A Tale of Two Years with Peloton (Becoming Jane Goodall)

Burritos, Vomit & Boredom (Or Why I Tried the Peloton Bike)

On December 30th, 2018 I celebrated my two year Peloversary — the 2nd anniversary of my first ride on the Peloton spinning bike. I have experienced a crazy two years with the machine named “the best cardio machine in fitness” by Men’s Health. While I have been going in and out of gyms for decades, the last two years have blindsided me and have been completely unlike any other workout or fitness system or program I have ever been involved with.

Truth be told, when my wife purchased the sleek black Peloton spinning bike in Fall 2016 I wanted nothing to do with it and refused to even touch the clip-in bike shoes she purchased for me.

I had never taken a spinning class, clipped in to a bike or attended a boutique fitness class. My last group fitness class was a Krav Maga class 10 years ago. I was a jogger and body weight exercise guy and in the Fall of 2016, in my mind, I was a 45 year old in decent shape — any physicians height and weight chart would confirm it.

As the Peloton was making its way to our house, my fitness levels were challenged in an adult hockey game that left me running off the bench to vomit during the second period. I did not get my helmet off in time and played the third period with remnants of beans, rice, chicken and cheese stuck in my mouth guard and cage. It was disgusting and I was truly embarrassed that a D level hockey game and a Korean BBQ burrito from California Tortilla had pushed me to that point.

In November 2016, after the hockey game, I ran on our old Precor treadmill in the basement 6 times and by December 25, 2016 I had already run on the treadmill 8 times in the month — the most I had run in any month all year that year.

I was doing well, but like many people, I hated the treadmill, and by the end December, I could no longer ignore the Peloton spinning bike.

On December 30, 2016, bored with the treadmill and the puking incident still fresh in my mind, I put on the size 15 Giro cycling shoes and clipped in to my wife’s Peloton bike for the first time.

I took a 20 minute beginner ride with a beautiful female instructor named Jennifer Jacobs. I would learn later that behind her smile was a brutally challenging and precise fitness coach that could coax amazing performances out civilians like me.

During 2017 and 2018, I completed over 550 rides on the Peloton, covering more than 5,000 miles. I also completed more than 850 non-bike workouts with Peloton in 2017 - this included stretches, yoga, strength and even some outdoor audio runs. These non-bike classes were delivered via the bike, mobile devices, live in studio and a few other methods.

By any measure, my 2017 and 2018 with Peloton have been truly productive, with more physical fitness than ever. However, if you scratch the surface a bit, you will quickly see it is in fact a tale of two years.

2017 Strong Year: But Yo-yo Workouts Appear

Relative to 2016 and the previous 25 years of my adult workout history, 2017 was a great year. I rode the Peloton bike 101 times and also ran a bunch (I have some records on my old Runtastic app). 150 cardio workouts in a year was awesome: woot woot. I was winning, no doubt. Thank you Peloton.

I cannot remember a year when I worked out more than when I ‘trained’ for and ‘completed’ the California International Marathon marathon in 2004. In reality, that was a 3.5 month cram/scam of health and fitness; temporary and painful and it had no real impact on my life other than me being able to claim I completed a marathon. It did not make me a runner or healthy.

The workouts on the bike were hard — I could not deny the sweat under my bike — often referred to as ‘pelopuddles’ by folks on the Facebook page as I would learn. While I did yo-yo workout when the weather improved — riding 1 time in March, 0 times in April, and 3 times in July, I was doing better in 2017 than I had before and I was happy with my progress.

Peloton, Facebook, and Super Happy Customers

Early in 2017, my wife told me about the Official Peloton Member Page on Facebook (then called the Official Peloton Riders Page). I found the sharing of stories and information from other riders and instructors motivating, humorous and insightful. I learned about different ride styles and instructors.

Throughout 2017 I spent a great deal of time on the Official Peloton Member Facebook page — amazed, as a entrepreneurship professor, by the passionate customers and instructors. It was during this period of time that I began to realize the potential scale of Peloton.

Many economists (and my dad) often share the maxim, “follow the money,” as a simple method for cutting to the chase and understanding almost any situation. For me, as an entrepreneurship researcher and professor and an American consumer, I rely on “follow the customers,” in trying to spot and better understand phenomena taking place in our innovation led economy.

