treacheroustexan
Well-Known Member
Any brewers here on Peloton?
JordanLBrews - Add me if so!
JordanLBrews - Add me if so!
How long have you had it? Anything else you'd like to share about it?
I'm in a rural area with only a moderately sized city close by, so have to expand a craigslist search out to the more populous half of the region to find any of the Bike+ bikes on Craigslist. Even then, there's only a couple of them in my search area covering from Everett, WA down to Salem, ORAre there a lot of used bikes on the market with Covid over?
I'm in a rural area with only a moderately sized city close by, so have to expand a craigslist search out to the more populous half of the region to find any of the Bike+ bikes on Craigslist. Even then, there's only a couple of them in my search area covering from Everett, WA down to Salem, OR
Used prices I see are only $200-$300 less than what I bought new, and don't have the accompanying package bundle that was being offered back in early Nov '22
hahait has a giant screen that chastises you for canceling your membership.
Alright... So I hate exercise.
The routine my daughter seems to be getting into has her the calmest after I drop her brother off at school, but I don't feel completely awake for a couple hours after that, when she starts getting cranky. I think I need to get myself motivated to get on my stationary bike in that window between dropping my son off and when my daughter gets feisty.
Just remember... Sitting your daughter in front of "educational" animated programming for 30 minutes to get a workout in is just fine. She's not going to complain
@betarhoalphadelta as you can see in our feed, I am currently at a significantly different conditioning place than your are. it's inspiring to be connected with others who are way beyond where I am during my initial weeks of getting back into shape, see what you're accomplishing, and see that it's possible to get there.
30 days ago I could barely get seated onto the bike without sending the heart monitor into Zone 3 (122-137 bpm). Yesterday I did a 30 minute 'low impact' ride that kept pace with the class, and I never got out of Zone 1 (<105 bpm), so I can see the progress on cardio conditioning and feel the progress in my endurance before I start to feel it. I now have to push it to get into Zone 3 for the classes I participate in, and soon I'll take another step and again increase the level of what I'm able to accomplish.
very much like homebrewing several years ago - that first extract brewing experience was pushing the limits of what I could accomplish without becoming overwhelmed, and yet today I do all-grain with a homebuilt HERMS system and find it a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. I enjoy the process of making progress towards the goal of becoming in good physical condition, just like enjoying the process of becoming a solid homebrewer. I'll never compete in a cycling competition, and I'll never be a commercial brewer - and that's perfectly wonderful for the goals I have for myself.
LOL 6 months should be easy! She's immobile
She's still under 6months, so cartoons aren't a reliable distraction for her yet. She's pretty fond of her teether toys at the moment. Ceiling fans aren't as interesting as they were a couple months ago.
She's consistently been pretty calm between my wife leaving for work until about 9:30am. I'm going to aim for after dropping my son off at school. We're getting back into our routine now that holiday travel is done, and she is doing better with her bottle, so that will help a lot.
It's more a matter of me getting motivated at the least productive part of my day.
added Hannah Corbin's 10 min Tabata to today's session. those last couple intervals were impossible to keep cadence on at the suggested resistance level, but someday in the not too distant future I'll exceed if I hit 1-2 of these per week. I'll also return mentally prepared vs today's "hmm, what's this?" approach I came to class with
Camila Ramon's Extra 10 Intervals session was also equally ego deflating on my first ride, but second time around I was mentally prepared to push thru
I had this thread up and walked away from my computer for a bit. Didn't read the post you were replying to and I read your whole post to the end thinking you were talking about an instructor, not a child haha.Her lack of mobility should work to my favor, for sure. But there are other challenges that come with this age. Worst case scenario is she complains the whole time. But it isn't like I'm not going to (double negative, I know) make sure she's clean before I get started, and she doesn't starve. 20-40 minutes of her complaining might make my primitive lizard dad brain upset, but everyone will survive. And like you said, if she really sounds like she's having a problem, I can stop.
Alright... So I hate exercise.
Which isn't to say I'm lazy (although I can be from time to time). I like taking the dog for long walks. I like hiking. When I play golf, I walk the course 90% of the time rather than take a cart. I don't shy away from personal exertion.
But I've never liked exercise. I had a gym membership and never went. When I went, I wasn't sure what to do other than a few weight exercises and maybe spend some time on a treadmill or stairmaster. The gym was only 1 mile away, but I couldn't muster up the effort to go, because I quite frankly simply didn't like it.
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In late June 2022, my Peloton Bike+ arrived. And that has changed everything. In about 6 1/2 months (maybe 200 days?) I've now done 220 workouts, with 125 of them being rides, which means I'm doing strenuous riding roughly 2/3 of days. I personally believe that's a good number, especially since I learned early on that I play golf like even more trash than normal if I play the day after riding. So every time I play golf it basically means I don't ride the day before, and since I walk 6-7 miles while playing, don't do a ride that day either.
And I LOVE the workouts on the Peloton, whereas I just simply couldn't get mentally engaged when going to the gym and hated it.
