The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Peloton
By: John Abella
Tags: Peloton, Beginners Guide, Fitness, Cycling, Spin Class

Introduction

After being a member of the Official Peloton Member Page on Facebook for about 36 months now, the same questions come up all the time. Hopefully this will help you avoid asking those same questions, and get you up and spinning faster.

Yep, this is why we’re here.

The Bike

Yes, it’s incredibly heavy — about 135lbs ready to ride. You can roll it from room to room on hard surfaces, but actually picking it up to move it isn’t trivial. If you’re riding on carpet, you will probably want to put a sheet of plywood down under the bike mat so that there’s a stable surface for the bike to rest on. Workouts are vigorous; you want something that doesn’t rock or move around much when you’re out of the saddle.

Follow the intro videos about setting the seat height and depth (Christine has a great one here), and know that one of the most common setup errors is that people don’t have the seat high enough. To start, raise your handlebars all the way up. They’re hard to adjust (get your arms under them while you stand in front of the bike and rock it back and forth) and probably not something you want to change much between riders. The seat is easy to change between riders.

The Saddle (It’s a seat, we’re just being pedantic)

Your nether regions (undercarriage, man / lady bits, etc.) are going to be sore. Like really sore when you first start out. People sometimes buy gel seat covers or padded bike shorts and a lot of other ‘fixes.’ The real fix is to just ride, and one day it just won’t bother you. In general, it seems like 6–10 rides does it for most people. Having dedicated, padded bike shorts may still come in handy, especially if you plan on doing a lot of longer rides. Yes, you can switch the seat out for any standard cycling seat, but don’t go get some super wide seat off Amazon — it won’t do you any favors.

Shoes

The full Peloton experience means riding with ‘clipless’ pedals, which use a cleat on the shoe and a special pedal to attach one to the other. This makes it easier to ‘pull’ on the upstroke, but is a foreign feeling for a lot of people who haven’t done it before. You don’t need to use Peloton brand shoes; any cycling shoe that uses a 3-bolt cleat mount (often listed as SPD-SL or LOOK Delta) will work, and some people with especially wide or narrow feet have found success with brands like Shimano, Giro, Sidi, Time, Lake, and Specialized. The bike uses regular cycling pedals, so if you have road bikes with pedals and cleats and shoes that you already like, it’s trivial to get another set of your preferred pedal and swap them onto the bike. The stock Peloton pedals use LOOK Delta cleats — the red ones. As a note, the red cleats have 9 degrees of ‘float’ meaning that when you’re clipped in, your heel can move about 4.5 degrees inward and 4.5 degrees outward. This helps keep your knees in a position that won’t cause injuries without having to have your cleats be absolutely perfectly aligned.

Heart Rate Monitors

You should probably get one, but it doesn’t have to be the one that Peloton sells. You need any model that does ANT+ connectivity, which rules out a lot of older Polar models. We use a cheap one from Amazon but the most common aftermarket one that people buy is probably the Scosche Rhythm+ armband model. It’s important to have one for two reasons: if you want the most accurate calorie calculations from the bike, it requires your age, weight, and your heart rate while riding. Also, some rides are based on your heart rate zone while riding, which is harder to do if you don’t know your heart rate. Your Apple Watch or Fitbit will not send live HR data to the Peloton.

Leaderboard Names

This one’s simple: you need a leaderboard name so that your metrics can be saved, and so that you can compete (or not!) against people on the leaderboard. Simple is better, at least if you ever want an instructor to call out your name on a live class. You’re much more likely to get a shoutout if your name is “JohnRidesFaster” vs. “xx_John_xx_1975.” Remember that the names are relatively public and will be seen by other people, so try to keep it PG-13. There have been some saucy names, but they never get shoutouts and if it’s really vulgar I think Peloton HQ will ask you to change it.