While the more than 26,000 people on the page (Feb 2017) impressed me, their statements and images — 90% positive — were shocking. I read about people crying while taking classes, watched videos of people riding with disco lights on in their basement, learned about ‘magic pants’, and witnessed countless unprompted posts (testimonials) about how the ‘bike that goes nowhere’ was fundamentally changing their lives. (Today - almost 2 years later, there are more than 146,000 people on the Official Peloton Members page - never was great at finance, but I think that is about 135% annual growth rate)

Perhaps the thing that bowled me over the most was the post by a woman living in Minneapolis who was about to turn 40 and was going to New York to ride live in the Peloton studio -- the ‘mothership.’ In her post, this rider explained that this would be her first trip to New York City ever - her hash tags included #neverbeentonyc and #sortofscared.

Could the bright lights of Broadway bring this Minnesotan to New York City? No. A work related trip perhaps? No. A friend or family moving there or wanting to visit? No… Perhaps an interest in Times Square, Madison Square Garden, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Maybe the Today Show or Conan O’Brien or The Daily Show? Nope, nope, nope; 40 years of no to NYC.

However, a chance to ride a spinning bike and sweat her ass off with her favorite instructors live in the Peloton studio? Hell YES…that was what would finally bring her from the Land of 10,000 lakes to the Big Apple.

The notion that Peloton was changing how people lived was a regular theme in the Peloton world as I began to explore the company and customers in early 2017. It was travel to NYC that led me to share the Peloton startup story with my undergraduate entrepreneurship students. By Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 I was discussing the company, its products and talent in my classes and during open entrepreneurship events on campus and off.

Joining the Facebook Community, Meeting the Tribes

As my first year with Peloton hit the Fall of 2017, I became more engaged with the online community and joined a Peloton Facebook subgroup called the Plant Posse. I’d switched to a plant based diet in September 2017 as a student entrepreneur building a plant-based nutrition education venture really sold me on the value of a plant-based diet.

Because the main Peloton page on Facebook was so large, many smaller groups related to Peloton emerged. Some are related to food choices and dieting (such as the Plant Posse I joined), others are devoted to specific instructors on Peloton. Still other Peloton groupings on Facebook are geographically based and still more are based on shared passions around road cycling, mileage goals, professional affiliation, marital and parental status, and on and on.

With the unlimited digital green space that is Facebook, Peloton related tribes and pages have grown dramatically with the company and the membership — highlighting the passion and diversity of the Peloton community.

For example, there is the JSS Tribe - for big fans of Peloton instructor Jenn Shreiber Sherman or King’s Collective - instructor Jess King followers or Denis’ Menaces - Denis Morton followers.

By engaging with various Facebook groups, I quickly began to learn about all of the instructors as other riders would share what great rides they took (eg. a Peloton rider might post their facebook and write something like “I just took an amazing 45 min 80s rock ride with Jenn Sherman and the soundtrack reminded me of my freshman year roommate that wore a Michael Jackson jacket everywhere, including our Spring Break trip to Daytona!)

I also began to the learn the value of cool down rides, tried climb, tabata and HIIT rides, and discovered the benefits of stretching. By spending time on social media (mostly Facebook and Instagram) was getting knowledge from Peloton instructors that typically only come with hiring personal trainers or coaches.

Many of the Peloton instructors were also on Instagram and other platforms providing further opportunities to learn from and about them — on the bike and beyond.

In 2017, when I was just exploring the bike and the Peloton instructors, I though about the Peloton instructors as a well curated team of trainers and personalities. Frankly I could not stop thinking about the old United Colors of Benetton advertisements of my youth in the 80s.

Finishing 2017 Strong

With a new focus on healthier eating and deeper engagement with the Peloton community and instructors, I rode the bike even more, hitting 29 rides in November of 2017. By this point, the treadmill and jogging were becoming a distant memory. Sweating on a regular basis was becoming something I wanted to do for the first time and I was beginning to rely on Peloton and its motivating instructors to conveniently and effectively meet that need in my basement.

That being said, when I traveled for the holidays in December 2017, I left the Peloton and my clip-in shoes at home and did not join my wife and sister at the Flywheel in Scottsdale when they went to ride Christmas week 2017. I chose to jog and hike in the mountains of Arizona listening to my own playlists.

Year 2: Becoming Jane Goodall

2018: Finding My Tribe, Riding With the Community

As 2017 ended, I replied to a post on the main Peloton Facebook page describing a Peloton tribe where members set goals and report back, accountability being the main requirement. Members had to post at least 4 times a month on their progress — good, bad or otherwise.

The tribe was known as the Peloton Monthly Challenge tribe and it was created in mid 2017 by a small group of women wanting to ride 30 days in a row. The core idea being accountability. Challenges would be posted, both group and individual, and members had to post updates. When I joined there were roughly 200 members and a vast majority were women.