So... What changed? A lot of things...
In 6+ months, I've probably lost 15 lbs and I feel SO much more fit than I was then--and my wife says she can see the difference in how I look. She's doing Peloton as well, and likewise she hated exercise before and loves this. She doesn't do it quite as often as I do because I can fit it into WFH, but she's devoting time to exercising which, like me, she wasn't before. And she's lost about 10 lbs and feels better (and looks better, although she already looked great).
- The workouts are programmed by the instructors. So rather than just going to a gym and trying to decide what to do, everything is laid out for you and and you just have to follow along. This is huge for me, because I don't have to think about what to do. I just need to pick a workout and follow.
- It's engaging. You're going through various things of hitting cadence and resistance numbers that vary throughout the workout. You're doing interval pushes, climbs, etc. All the while the instructor is talking you through it (which admittedly can be annoying for some of them) and there's plenty of musical options to go along with it.
- Speaking of instructors, there are a lot of them and so you can find personalities that jive with your own, music that jives with your own, etc. My wife (as do many women) loves riding with Cody Rigsby because he's like every girl's gay best friend, talking so much that he distracts you from the work you're doing. I prefer more of the aggressive "push you to work" instructors, and based on my music selection (mostly rock/etc) I rotate through typically about 5-6 different instructors that all challenge me in different ways.
- To an extent it's very much "gamified", meaning that you can see your output in real time. There's a leaderboard, which although I don't take many live rides (preferring on demand), you can see how you're stacking up both against others and against previous personal records. Being on a tough ride and seeing that you're tracking near your PR can give you that extra push to get through. I haven't tried it personally, but they also have a very video-game activity called Lanebreak where you're trying to reach certain milestones via resistance and cadence pushes. I think for actual gamers that's got its own little endorphin rush from what I've heard.
- In addition to the output for gamification, there are various kickers like badges for doing various things. For example, I didn't realize it but I hit my first 45-day streak and got on a ride and got so many "high-fives" in the ride that I thought there was a software glitch. Nope, it was because the other riders got to see that I'd just hit 45 days in a row. The platform gives badges up to a 60-day streak, so I literally will go 60 days in a row, take one rest day, and start again. I've done 60 days twice and am on my way to the third. I've decided to do the 2023 "annual" challenge with the goal of hitting 10,000 minutes of exercise throughout the year (roughly 27 min/day average). I'm the type that if you'd asked me before I started whether I'd care about badges, I'd say no, we don't need no stinkin' badges. But dammit I like getting them!
- It's cross-functional. As mentioned I'm hitting 60-day streaks but I don't ride every day. I try to incorporate stretches on a regular basis to restore some of the lost flexibility from my teenage martial arts days. There are strength exercises--I try to do some core but probably am not doing enough. I'm planning to actually start yoga. If you're a runner, you can do outdoor runs or walk coached through the platform.
- It's an expensive bike, but at $44/mo which covers all members of a household it's cheaper on a monthly basis than my gym membership was for my wife and I (~$80/mo even with a family discount). If you have your own spin bike and just have the app, or just want to use the app for the cross-functional exercises, I think it's something like $13/mo. I've heard the app with a different bike isn't QUITE the same experience because you're guessing on things like resistance and you don't participate in the leaderboard aspect since you don't have output, but I know a lot of people that didn't want to bite the bullet on the bike cost still enjoy it.
I'm honestly getting to the point where I started with 20- and 30-minute rides and now I look forward to 45- or 60-minute rides. I actually enjoy it that much. It's not a $2K clothing rack. It gets used and I absolutely DON'T see that changing in the future.
Exercise and peoples' relationship with it are very personal. So I'm not saying that other people will have the same experience I did. But hopefully my experience gives you an idea of where I came from, and where I am. If it resonates with you, it's something I highly recommend.
With the current incentives, it's actually a great time to buy. If you are really considering it, I'd say reach out to @treacheroustexan for a referral code--there are advantages for both the giver and receiver of the code as I understand it (although that may not apply with current incentives). If you're interested in the app only, there is no incentive for the giver so any of us can give you a link that gives you a 60-day free trial for the app-only subscription to give it a shot.
Oh, and if you join, look me up. My leaderboard name, appropriately, is: buhbyebeergut
I was giving some people from work a hard time about using the Peloton and was sort of half joking. I completely don’t understand it, I would NEVER ride one of those. I tried a stationary bike at the gym a few times, and I was bored out of my mind, not to mention the seat and pedals were very uncomfortable. I once thought of getting a trainer for the winter, but I found I can easily cycle outdoors when it’s as cold as 20F with no problems. I just can’t seem to get past the idea of riding a bike, that goes no where. I’ve always been more of an outdoors person anyway. When I’m not cycling, the wife and I will walk 4-7 miles at a time.
