing, but Alex to Daddy Morton to Hannah Corbin. Of course, Cody was the moderator. He is fantastic. Everybody, actually. Most of them. Besides Rebecca Kennedy because she was in Paris. They all got on stage and people go crazy. They’re celebrities. They’re Pelo celebrities. They love it. The audience loves it. Everyone was getting excited. When they entered the theater, everyone was clapping and excited. It was a good time.

It’s the new level of celebrity that our culture seems to have, which is interesting. It’s ultimately healthier for people because you’re a big deal to a very small subset of people. You can still go out in the world. If you’re Tom Hanks and you go to Disney World, you’re going to get swarmed. If you’re Hannah Corbin and you go to Disney World, a couple of people might be like, “I know you,” but you can also go to a place that’s Peloton-related and you’ll be a rockstar.

You will be swarmed. You get the best of both worlds.

I definitely think there are a few that are a little bit more so like Cody. I do think with Cody, it has gotten to be extensive for him. Someone like Hannah Corbin or Callie can walk on the streets and feel comfortable. I hope they feel comfortable. I know a few instructors have some issues with safety, which is a shame because there are some weirdos out there. I think that’s the best of both worlds. They don’t have to feel like Tom Hanks.

That would be a tough road to walk.

I planned an event for Tom Hanks, for A Man Called Otto. I was doing his huge release for it in New York. It’s the same thing. Their security detail is so intense and extensive. I want to walk outside my house and feel comfortable. I can’t even imagine what the Peloton instructors go through. That’s why I said to the Moms of Peloton crew, “There will be instructors there. Trust me.” They like it too. They like to feel that energy and to get that praise. Who wouldn’t? I was like, “They will be there. Don’t be alarmed. They will be there, trust me.”

They’re good about supporting each other’s things. They show up at each other’s stuff all the time.

It’s so sweet. I love the fact that they moderate for each other. That’s what made Emma’s book so great because Cody has known her since they were dancers before they made the hundreds of thousands that they are right now. I think there’s some nostalgic sweetness to it. They remember when they weren’t famous before the pandemic. I remember being in classes prior to the pandemic where there would be empty seats in Cody’s classes. I would be front row for Alex’s classes every single ride. They were just regular fitness instructors. It’s interesting to see how it has evolved for sure.

Especially if you want to be a celebrity or famous, fitness instructor is not the path people would recommend. It’s acting. It’s being in a band. People didn’t become fitness instructors so they could become celebrities. There was not their path when they started out.

Do not pigeonhole Peloton coaches. People can see through fakeness. As long as they can follow their heart and their genuine personality, they will do great. Click To Tweet

It’s so weird to think about. Even still, I’m like, “This is so strange.” They’re teaching, but people are obsessed with it. Instagram has elevated that because they’re seeing behind the scenes. They’re seeing Jess King’s house renovation and she has a baby now. Emma is redoing her house. Tunde is killing it with speaking engagements all over. Her life is so fun with the Nike sponsorship. It’s like reality stars. They need their own reality show because each of them has their own path that they’re taking. It’s all so interesting to the outsiders.

I know you interact with them quite a bit. I’ve heard people say this before. They worry that some of those instructors who are super famous like Cody, maybe they might get either overexposed or outgrow Peloton and move on. Do you ever hear that? Do you ever get that sense?

Yes. Back to the DMs. This is a constant question. It’s always about the same three instructors. Tunde, Robin, and Cody. Cody is number one. This is my response. They’re not going to go anywhere. Peloton is going to continue to pay them to even show up for half an hour in a month and they’ll get paid X amount of dollars. That X amount is quite large I’m sure. I don’t know the number. They’re not going to go anywhere. Why would he? You do half an hour of class once a week, you’re done, you get paid, and you still get that exposure. I do not think they would go anywhere.

It’s not that time-consuming for them. What I would compare it to, and this is going to be a weird comparison, is professional wrestling. Those guys go off and make their movies, but when they got a movie to push, they still come back because they know that there’s a core fan base there. They want to drive them to the box office on opening day. You still see John Cena on there. You still see The Rock show up and wrestle sometimes. They would follow a business model that if Cody was like, “I’ve got to go do this other thing. My gut tells me that they’re going to leave the door open so he can come and go at will.”

It’s interesting because Peloton supports their endeavors. I don’t know from a legal standpoint how that’s working and how they’re navigating that, but Peloton encourages them to do this. I don’t know if they get a percentage of sales for something or what it is, but it’s very interesting to me. I don’t see them going anywhere. It’s smart for them not to go anywhere because there have been a few instructors that have left and you don’t hear about them.

Right now, that’s the only game in town to be a celebrity fitness instructor. Other people are trying, but nobody has been able to replicate it yet. My guess is with the sponsorships, I doubt that Peloton gets a cut. I think the advantage to Peloton is it’s a lot of unearned media for their instructors and they don’t have to pay them as much. Not that they don’t get paid well. Don’t cry for them, Argentina. At the same time, if Robin has a deal with Adidas or whoever she has a deal with, and Peloton said, “No, you can’t do that.” The first words out of Robin’s mouth are going to be, “You then need to pay me what Adidas would’ve paid me.”