Early in my membership in #PMCT there was a group challenge to ride with all 12 of the cycling instructors during the month (all challenges were voluntary, but goals had to be posted and progress reported).

By diving deeper into the community I was immediately drawn into more instructor rides and more rides as the tribe (and most groups) organized many rides together. Group rides might be celebrating a milestone (eg join me as I ride my 300th ride this Friday at 8 am with HMC), specific types of rides (Tabata Tuesday at 6 am with Robin), or just because group members want to ride together or ride at specific times.

This instructor challenge and group rides meant I spent far more time in the saddle and got to know more about each of the instructors — they often share stories about themselves, their lives and their outlooks as they teach classes. I quickly discovered each had their own distinct approaches to class, fitness and, life. It has to noted that in 2017, two-thirds of my rides were scenic rides.

Riding Live, Going to New York, Grooming the Chimps

Community and tribe involvement meant did more live rides, often spurred on by the group. In 2017 I did 3 live rides out of 101 total rides. In 2018 I completed 129 live rides!

Spending all of that time riding with the instructors pushed me to spend more time with them on the official Facebook pages and other social media pages, extending the ‘time I was spending’ with the Peloton ‘family’. The community of instructors and members spread knowledge on a range of subjects that has allowed me, the member, to better organize my workouts, make them more effective and enjoy them more.

Before Peloton, I had never crossed a state line to meet someone from the Internet. Somehow that all changed in 2018 because of Peloton and my deepening involvement with the community. I also started using Pic Collage, sent engagement and babies gifts to people I had never met, and posted a selfie of myself doing burpees because of Peloton). Somehow this spinning bike was changing my relationships, my behavior and my well-being.

The tribe relationship led to me visit the Peloton studio in NYC during 2018. Although my wife had been to visit the Chelsea studio (where the spinning classes are streamed out of and recorded), I had been reluctant to go throughout 2017 and in early 2018. I had never taken any studio spinning classes, let alone one that was a ‘streaming’ live fitness program.

I eventually agreed to go for my wife’s birthday in early July 2018 and as fate would have it, my tribe was having a meetup to ride in the studio in NYC the same day as my wife’s birthday. These meetups, knows as Home Rider Invasions (HRI) were first created by riders in 2015 and many tribes ended up creating their own, on their own weekends. My wife had been to two of her tribe’s HRIs in NYC — her tribe, btw, is based on her professional affiliation and her status as a mother.

On June 30, 2018 I walked into the Peloton Studio in Chelsea and spotted members of my tribe IRL.

I had not been to NYC in at least 10 years. Peloton had brought me there. I was now that woman from Minnesota I had seen in early 2017. I was in NYC, sweating with people that I had only knew via a Peloton Spinning bike and an online challenge group. Was I Jane Goodall? Grooming the chimps I had been studying.

Floor and the Return of Running!

One of the group goals in my first month with #PMCT was to complete 3 ‘Beyond The Ride’ classes each week. These are workouts focused on core, strength, stretching, cardio and yoga and generally range from 5 to 30 minutes. As their name implies — they are not on the bicycle. Eventually their named was changed to Floor.

When I tried these BTR offerings, I was blown away by the quality and how much I enjoyed them. I absolutely smashed the monthly goal of 12 BTRs and completed more than 40 (again, many are only 5 minutes — for example post-ride stretches, some basic yoga classes and even some strength classes such as 5 minute arms).

By year end 2018 I had completed more than 800 BTR classes — that is not a typo. I fell in love with them and their flexibility — giving me the ability to create or ‘stack’ my own workouts. For example, I might do a 10 minute On Demand yoga with Aditi Shah, ride for 30 minutes with Alex Touissant, then complete a 5 minute On Demand post-ride stretch with Denis Morton and then a 10 minute arms session with Jennifer Jacobs On Demand. That is a 55 minute workout in my home with up to 4 world class instructors.

With the ability to pull up rides and floor exercises on the app on my phone (what Peloton was calling Peloton Digital) I now had a ‘gym’ and ‘spinning studio’ in my pocket. I continued to follow the business of the company closely as it was clear they were welcoming app riders (those who ride on non-Peloton bikes to get the great instruction and music, but without the leaderboard and their metrics feeding back into the system). I could tell from my time of the Facebook pages that there were a decent amount of app riders out there and that many of them transition to bike ownership.

Peloton Creates a Treadmill: the Return of Running

In January 2018, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Peloton announced that it was building a treadmill and it would be known as the Peloton Tread. The machine, featuring a massive 32 inch HD display, would stream running, walking, floor and boot camp style classes from a new, additional studio in NYC. The company started offering and producing classes in April 2018 and would begin delivering the actual Peloton Tread to home users in Fall 2018.