Instructors

You’ve probably found the Peloton Instructors page by now, and we’ll leave the biographical stuff there. Just know that all the instructors are different, and some people develop strong affinities for one instructor over another. In the beginning, it’s great to try them all and see what fits. It’s also highly likely that as you get in better shape your preferences will change over time. All of the instructors are active on Instagram, Facebook, and various other social media outlets. Follow them and reach out!

Your First Live Ride

This is it. Some people never ride live, and some always ride live. There’s no right or wrong, but I found that doing the first live ride was at least a little daunting compared to doing on-demand rides. Generally, you can join the live rides about 10 minutes before they start, and with about 5 minutes to go the video stream comes up and you can watch the instructor banter with the people in the studio and warm up. And then the lights go down, game faces come out, and off you go. If your name is unique and easy to pronounce and it’s not a crazy crowded ride (i.e. Friday night Robin Arzon DJ Ride) you might get a shoutout.

The Century Shirt

Once you’ve completed your 100th ride (Beyond the Ride workouts don’t count) you’re eligible for a Peloton Century Shirt. Warning: if you try to buy it without a code, it really does cost $100k and you’ll get a surprising charge on your credit card. Once you finish your 100th ride you generally get an email within a week, or you can talk to Support online and they can get you the code. The Century Shirt is free, but you pay shipping. Yes, they ask you to pay shipping, it’s generally $7 or so. If this offends you, you don’t need to get the shirt.

“Tribes”

Hang around the Facebook groups or Reddit long enough and you’ll hear talk of tribes. These are groups of riders who have coalesced together around a shared interest. There are tribes of doctors, nurses, teachers, as well as tribes based around certain ride times, etc. The #435amTribe are the ‘Mothercluckers.’ As you do more rides you’ll see various hashtags on the leaderboard for groups of riders, one of which may appeal to you. Most of the tribes have their own Facebook groups. Some of the bigger groups are the PowerZone Pack, The Peloton Moms Group, and there are probably 100 others that I don’t know about.

Power Zones

A popular training technique is to focus on ‘power zones’ which are different levels of output based on your calculated capability (in simple terms.) Once you’ve taken an FTP test ride — there are some in the library — you can calculate your zones and then do Power Zone rides with a better understanding of how hard you should be pushing to stay in the correct zone. It’s possible to do those rides without having done the test and knowing your zones, but you’re probably not getting the most out of the program. The Power Zone Pack Facebook group is a great resource for learning more about this training method. Denis Morton and Matt Wilpers lead the Power Zone rides and both have 10 minute FTP warm-up and 20 minute FTP test rides in the library.

Riding at the Studio

If you’re in or around NYC, you can take a live ride at the studio. It’s not free, and you need to make a login on their booking system to reserve a time — this is not the same username / password you use on the bike. The bikes in-studio don’t use your heart rate monitor, so leave it at home. The studio has refreshments and showers, as well as a store to buy more Peloton swag if that’s your thing. You can bring your own shoes or use their shoes at the studio. Before you go, make sure you know how you set your seat height / depth, and know your username and password so you can login to the studio bike.

Data

If you’re data driven, you can login to your website profile page and download all of your ride data. From there you can open it in Excel and slice and dice it any way you see fit. If you use an iPhone, check out the mPaceLine app, written by a member of the Peloton community. It’s a great way to track rides and sync them into Apple Watch’s Activity app as well. It does a lot of trending (power to weight ratios, other training metrics) that you don’t get natively through Peloton.

The Pause Button

Short answer: there isn’t a way to pause an on-demand ride. The feature is often talked about, frequently joked about, and new riders ask about it a few times a week. If you drop your bottle or your towel, or your child starts tearing up the house, you’ve got to just get off the bike and let the class keep going. Likewise, there’s no way to rewind a class. If you ‘exit’ a class in progress, the timer keeps running.

Progress Indicators

Some people like knowing exactly how many minutes of pain (ahem…class) are left, but other people would rather just go with the flow. Like anything else on screen, you can tap the timer (top left) or the progress bar (top middle) and make them disappear. Similarly, you can do the same with your metrics or the leaderboard as well. If you tap in the middle of the screen twice, everything goes away but the video feed. If you do it again, it all comes back.

