Executives at Peloton, the digital-fitness behemoth, speak about the company as though it were a Hollywood studio. The signature Peloton product is a pimped-out stationary bike, with a twenty-two-inch touch screen mounted above the handlebars, but the corporation’s crusade to become the “Netflix of wellness,” in the words of its chief content officer, rides in large part on the library of exercise programming that it streams from a multimillion-dollar production house in New York City. Since quadrupling its revenue during the pandemic, Peloton has suffered a streak of setbacks, among them hardware recalls, digital-security breaches, supply-chain snafus, management turnovers, advertising mishaps, and widespread reports of buyer’s remorse. Whatever the company’s future, though, its most lasting contribution to the culture may be its minting of a new generation of fitness icons for the digital age. Its magnetic cast of instructors, who stream slickly produced workouts for tens of thousands of live viewers and millions more on demand, are workout celebrities on a scale unseen since the heyday of Richard Simmons.
Like Sweetgreen salads or the Spice Girls, Peloton instructors come in defined varieties. For a mellow vibe, subscribers ride with Emma Lovewell, a former d.j. from Martha’s Vineyard with an older-sisterly wisdom and a cat named Kimchi. For chatter and distraction, they go to Cody Rigsby, a hunky riot who streamed classes from Pasadena during his stint on “Dancing with the Stars.” But the trainer most emblematic of the brand might be Robin Arzón, a forty-one-year-old “reformed lawyer turned ultra-marathoner,” who has been the company’s head instructor and vice-president of fitness programming since 2016. Arzón’s riders—I’m one of them—know to expect unrelenting interval workouts (they’re worse when she’s wearing yellow), nineties hip-hop, and breathless soliloquies on everything from besting fear to Burning Man, all delivered with brutal ebullience from Arzón’s flywheel pulpit as her long braid snaps behind her like a whip.
Arzón is fond of motivational slogans that sound at first like any other self-help speak. Spend even a few minutes in one of her Together We Ride classes and you’ll almost certainly hear her say something like “Turn ‘Why me?’ into ‘Try me’ ” or “You will survive the fire—become the flame.” At least to me, though, her pronouncements usually have the feel of hard-earned principle. The daughter of a Puerto Rican lawyer and a Cuban refugee, she was a straight-A student who considered herself “allergic to exercise” until a freak event during her undergraduate years at N.Y.U. Arzón was at a wine bar in the East Village one night in 2002, when a gunman strode in, poured kerosene on the crowd, and took her and dozens of other diners hostage. “The only things I was aware of were a gun pressed to my right temple, a barbecue lighter to my left, and my beige, urine-soaked slacks,” Arzón recalls in “Shut Up and Run,” her best-selling memoir-cum-manifesto, published in 2016. (The police ultimately intervened and arrested the assailant, who was sentenced to two hundred and forty years in prison.) In Arzón’s telling, the lingering trauma of that night is what moved her to pluck an old pair of sneakers from her closet and sign up for her first race. During the next decade, while earning a law degree at Villanova and practicing at a white-shoe firm in New York, she crammed her off hours with marathon training and fantasized about a new life as a fitness influencer. Since leaving her legal career, in 2012, she has become proof of her own aspirational mantras, with a million Instagram followers, a MasterClass on “Mental Strength,” and a “lifestyle membership club” called Swagger Society in the works. In “Shut Up and Run,” she writes, “I re-created myself, and so can you.”
Arzón has worked to expand what it means to be an athlete, developing prenatal workouts for Peloton during her first pregnancy—which she revealed, during a cycling class, in 2020—and publishing the fitness-focussed picture book “Strong Mama,” a Times best-seller. Her daughter, Athena, is almost two, and last month, on “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” Arzón announced that she is pregnant again. When we met recently, in a conference room inside a high-rise at Hudson Yards, near the Peloton studio, she was gearing up to promote a new picture book, “Strong Baby,” which will be published next week. Trailed by an executive assistant and a P.R. rep, Arzón wore an ankle-length slate shearling coat over a sparkly silver sports bra, black fish-net fitness leggings, and bedazzled white sneakers. In her bag was one of the “seventeen-ingredient” smoothies that her husband makes every day for breakfast. In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed Peloton’s growing pains, the balance between public branding and privacy, and the long afterlife of trauma.