It also works together. It’s synchronous because if Robin goes out and she has her deal with Adidas, she’s all over TV, and she’s all over all these ads, that brings more recognition to Peloton. I agree with you 100% they’re not going anywhere. That is always my sense, but I like to hear other people’s thoughts on it.

I think that people do think, “Cody would do live TV.” I love Cody. I saw Cody on Dancing With the Stars. I don’t know that live TV is the spot for him. I was surprised. Cody people are going to come after me for this one. He’s most comfortable in the saddle. That’s where his jokes are coming from. Maybe when he gains experience, he would do something like a talk show, but I think that talk show would be more Tunde. It’s way more in Tunde’s favor. If I was a producer, I would say Tunde for that for sure.

Cody is fun in these other little elements. He’s been doing some food reviews and restaurant reviews. I like that for him. That’s perfect for him. I don’t necessarily know that interviewing would be something up his alley. I said this before, “Food Network, pick him up. Do all New York City reviews or fly him all over wherever he’s going.” He’s fun in his element when he’s just him, not interviewing.

I absolutely agree with that. I agree with what you said about Tunde. I could see that turning into a talk show thing because I feel like whenever she did the podcast for Peloton Fitness Flipped, they scripted it too much. They took all the Tunde out of it. They made it so formulaic that they took all of her personality and squashed it. She’s got so much. Let her go. She’s perfect the way she is. Don’t hold that back. In another place where she was allowed to do whatever, she would shine in that way.

I totally agree with you. It’s interesting to see where we could place them, and Robin too. I don’t know if you guys took the masterclass with that app, but I had the app, and then I saw that Robin had her masterclass course. She killed it. It was perfect for her because she’s so motivating and she’s intense. She’s like, “You can do it,” and that kind of thing. She’s not this light, fluffy, fun, and bubbly person.

She’s more like, “I’m going to kick your butt. I’m going to tell you what you need to do. If you don’t follow it, that’s on you. Let me tell you, this is what you got to do.” Let them live in these areas where they are themselves and don’t pigeonhole them and create the fakeness. We can see right through it. It’s true. As long as they’re following true to their heart and their personality, they’re going to do great.

I felt like with Tunde’s podcast, I feel like she had done a good job and then someone had edited it within an inch of its life. I feel if they’d have let it play as a more normal conversation, and you can certainly go through and tighten things up and whatnot, but it felt almost like a trailer for another podcast instead of the actual podcast.

I will say though, and I’m sure you see this with your own content, it’s so much easier to go back and pick things apart than it is to do it yourself. Whenever you’re putting things out there, I’m sure there were lots of thoughts about why they did it, what they did, and how they did it. It’s easy for us to be like, “Why did you do it that way?” It’s not so easy to know at the moment how to do it.

That’s the thing. It’s like you’re second-guessing your content, “Should I put this out there? Should I not put this out there? What’s going to have the most engagement? What’s not?” You have to try it. For her, she tried it. I actually didn’t listen. I listened to it a little bit, but I’m always so crazy busy. I just started getting into podcasts myself. I’m going to go back. I hope that they still have them available because I want to listen to them.

They are. They’re still out there.

I’ll take a listen, for sure.

Having said all this, do you have instructors that you gravitate more to than others?

I definitely do and it’s very apparent. I was thinking about this the other day. I was like, “I need to get more instructors on the page,” because I stick with who I love. It’s hard for me to veer past that. They’re all amazing. Everybody has their own cup of tea. It’s something that I ask frequently on my page too. I’m like, “What instructor are you gravitating towards?” People are like, “How can I even answer that question? There are so many.” I’m like, “I know, but you have a few that you love.”

You always do. You have three you click with. Everybody has at least three they click with.

That’s what I said. I made a joke. I was asking, “Who is your favorite Peloton instructor?” It’s like asking them, “What is your zodiac sign?” That’s what I feel. My response to that was, “Robin is my sun sign. Matty Maggiacomo is my moon sign. Emma is my rising.” I feel that runs the gamut of super intense. You then get Matty in there. That’s your bestie. We’re talking about Broadway plays and gossip, but in a good fun positive, not in a sh**ty gossip way. Emma has got the ’90s playlist where you can jam and feel her Martha’s Vineyard vibe and whatnot.

For me, the perfect Peloton circle is those three. Not to say that I don’t love Alex Toussaint. He has been my guy since the beginning at the studios. I think his energy is totally unmatched, awesome, and out of control. He’s amazing. I don’t know. I guess I love Dennis Morton too. I always make jokes about him. I call him Daddy Morton. He’s my thing. Adrian is another favorite beyond his fitness level. Just his looks alone. Who do you guys gravitate towards?