Android

The App exists! This was often asked about and finally came out in December of 2018.

Your Apple Watch

It doesn’t really work here, or at least not well. Which is especially disconcerting, since the Peloton app is iOS-only for now. The Watch won’t send HR data to the bike, but you can have your bike send ride data to Strava and then that will come over into Apple Activity / Apple Health if you want. A better solution (written by a Peloton rider) is mPaceLine which can read HR from either your watch or your Bluetooth heart rate strap, and then will combine that with bike data, ride data from Peloton, etc. Update: As of February 2019 the Peloton app will now integrate with Apple Health / Activity. In the iOS app go to “More” and then “Health App” to configure it. There are some caveats; right now it only seems to sync when you open the Peloton app after a ride, not automatically. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting there. Update 2020: You can get an app called ‘HeartCast’ (there are a few others) that will make your heart rate from an Apple Watch show up on the Peloton screen. People have had mixed luck with a few of these apps, and a good HRM isn’t expensive.

Helpful Tips

It’s not a bad idea to order a bunch of small towels. You’re going to sweat a lot. And you should have a mat under your bike, or you’re going to leave puddles on whatever surface the bike is sitting on. The Peloton brand mat is nice (and big) but a yoga mat works just a well for a lot of people.

If you’re the type of person who is going to roll out of bed at 5 am and is crunched for time — use the iPhone app to bookmark some on-demand rides. When you get to the bike in the morning you don’t need to peruse or browse; filter on bookmarked rides and you’re on your way.

If you ride in a household with more than one rider, make sure you’re logged in as the right person before you start. There is no way to move a ride between users, so if you ride as your spouse, they get the credit. Of course you did the exercise, but if you’re numbers driven — you don’t get this one back. This happens more often than you think.

Types of Rides

If you’re new to Peloton, some of the terminology and slang used will probably be confusing or at least non-obvious. Here are some basic ride types to get you started:

Low-Impact — this doesn’t mean low effort, but in general it means that the cadence won’t go over 100, the resistance won’t go over 50, and there will be little or no ‘out of the saddle’ (i.e. standing) sections

Groove — less cadence dictated by the instructor, more based on riding to the beat of the music. Can also sometimes include more movement on the bike. When people ask “What ride is more like Soul Cycle” — this is one of the frequent answers.

Live DJ — exactly as expected; a live DJ is in studio mixing songs and helping to drive the class. These are fun when the DJ and the instructor have a good rapport.

HIIT — high intensity interval training. Intense periods of effort followed by a short rest, and then back on the gas. Don’t do this as your first ride.

Tabata — a type of HIIT ride, but it follows a specific pattern. The classic Tabata pattern is 20 seconds of effort followed by a 10 second rest. I think ‘Tabata’ translated means sweaty. Or death.

70’s / 80’s / Y2K / Classic Rock / EDM — all rides based on the associated genre of music. There are a ton more: country, jazz, broadway, etc.

Power Zone — based on your calculated Functional Threshold Power, these rides direct you through 7 different zones of output from ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Max Effort.’

Encore Rides

At certain times where it would be hard to fill a live studio class (or maybe even find an instructor) the schedule has ‘Encore’ Rides. These are broadcast as if they were live, but are essentially repeats of popular classes from the prior day. There are two main differences between Encore and On-Demand rides:

Encore rides are broadcast at a fixed time, not when you choose

When you do an encore ride, the leaderboard is live. You may only see 100 or so people on there doing it with you. Afterward, your results are put in with everyone who has done the ride ever; you may have been 14th place in your group, but you might be 199th once the results are merged with on-demand riders. (Yes, those are my numbers, no I’m not too bitter.)

What is HRI / Peloton Homecoming

Once a year, Peloton HQ shuts down the studio to the public and invites home riders for Peloton Homecoming weekend. It sells out in hours, and people travel from across the country to attend. In previous years this was called “HRI” or Home Rider Invasion. Tickets for 2019 are sold out, and the details about what will be happening that weekend are just now being clarified.