In your book, you recall working eighty-hour weeks in your old career, as a corporate litigator, and sometimes feeling that you were leading “a double life”: Robin the lawyer and Robin the athlete living passionately “twenty percent of the time.” Can you tell me how you went from quitting your day job to being hired as one of Peloton’s first instructors?
It was a slow two-year process. I was already running marathons, and I started to run ultramarathons, and I thought, Oh, my gosh, I love this—how am I going to live a life where I can do this all the time and still pay my rent in New York City? And I had an opportunity—I created an opportunity—to go to the London Olympics as a spectator, as a blogger, as a burgeoning social-media personality. I bought a ticket, put it on my credit card, and then two weeks later I was sleeping on my friend’s couch in East London.
I was doing all I could—petitioning P.R. agents, messaging athletes in their D.M.s on Twitter and just being, like, “Hi, I want to talk to you.” Literally anyone who would listen. I was just so passionate about it, this new career in movement. And in order to take this trip to London, I needed to quit my law job. I kind of had to choose. So I made the choice, and it felt like jumping off a cliff.
I had the luxury of time. And I had probably an irrational confidence that I was just gonna figure it out. In London, I actually received a job offer to work on the agency side, with Nike Women as my client, and I would be helping run their social-media networks. So I thought, Oh, my gosh, I’ve landed this plum job of storytelling in social media, which I was very enthralled with and using day to day. Influencer marketing, as it’s understood now, was kind of just starting.
I was in that job for about six months when I realized, like, I don’t want to hide behind a swoosh. I want to tell my story in partnership with these iconic brands. I left that job, and I just went out on my own. I created my first book proposal. I was training a lot of athletes at the time. I was living a classic multi-hyphenate life—teaching spin classes, working on my book, trying to get an agent, running ultramarathons. And that was when I read about Peloton.
I’ve read that you wrote to John Foley, the founder, cold.
I wrote to “info at”—so it was, like, “info@pelotoncycle.com.” And John was one of the first people I met when I came into the office. When I went in for my audition, there were probably twenty employees. So we were recording classes in the corner of the same place where all the executives and C-level folks sat. It was all very scrappy.
There was a recent ad campaign boasting that ninety-two per cent of users who sign up for Peloton stick with it through a year. But there have also been news stories about Peloton bikes being repurposed as clothes racks or languishing in secondhand-sale groups. Do you think the company has a sustainable future, given some of those doubts constantly swirling around?
The C-level folks are more attuned to that kind of stuff—you know, supply-chain stuff, any of that. But what I see is the heartbeat of Peloton is not going away. It’s getting louder. Like, you can bring up any meme you want. I don’t give a shit.
Every single day, every Peloton instructor is getting stopped, whether it’s at Duane Reade or wherever. And the interactions—sometimes they’re pleasantries, like, “Oh, I took your class. It was great.” Ninety per cent of the time, it’s “This is changing my life.” And I have not had a brand experience that was that meaningful, that palpable. So that’s what I focus on.
The roster of instructors is carefully cultivated in terms of style and personality. At the same time, there’s a very conspicuous brand consistency across the coaches. What goes into the training to insure that?
It’s always hard to answer this question. It gets a little bit esoteric. We’re all tuned in to a very similar frequency. There’s an energy anchored in—I think it’s more than a passion. I think it’s an obsession. I think that the instructors come with an obsession for creating a revolution of sweat. Like, that’s what makes us better than a YouTube channel.
The bigger Peloton gets, the more the relationship between instructor and rider changes. It feels a little less personal trainer and athlete, a little more preacher and congregation. I’m curious about how you see your role. Are you a muse? A coach? A magic genie? A therapist?