Tom doesn’t do any Peloton, but I have different people for different moods. On the bike, I tend to go toward Jenn Sherman because first of all, I love her group. The people who make up the tribe are amazing people. They’re always so uplifting and accepting, and I like that. On the tread, I have been super Susie Chan, Becs Gentry, and I can’t ever not enjoy a walk or a run with Matty. The man just makes me smile no matter how sh**ty of a mood I’m in.

That used to be me. I used to be that guy.

Tom, you’re out. Matty, you’re in.

It’s funny because I love the humor from both of you in such different ways. Matty always makes me laugh. Susie Chan, what an inspiration to start running in your late 30s. That resonates with me because I started running in my late 30s. Don’t get me wrong, I’m nothing like Susie Chan but it feels like that is inspirational. I could continue to grow into that. As far as yoga, Ross Rayburn, of course. First of all, he’s the nicest person on the planet. That’s par to none. All of the yoga instructors are great. They are very relaxing. Chelsea Jackson Roberts with how accessible she is. You take one of her classes, and even if you can’t do yoga, you’re just like, “I did that. That’s okay.”

I was at Ross’s first class back after the pandemic and the new studio. I don’t do yoga. Beforehand, there are seven spots in there. I was like, “I booked this because I want to get into the studio and I would love to see Ross. I have so much respect for him and meditation.” Now, it’s hitting me, “I don’t even do yoga.” They were like, “Melissa, don’t worry. You’re going to do great.” I’m like, “Okay.” The next thing you know, he’s going through. He’s like, “It’s your 700th yoga.” I’m like, “You literally played it down how good you were and I’m over here struggling with downward dog.” His husband was there, who’s also absolutely fantastic. I was like, “Can somebody else take my spot? I am not supposed to be here at all.”

I will always remember that. The yoga instructors are amazing. Susie, I have to give her huge props. She is amazing. She’s absolutely something to strive for. She’s such an inspiration. I’m dying to go to London. I think the London instructors have such a different vibe and are so fun-loving. I know I’m going to get there this year. I’m dying to go. I don’t know if you’ve been.

I haven’t been to London. It’s on my list but it’s such a long trip.

Especially from St. Louis.

We’ve got the teenagers. It’s like, “Do we take them? Do we not take them? Can’t they figure that out on their own? Do they need me to take them?” You know what I mean?

I had this conversation. Somebody was asking me, “When you go to London, are you bringing your daughter who’s two and a half?” I was like, “She will not be going. She will be staying somewhere else.”

“She can’t keep up on the sight-seeing. There’s no way.”

It’s absolutely not happening. I want to be able to enjoy it. As parents, you just want to have a second to breathe and relax. The London instructors, I can’t wait and I want to go, I love all of them.

What is your leaderboard name?

My leaderboard name is super boring. It’s Moms of Peloton.

That’s branding.

Branding the sh*t out of it. I was thinking about it the other day because my leaderboard name started out as Ms. New Jersey before my husband. I was like, “Ms. New Jersey. It’s fun. No one will get that wrong.” I then got married and I changed it to Mrs. New Jersey.

It was available.

I would love to still grab it because I loved that leaderboard name. I then had my kid, I had my baby, and I was like, “How am I going to do this?” I gained so much weight during my pregnancy because it was through COVID. I changed my name to Mama’s Hauling Ass because I was literally hauling 65 extra pounds up those hills. I was like, “I’m truly hauling ass right now. This is not easy.” I then changed it to Moms of Peloton to make it easier for all the challenges and whatnot that I have. That’s the long story of my leaderboard name.

If you want Mrs. New Jersey, you should probably create a dummy account and go snag it before this airs.

I know. I’m like, “Damn.” You feel such a weird connection to it.

I know exactly how you feel. If you do that, you could always keep it because you never know when you might want to ride and nobody knows. Just hop on by yourself. Maybe you don’t want all the high–fives. Maybe you don’t want to have 17,000 people you know once. Sometimes you just like a little quiet.

 

I always think about that too. I know a lot of celebrities have burner accounts too because obviously, they don’t want people to know them. It’s funny because I’ll be on a ride from 2019 by myself, and then all of a sudden someone pops up and they’re high-fiving. I’m like, “No.” I love it. I love everybody, but you want that moment to be alone. I cry on the bike. I’m laughing on the bike. I want to be in my bike emotions solo.

Thank you so much for doing this, Melissa. We appreciate it. Before we let you go, tell everybody where they can find you on social media.

You can find me @MomsOfPeloton on Instagram. I’m going to be doing a podcast later on in 2023 that has nothing to do with Peloton at all. Follow along for those ventures. On the leaderboard, MomsOfPeloton.

Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thank you. Virtual high-five.

Even Tom jumped in.

It’s virtual.

—

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

They 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. Don’t forget our Patreon at Patreon.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling, and running, and rowing.

 

Important Links

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• Patreon.com/TheClipOut
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