Reading your post helps me understand why they have become so popular, and I love hearing about people exercising and getting healthier. Our bodies were not meant to sit around all day; I believe we’re a lot happier when we get exercise. But I would high encourage you to try riding a real bike, the exhilaration that you experienced as a child, doesn’t go away in adulthood.
Howdy J,
I do Peloton... but not with their bike or tread. I just use their app from my phone or iPad for workouts using my own weights, cycling trainer, or whatever the workout I feel like that day calls for. Once the weather warms up here where you and I live, my bike comes off the trainer and back outside to the real roads it is. Cycle on!
Use the app. I like to sign up for services on my laptop with a full keyboard, a bigger screen, and fewer issues with permissions. After three hours with customer support I caved. It was frustrating, but I just wanted to move on. For some reason I'm having trouble managing my account through a desktop browser, so all of this will be done through my phone app. The customer service person I dealt with longest seemed like they were frustrated with me, but did a good job staying calm. I have since also logged in with my FireStick so I can follow along with the video on the TV.
The phone app is pretty much what I expected it to be. It takes a little messing around to figure out where everything is, but that's not much different from any other app. It took a little longer to find everything than I usually need to navigate a new app, but that kind of time investment doesn't matter, as it's an up front time investment that will pay off over the next couple months. Probably the strangest quirk I've found is that if I want to see past workouts I need to go through my profile rather than the Workouts tab/screen. So far the FireTV app is ok to navigate, though I wish there was a faster way to get to bookmarked videos, it still doesn't take a long time. I suppose it would be nice if I could preview the first few minutes of a video before it counted towards my workout time in the system, but there are Class Plans in the workout details that I can see before I play the video which tells me what I am getting into. Maybe there is also a way to remove a workout the system has recorded and I just haven't found it yet?
So far I've tried a handful of beginner cycling videos and repeated an arm workout with light weights.
The workout videos themselves, they're fine. I've stuck with them for almost a week and I intend to keep going, so they're doing something right. They usually make a big deal about the music, which I'm sure works for them. Without getting horribly off-topic, my preferred music isn't the kind that gyms are going to play, and they aren't including them in these videos. I thought I'd search for videos with country music, but I haven't found many that conform with what I want to do in the time I have, and I doubt that they're playing much country music recorded before '05.
So this might have more to do with gym/trainer culture as a whole, but I've only experienced it through these videos. I can appreciate that the trainers have a difficult time coming up with things to say when they might be used to working and getting to know people in person, but sometimes I just have to groan and roll my eyes at what they say. I don't think of this as a "[fitness] journey". If that term works for you, fantastic. I'm just trying to develop some positive habits. When (IF!) I start training for RAGBRAI I'll accept the term "fitness journey". So making a big deal about me starting off makes me uncomfortable. They also like to tell me that I'm "worthy". When I think of whether I'd be worthy of something, I think of receiving a fancy gift. These people aren't sending me on vacation, they aren't so much as volunteering to watch my kids and give me a $50 gift card to Applebee's. In fact, they want to eventually charge me for this (again, thank you to the person who sent me the trial membership code).
So I have to find a way to shrug off the weird encouragement and cliches or mentally buy into them. We'll see how it turns out. I've endured them enough that those aren't the reasons I would stop. Hopefully getting away from the true beginner stuff will help.
Using a different bike than the trainers expect is a bit of a challenge. I can adjust the resistance on my Schwinn, but I have no idea what my cadence is. I might take the cadence sensor off my outdoor bike and put it on the Schwinn for a few weeks. Trying to match resistance is interesting. It took me until my 4th 20min beginner ride to find someone who would parse the Peloton bike resistance settings to a generic enough description that I could translate it to Schwinn resistance (Sherman's ride from 1/10/'23, in case anyone cares). Trainers are also a bit inconsistent communicating when they adjust their resistance, some announce it well in advance and give you a countdown, others just say it while they turn their knob, and if you miss them call it out they don't usually repeat it until the next change. I do my best to increase or decrease resistance when the trainer says to, to pedal faster or slower depending on the target cadence, and for me that'll be fine. It's not like anyone is going to chastise me for missing something anyway.
As for the arm workouts, they kicked mybuttarms. I've never had great arm strength, and I feel like my muscles atrophied after my herniated disc this past summer. None of these workout videos are listed as "Beginner". Despite having lifted weights in the past I am not used to dumbbells. I was hoping that they'd spend some time explaining correct form, which has been a bit of a hurdle for me, and so far I haven't found anyone taking the time to explain proper form/technique in their video. They do have some quick demonstrations in the Class Plan, but those are silent 3-10 second videos.
How much do you find it helps (or not) to use the Peloton workouts to train for real cycling? I've heard cyclists say that it can often be very helpful because Peloton rides typically don't have downhill, or stopping at a signal waiting for a light to change, etc... It's constant work (of varying intensity levels). But that some other cyclists find it difficult because there are fewer long-duration classes, and some will do thinks like stacking two 90-minute classes on top of each other to continue training endurance for longer rides that they'll face out in the real world.
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