[Laughs.] That’s up to the member to decide, right? I do think there is a life-coaching element to it. I created a MasterClass on mental resilience. And a lot of what I’ve been writing about for over ten years goes into my classes. So there are practical things that we might talk about or spiritual things that we might talk about. That’s really dependent on the instructor and their comfort level and literacy around those topics.
I’m oftentimes speaking to both future and past versions of myself, with kindness and grit and grace, and thinking about the evolutions that I’ve had even within my time at Peloton—and what I needed to hear when I was in those celebratory moments or what I needed to hear when I was in those grieving moments. And I often will speak to the genuine chapters of my life. I lost a few family members during COVID, and I spoke about those things—hopefully appropriately. You never want to be a Debbie Downer. But I also think it’s really refreshing when an instructor shares what’s going on in their life.
Debbie Downer is not the first term I’d associate with you.
You always want a balance, right? You don’t want to be too preachy or too pedantic. But, then, that’s what makes it different. That’s what makes it more than a pushup or more than a pedal stroke.
I’ve noticed that some rides open with this awkward onscreen disclaimer—essentially “This is not therapy. Don’t confuse this with therapy.” What’s up with that?
[Laughs.] Ask our legal team. I do believe movement is medicine. Dealing with my own trauma, I’ve unpacked so much of it through movement—and also talk therapy, and also really creative medical approaches. I can’t speak to that slide, but I do know that the catharsis that’s happening is very real.
Recently, at the end of one of Emma Lovewell’s classes, a pop-up showed up on my screen inviting me to “Shop Emma’s look.” My understanding was that clicking on it would e-mail me a link to buy her outfit?
Yes.
I’m not sure I could pull off “Emma’s look,” but the advertisement seemed to encapsulate this fantasy that Peloton is selling—this aspirational possibility of maybe becoming a version of your instructor.
I think there are things to be admired about every single one of us. . . . I work hard to live a life that is purposeful, intentional, healthy, jam-packed. The things that I espouse and the value systems that I talk about are truly how I’ve architected my life. So if somebody wants to achieve that or model that, that’s why I’ve built a tool kit around it. I have my MasterClass. I wrote my book. I’m creating Swagger Society. I want folks to use those tools—and not in order to be me.
For the superheroes in my life, the Beyoncés of the world—now, I don’t want to be Beyoncé. But I am obsessed with her creativity, her work ethic, her ability to smash genres. And so then I take that admiration, and I say, “O.K, what about that can I start to bring into my own life?” And I do think that’s a really healthy model for folks we admire.
I want to talk about the balance between opening up and maintaining a private life, which is increasingly relevant as your celebrity status at Peloton rises. Ally Love taught a thirty-minute “Wedding Celebration Ride” when she got married. You announced your first pregnancy on the bike—and, if I’m not mistaken, Peloton shared some of the first baby photos?
Yeah, I think so.
You like to say that “boundaries are sexy.” How do you handle opening up while also being your own private self?
We’re still learning. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don’t. And then we learn from the times we don’t get it right, I guess. For the most part, I’m proud of my decisions, and I live my life in alignment. And what I share publicly I’m genuinely standing behind. It doesn’t mean every single comment is going to be, like, glorious, but I think that’s just the nature of some corrosive aspects of social [media].
You’ve written at length about what you call “the incident at Bar Veloce,” where, two decades ago, you were held hostage. In your book, you describe surviving that night as a “catalyst” for you.
Yes.
I want to be careful not to present your trauma as an overly tidy origin story. Could you explain, in your own words, how you connect that experience, the horror of it, with your story and your achievements today?
I was just thinking about it this morning. I forget what I was listening to. It was one of these podcasts about the science around trauma and how storytelling becomes so instrumental in our healing—or not. And I did that innately. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I grew up with superhero stories, loving She-Ra and stuff.