My wife (always the smarter one), placed a deposit for the Tread the first day it was announced so we were in the first grouping in late November to receive word that the $4,000 treadmill, would be coming our way before year end 2018.

The creation of the Tread and its additional content meant new instructors and a greater chance to learn and try new fitness approaches. For those of us riding daily and existing in tribes, this new machine was like a gift from John Foley and the entire Peloton team.

Not so many years ago, many of us waited for new iphone and iPad announcements from Steve Jobs. Today, in the Peloton world, we are constantly waiting for new content types, instructors, and insights into fitness hardware.

The new treadmill provided cycling instructors Robin Arzon and Matt Wilpers, with their extensive backgrounds in running, a chance to share more of their knowledge with Peloton members. They were feeding us more content and we were loving it. BTW, all this new bootcamp, running and floor content would be covered under the $40 per month fee we were paying for the bike.

Outdoor Running Too!

In June 2018, just as I was preparing for my first trip to the mothership, as the NY spinning studio is known, Peloton began releasing outdoor running content. This content made use of the running instructors and was another way to introduce the new Tread instructors to the existing users.

The outdoor content is audio only and assumes the member is outside and has to be aware of curbs, cars, trees, etc… It was a truly brilliant way to extend the value to members during the summer months, provide a clear preview of what was to come, and further introduce the new Tread instructors to the community. When the outdoor content arrived, the app was rebranded Peloton Digital (available for about $20 a month), I was in Colorado and I decided to take a run with Rebecca Kennedy — the lead Tread instructor. I had heard she was a big deal over a Barry’s Bootcamp before joining Peloton. I was now in the game and I was now running again. Waiting for the Tread to come later in 2018.

Yoga for Christmas!

Taking the BTR challenge early in the year had me trying exercises I had never done before. One of those activities was yoga. When I started with the Peloton yoga content, a women named Colleen Saidman Yee led all the classes and there were few if any live classes. CSY was calm and patient and the perfect guide to introduce me to yoga — in 5 and 10 minutes classes to begin with. I would have never walked into a yoga studio and taken a 30 of 45 minute class. Learning via Peloton, in the privacy of my own home, was the perfect on ramp for me.

As I mentioned, I fell in love with the content and Colleen’s Yoga classes became a regular part of my well-being activities and eventually became a daily morning ritual. Putting together my own 10 to 25 minute yoga practice each morning has become something I look forward to when I wake up. After doing some research I learned Colleen and her husband were famous Yogis with multiple studios and they traveled all over the world teaching classes and seminars to others than taught yoga and ran studios.

In early December 2018, Peloton announced that there would be a new yoga studio and new, expanded yoga offerings with 3 new instructors. Live streaming would start just after Christmas! With almost a year under my belt with CSY, I was a bit disappointed, but I knew the rocket ship that was Peloton was not congruent with her lifestyle.

Looking Back on 2017 and 2018, But Further Ahead

Peloton expanded its offerings dramatically in 2018 and I was there, with my wife and hundreds of thousands of others to drink it all in and gladly pay for new hardware, content, swag, and trips to NYC to sweat, smile, laugh and improve our well-being and happiness.

Even as I type this, I am shocked by the two years I’ve put together with Peloton, its community and instructors. Between regular riding and messaging with other members and instructors, continually being inspired to try new things on and off the bike, and taking a new goal and growth oriented attitude (and body) into the world, Peloton, fitness and well-being have become central parts of my daily existence.

Well-being is now top of mind for me and my family (my oldest kids work out on the bike, the tread and use Peloton digital — all for $40 a month). I watch far less tv than before, go to bed earlier and wake earlier and a majority of my time online and with devices is spent with the Peloton community or planning activities using my increased strength, fitness and positive approach.

The year 2018 was a special year one for Peloton with the introduction of a big, expensive piece of hardware in the Tread. This highlighted they could scale beyond the bike and the Peloton team even proved how magical they are by doubling the price of their second offering ($4000 Tread versus $2000 bike). Not even Elon Musk and Tesla have tried this. You should also know that the treadmill market is two times the size of the stationary bike market.

BTW, just to show us all how efficient and sharp they are, the introduction of outdoor running and yoga content in 2018 reminds all how quick and deadly the Peloton Content Team, led by Fred Klein, can be in fitness and well-being categories that do not demand expensive, technical hardware for participation.

As a Peloton fanatic (I think that is fair to say) and an entrepreneurship researcher, I am really looking forward to seeing what the data says about the company and where I am on my third Peloversary on December 30, 2019.