Multiple Riders, One Bike

The Peloton monthly subscription is per-bike, not per-rider. If you have one bike at home, you can have as many family members as you’d like ride it. Each of you can have your own username for the leaderboard, and when you start up the bike you can select which rider is using it. I know it’s mentioned above, but if you do a ride logged in as the wrong user, it cannot be moved to your account.

I’m the DJ

You can’t load your own music onto the bike, you can’t pick your own music, or watch your own videos. There are absolutely people that take a class (or more often probably, a scenic ride) with the sound turned down and listen to their own music. You’ll miss the cues for when to speed up / slow down and change resistance, but some people prefer to do their own thing. You’ll probably see some of them near the top of the leaderboard pushing 85 cadence / 65 resistance for 45 mins straight without deviating. For on-demand rides (at last ones for about the last year) you’ll see the song playing details on screen.

Calibration

Not all of the bikes are the same — let’s just get that thought out of your head right away. Peloton says they should all be within a certain spec, but there are lot of factors to consider. Remember that a certain cadence and resistance will always return the same total output, and re-calibrating your bike will not change that. What may change is the amount of effort required to push 50 resistance, etc. Don’t recalibrate unless support tells you to; a lot of people end up worse off and some have had to then re-calibrate multiple times to even make the bike rideable again.

Riding with Friends

In May 2018 Peloton introduced a lot of new features for riding with friends, including the High Five feature.

Slap that face!

There’s more to it, but they detailed all of it here when the features were introduced.

Getting a Shoutout

As mentioned earlier, having an easy-to-pronounce leaderboard name helps. Some ways you may end up getting a shoutout include:

Riding on your birthday (Make sure your birthday is set in your profile)

Milestone rides — any that get you an award are a good start: 50, 100, etc…

Your first live ride

You may also get called out in the pre-ride live banter — which is fun but doesn’t get recorded so you won’t see it on the on-demand replays.

Losing Weight

This should probably be at the top since the question comes up a few times a week in various Facebook groups: “Can I / How do I lose weight with a Peloton?” The answers range from benign to snarky to ‘Just try these shakes that I’ll sell you.’ I’ve lost over 100lbs since we got our bike, and Peloton even did a feature about me. I’ll write something longer about this, but just be mindful that you can ride 5 or 10 or 20 times a week, but if you don’t change how you’re eating, it probably won’t help you lose weight.

Common Problems

While we’re all hopeful that a purchase of this size would be problem-free, there are a few common issues reported by new riders.

Squeaky or clicking pedals, especially when out of the saddle: Use this, or something like it. Also, for a lot of people switching to LOOK brand ‘bi-material’ cleats available at bike shops or on Amazon. Don’t get LOOK “Keo” cleats — they’re incompatible. Don’t use SPD-SL cleats either. All of your on-screen metrics are reading ‘0’: check the cable from the bike to the screen — it’s probably loose. Happens on a lot of new deliveries Trouble detaching shoes from the pedals: this one takes practice, and is covered in the intro videos. If needed, you can adjust the pedal tension with an Allen wrench (it’s a 3mm.) If you really get stuck, just undo your shoe velcro and slip out and then figure out the problem. You feel like the bars are too far away, even with the seat slid all the way forward. If your handlebars are all the way up, and you’re a shorter person, there are a few common tricks: you can get a wrench and adjust your seat within the rails that it mounts on. Depending on how it was installed this might get you as much as another inch. Some short-stature riders have also put a section of ‘pool noodle’ over the handlebars to shorten the space between the bars and the saddle. Howard Rubin has a great troubleshooting guide that you should look at if you’re having issues. If your cleat comes off the shoe and gets stuck in the pedal, Peloton has put up a great video explaining how to fix it.

What about Zwift?

I’ve had a bunch of friends ask about Zwift over the years, so I wrote an Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Zwift as well.