I remember being really scared to even leave my apartment and get on the subway. This was maybe six months after I was held hostage. I remember writing down, almost in the third person, “Robin goes to West Fourth Street. She gets on the C train. She’s fine. And she’s listening to her music.” I had to play it out. And I started to really play with narrative, inserting myself into narrative almost as a fiction. That was an exercise that’s maybe really taught in therapists’ offices. But I just used story as a form of empowerment.
I started really simply—and really practically—just so I could get to school and get on the subway. And then I was, like, Wow, where can I take this? Like, why shouldn’t I feel like the baddest bitch on the planet? I really started talking to myself like that, hyperbolically. You’d think that there was some crazy score playing in the background. And I still rely on those grand moments. I want to live a big life. And it took feeling really small and feeling really weak and disempowered to understand the juxtaposition that I feel now. But, also, I think I’m so unapologetic about living a big life because I know what it feels like to risk living a small one because of fear. And now I don’t fear fear, which I think was the healthiest, most refreshing, most liberating thing that could have ever happened.
You’ve talked in classes about becoming a mother, struggling with Type 1 diabetes, the death of your uncle Henry. I’ve taken more than a hundred classes with you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard you discuss the incident at Bar Veloce on the bike.
You know, I’ve mentioned broadly the trauma. I just don’t ever wanna be a trigger for somebody else’s thing. I mean, I know there’s a lot of different triggers for folks. And, you know, it’s interesting to me, because when I announced my pregnancy, that was a trigger for folks going through infertility. And I thought, Ugh, gosh—that’s the last thing I want. So there are some things that are kind of unavoidable, right? But to the extent that I can control that, I would never wanna make somebody in the middle of their positive workout feel like crap.
I’m curious about subjects that might be too personal or intense to broach during a ride, and whether there are policies around what you can or can’t say in general. There are silly examples of this. Like, does Cody Rigsby need a green light to get on the bike and say, “You didn’t survive a pandemic to fake an orgasm”?
[Laughs.] No, we don’t censor our instructors. Certainly we’re never going to promote certain politicians or political parties. We stay away from that. But we don’t censor our instructors. And so far that’s worked.
I’m thinking of the Breathe In, Speak Up series that followed George Floyd’s murder—and other rides at the time. Alex Toussaint had one in which he spoke really movingly about his experiences as a Black man.
I love that ride.
He told his riders, “I understand for some of y’all, I’m the one person from the African American community in your household.” To what extent is that messaging coming from the instructors versus from management?
One hundred per cent the instructors. That’s completely the instructors. We are never scripted. We are never given a marketing spiel. And oftentimes—actually almost always—it’s led by the instructor. Like, O.K., this is what I’m thinking for this ride. And then the producers will maybe shape it a little bit in partnership. But, yeah, that’s all the instructors.
I read an essay online by a rider, a Black writer, who took one of Tunde Oyeneyin’s Speak Up rides. She was clearly a Tunde fan, but she also wrote, “I couldn’t help but feel that her willingness to talk about racism was being exploited by her employer.” Have you ever felt that way sharing aspects of your own story on the bike?
No, because I’m always in control. We always have a choice whether to participate in something or not—whether it’s an affinity month or something that might be more rooted in social justice, like the Speak Up ride, which came from Tunde. That was literally Tunde being, like, “Give me the microphone. I’m ready.” And Chelsea Jackson Roberts, who has a Ph.D.. So it’s interesting that it could be interpreted as exploitative, because it’s always led by the instructors.
You talk about turning “loss into lessons.” I’m curious about this as someone who has experienced profound trauma and written about it in The New Yorker. Do you see any downsides to invoking your own traumatic experience? Does it ever feel icky or insincere—either because there’s a commercial element to it or because you feel you’re telling a story that skims over the real struggle and presents a happier ending than there is?
I don’t think so, because it’s always coming from, like, what I would tell a friend. Would it be different if it were in a thirty-second Super Bowl commercial for Peloton? Probably. But when it’s on my terms and my ride with the music I selected and I say at minute fourteen, “I feel like saying this”? Nobody’s gonna tell me shit. I’m gonna say what I want. And when it’s coming from that very guttural place, you can like it or you cannot—but it’s me. So change the channel if you don’t like it.
I ask some of these questions because Peloton has proudly, and admirably, described itself as an “anti-racist” company. But it’s also made an effort to steer clear of “political” topics, as you mentioned. I’m thinking of this kerfuffle from 2020 when Jenn Sherman—bless her soul—made what I think is a pretty innocuous joke about a football game being delayed. She said, “I can handle coronavirus taking down the White House, but I cannot handle coronavirus taking down the N.F.L., O.K.?” And then some disgruntled lady writes to the C.E.O., saying, “I ride to get away from the media, the noise, the hidden agendas.” The class was temporarily removed, and John Foley, the C.E.O. at the time, reassured riders that Peloton would remain nonpartisan. I don’t want to quote you saying anything that’s going to cause trouble. I’m more interested in what you said about acknowledging the outside world versus not when you’re on the bike.
Honestly, it’s tricky when things like that are happening. I’m so proud that Tunde and Chelsea created the Speak Up series, because it felt like a really honest access point to gather around stuff that was happening in the world that felt really heavy. We do want every single rider, of every kind of affiliation, to feel like they have a place, right? I don’t want somebody who’s considered red, blue, green, or otherwise to feel like they can’t take a Pop Ride because it’s going to be a soapbox.
But, also, when things are happening in the world and things feel heavy, I do think it’s appropriate to a certain extent to acknowledge that. And we, as a team, try to strike that balance. We don’t always reach that balance, but we really try—to find the humanity in it but never be exclusionary. But, you know, we stand for social-justice issues as a company. We are anti-racist. We do support the L.G.B.T.Q. community. There might be people who have differences of opinion—and, if you have a caustic point of view like that, then maybe this isn’t the company for you.
Another topic that sometimes seems to be the subject of a formal or informal policy of silence is weight. I’ve noticed consistently that instructors don’t speak about getting thin. They focus on movement and strength and mindfulness. “Diet culture” is kind of off limits. How intentional is that?
I think it’s very intentional. I also think it’s where the fitness industry is going. I do think that we have a more holistic, healthy approach to those conversations now, generally speaking. But, for sure, “getting fit” or “getting your bikini body” or any of that stuff is an absolute no.
At the same time, Peloton coaches are pretty uniformly lean and muscled and beautiful. And there is a kind of implied ideal body type. Do you see that as essential to inspiring riders? The fact that the person up there looks good?
I think that the person has to be a capable fitness authority. That’s going to come in a lot of different sizes. I’m proud of the team that we’ve assembled, and I hope that we always continue to provide many, many different access points for all different types of folks. We’re not saying that it needs to look like this package. What we’re doing is creating an opportunity for you to bring these principles into your own life however that makes sense to you.
Do you think fitness culture is in some sense inextricably tied up in society’s obsession with thinness, though? The Thanksgiving classes—which I love—are called Turkey Burns, after all.
All I know is when I laced up my first pair of running shoes years ago, it allowed me to step into my power. I built this body—not to shrink for society or anyone’s comfort but, instead, because I vowed to take up space.
The company’s new C.E.O., Barry McCarthy, has talked about driving decisions with data. Last year, after the instructor Chase Tucker left, there was some talk online about his having lower ratings than other trainers. You can’t comment on that, I imagine, but among instructors is there ever a sense of pressure to keep up?
We have a lot of data points. I mean, we’re run very much like a television network. So we do know what classes in our library are doing really well and where we need to pivot. We have an entire programming team that looks at that data. And then, qualitatively, each individual instructor, for sure, is always trying to get better. And that’s where we meet with our producers, and we have conversations strategically about what makes sense. Like, this is the big menu of what we can produce. What should I be teaching?
A lot of businesses these days are hurting, and Peloton’s stock has suffered since the highs of the pandemic. Do you feel the effects of that internally?
It’s kind of hard to say, because when the instructors are around each other, we really are in such a bubble. We love being around each other. And there is such high energy, in a good way. So I think that the studio has been able to maintain a really healthy environment. To be honest, I don’t see a lot of the other areas of the company very often. I’m kind of in a bubble. So I shouldn’t really speak to that.
Maybe this is something you can talk about. In a Times interview last year, shortly after taking over, Barry McCarthy discussed some of the differences between his management style and his predecessor’s. He said, as an example, “You’ll never hear me say we’re a family. We’re a sports team, and we’re trying to win the Super Bowl.” I’m curious to learn how you, as a leader of the company, reconcile this all-inclusive “One Peloton” ethos—“Together We Go Far,” that stuff—with the less pleasant realities of running a competitive billion-dollar business?
I mean, honestly, we’re focussed on the members. In that respect, it is that “Together We Go Far” mantra. That’s what I focus on. And that’s really what we see mostly, as instructors—the folks who are stopping us and coming into the studio and sharing their success stories. So that’s what I focus on, and I do think that’s consistent with that “One Peloton” mentality.
Peloton got some pushback for including free access to exercise content as part of a severance package during last year’s layoffs. Did that feel cynical at all?
I can’t speak to that at all.
You’ve written that one of your personal missions is to “redefine what it means to be an athlete.” How have you changed the most since you started teaching?
Well, certainly, becoming a mom was a very physically intense experience. My postpartum training experience was really tough. But it was good, because it got me back to a beginner’s mind-set. And I think that that helped me understand where a lot of folks start. That’s certainly what it felt like after having Athena. But I’m also stronger now than I ever have been.
Tell me about the prenatal strength and cycling classes, and how those came about.
I was already certified in pre- and postnatal before I was pregnant. And when I became pregnant I thought, O.K., I’m living this experience, so I might as well capture it and create content for folks who consider themselves athletes who happen to be pregnant. That’s kind of how I viewed it. I wanted to create content that was, of course, safe—but also tough. Pregnant athletes can work hard.
I’ve taken some of those classes. They’re good classes.
[Laughs.] Thank you. I worked hard on them.
You were training twelve hours a week when expecting your first child.
Yeah, easily.
And you’ve sometimes described the series as a challenge to criticism that your routine might have been too much. What kind of things were you hearing?
It is the classic myth that pregnant folks should just kick back or not work too hard, or that they’re limited in ways that they’re not. So I wanted to focus on capability rather than limitation and allow folks to choose for themselves. I think that’s the biggest thing. A pregnant person should feel competent to choose for themselves what’s too much. Like, I’ll tell you what’s too much—you’re not gonna tell me.
This reminds me of the part of your book where you describe reactions to keeping up your ultramarathon habit after getting your diabetes diagnosis. You talk about doctors who “just don’t understand what it means to race and commit to endurance sports with Type 1 diabetes.” And you write, “I know my body better than they do.” Where’s the line between transcending limits and pushing yourself too hard? Sometimes you’re on the bike and there’s this clash between, you know, self-care is important—blah blah—but also, like, don’t rest. Push yourself through. There has to be some discomfort.
It’s the self-imposed limitations that I want folks to get curious about. If it’s a physical one, a medical one, of course—do what you’ve got to do. Literally, every single class, every instructor says modifications are encouraged. But I also want folks to rise to their next level and not sit in fear-based thinking.
What do you say to someone who has no interest in working out—doesn’t do it, doesn’t like it, feels skeptical of it?
Movement is medicine. It’s fertilizer for the brain. It gives you more energy. There’s this illusion that we should be endorphin-filled during the very first workout. But, when you’re changing your body and starting a new routine, of course your mind is going to be like, This doesn’t make sense. So I recommend finding a workout that you would like to like, something that makes you want to want to work out. You can start small, too! I think sweeping change, for anyone, is really daunting. So start with one achievable thing—and then do it again, and then do it again.
The prenatal series embodies a broader shift that I’ve seen with Peloton—from marketing toward people who already see themselves as athletes, perhaps, to marketing toward people who might not. That recent ad campaign—“It’s Not What You Think”—makes a point of trying to take down certain “misconceptions” about Peloton, including the idea that it’s this “élitist fitness cult.” Where do you think those myths come from?
Oh, gosh. I don’t know, because I’ve seen the other side of that all along. So it’s hard for me to comment on that because it’s just not my opinion.
Are there aspects of the training—the style or the difficulty—that you feel have changed as the audience for Peloton has gotten a lot larger?
We want to provide as many access points as possible—whether it’s hiring Logan [Aldridge, a strength instructor who lost his left arm in a boating accident during his teens] and creating adaptive programming; whether it’s creating entirely new products and having the rower. I want every person who is able to move on the planet to have some type of content at Peloton that they can do. I really believe that. Not every instructor is going to teach every type of class, right? So I think it’s also pairing the content with the right leader for that content.
Among some O.G., pre-pandemic Peloton riders, I’ve seen this sense online of “Oh, I did Peloton before it was cool.” Forgive me for bringing this up, but, in browsing through the Peloton Reddit, I found references to “the old Peloton” and even sometimes to “the old Robin” or “the vintage Robin.”
[Laughs.] I don’t know what that is, but O.K.
One person wrote, “Old Robin was gritty. She cursed, she was hilarious, her music choices were less polished. New Robin is ‘inspirational’ and it’s like she’s more produced if that makes sense. I still like her but every now and then it’s fun to filter her rides by oldest and get down with old Robin.”
Well, I would ask that person what version of themselves they were ten years ago. I think it’s absurd to try to keep someone in a box. I would never, never box myself in just because someone else is more comfortable.
There is this old clip I love from one of your classes, posted by that guy John Prewitt, the Peloton mega-fan influencer.
Oh, yeah. I see some of those clips.
And let me set the scene. “I Like to Move It” is blasting—and you’re wearing yellow, so we know it’s a kick-ass ride. And during this lull between intervals you see someone checking a phone or something, and this brutal, ruthless coaching instinct kicks in. You say—three times—to this rider, “Put your phone away. Let’s get to work.” And then, still pointing to this person, you instruct the class to turn up the resistance “heavy enough so you forget about your e-mails.” I love this video. I play it sometimes to amp myself up, or if my boyfriend is on his phone or something.
[Laughs.]
But these days I don’t think that I’ve seen as much of that edginess in classes. And it’s not just you—there’s also this old video of Dennis snapping at two riders who are being chatty. You wouldn’t see that anymore. Do you think, with this emphasis on inclusivity and targeting a broader group of people, there is an element to the classes, in tone, that has changed?
I mean, maybe. I hope we’re always evolving. But I also think that the production environment is more sophisticated. We have more folks helping with that—literally managing the humans in the studio. And that helps. Back in the day, it was kind of just somebody in the booth and us. And really, back in the day, we would, like, press Start on an iPad.
I hear you’re expecting a second child.
I am.
Congratulations. Tell me about your new children’s book.
I want little humans to start to fall in love with movement. Kids, toddlers, babies are such innate athletes. I really didn’t develop a love of movement till I was an adult. And I look at my daughter, Athena, and her playmates, and I think, My gosh, if you could have that spark—and awareness of your own inner strength and power—from a younger age, what is your trajectory? You have movement in your tool kit from one year old. So the target audience is little movers and folks who care about them.
How old are the youngest riders on Peloton? When do they get started?
Teens . . . you have to be big enough, obviously, to fit on the bike.
At what age do you see Athena getting on the bike?
She would get on now if I let her. She is very, very enchanted by the bike. But I want her to find her own approach to movement. If it’s not on the Peloton, cool. As long as she’s moving, I’m happy. ♦
An earlier version of this article misidentified the location of the wine bar where a gunman held the crowd hostage.
