I\u2019m not good at bike riding \u2013 when I attempt it I\u2019m that wobbly person holding on for dear life, trying not to fall off.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been to a few spin classes over the years and consider my fitness OK, but I always need help clipping the shoes into the pedals. Do I keep up with everyone else? No.<\/p>\n
So when I was offered the chance to test out Peloton\u2019s new Cross Training Bike+ for four months I feared the only things I\u2019d have to write about would be embarrassing. <\/p>\n
But I was curious about trying a fitness product that retails full price for $3899 and has a $65-a-month membership fee.<\/p>\n
Would it improve my fitness? <\/p>\n
How often would I ride it? <\/p>\n
What changes would I notice in my body?<\/p>\n
And the biggest one of all: Would I finally be good at cycling?<\/p>\n
But it turns out the most significant benefit of all was one that didn\u2019t even cross my mind before starting the whole experience.<\/p>\n
I think that\u2019s partly because I didn\u2019t realise how bad this area of my health had become or how it was impacting my life: My lack of sleep.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll explain more below \u2026 <\/p>\n
Inside my struggle on the first go<\/p>\n
When the delivery man comes to set up the equipment at my place he tells me he has been in the job for a long time.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of delivering Pelotons he often had to pick up returns within the 30-day free trial period. <\/p>\n
But now that rarely happens, he says, despite the membership fee, because of all the classes on offer and how engaging they are.<\/p>\n
I put in my username, connect it to my Wi-Fi, and I\u2019m ready to go.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m ambitious (and in hindsight unrealistic) and set my workout schedule to ride every day.<\/p>\n
Once I figure out how to clip in the supplied shoes to the pedals (on my own!), I\u2019m ready to go.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting virtual high fives from people all over the world who are riding at the same time as me and have been alerted to the fact I\u2019m a new person in the Peloton community.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s exciting and I want to keep going but my legs feel like they are on fire and I give up, half way through.<\/p>\n
I log off and decide to try it again another time when I have more energy.<\/p>\n
After a couple of busy days at work that moment arrives.<\/p>\n
I strap in and pick the shortest 20 minute ride option to ensure I finish this time.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a \u201cleaderboard\u201d on the side of the screen where you are competing against other people all across the world who have done the same workout as you.<\/p>\n
It is strangely motivating \u2013 similar to what you\u2019d feel in a real-life class with the pressure of having other people in the room.<\/p>\n
I remain down the bottom of the rankings, which is humbling, but not surprising.<\/p>\n
But the end of the 20 minutes I\u2019m dripping with sweat.<\/p>\n
On a high from the achievement, I decide to do a second cycling class later that day.<\/p>\n
This one goes for half an hour and for a moment I\u2019m beating a US rider with a username along the lines of \u2018grandpa of five\u2019. <\/p>\n
One of the things I\u2019m most impressed by is all the super-fit riders on the leaderboard who proudly share they are aged in their 50s, 60s or 70s. <\/p>\n
Their fitness is incredible and shows getting older doesn\u2019t have to mean slowing down or being inactive.<\/p>\n
The instructors are funny and relatable, telling personal stories about what they did over the weekend, the biggest challenge or failure they had faced in life, or reminiscing about being a Millennials. <\/p>\n
What about the weight classes?<\/p>\n
I was actually surprised you could do weight classes with a bike. <\/p>\n
But the massive screen swivels to the side (this feature has been \u201cenhanced\u201d on this new model).<\/p>\n
It means you can watch the instructor on a mat in your own living room.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s even a movement-tracking camera that alerts you if your form is wrong.<\/p>\n
I lay the mat out on the ground with the weights for a 10 minute arms-focused class.<\/p>\n
It logs your repetitions which is good for accountability when it starts to burn.<\/p>\n
There were a few glitches where it missed a couple of my reps.<\/p>\n
When I asked Peloton about this it told me there had to be 1.4m by 1.8m of unobstructed space.<\/p>\n
I have a coffee table near me, so this may be the reason why.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeautiful, beautiful, glorious, keep going, keep going,\u201d the prerecorded instructor says.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m doing a push up, the machine tells me to lower my hips.<\/p>\n
The next day my arms feel very sore and I can barely move them.<\/p>\n
The big surprise to my health after four months of riding<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t lose any weight while having the Peloton – and that wasn\u2019t really the goal – but I was surprised by how much healthier and better I felt overall.<\/p>\n
The main reason? My sleep improved dramatically. Like really dramatically.<\/p>\n
I have a fitness tracker and my sleep quality, quantity and consistency is always terrible because I get up at 5am to go to work out classes and I stay up late a lot of the time.<\/p>\n
But with the Peloton I could sleep in until 7am, do a quick 30-minute workout, then jump in the shower, which was always needed because of how much of a sweat I worked up with each ride.<\/p>\n
If I slept in even more and ran out of time for a morning workout, I often did them at night, sometimes as late as 10pm.<\/p>\n
That meant on my smart watch, my fitness age went from two years older than my real age to five years younger \u2026 a whole seven year difference in only four months.<\/p>\n
I am also proud to say that I moved up the virtual leaderboard each time I did a class and continually smashed my personal best scores. <\/p>\n
The last one I logged, I was ranked 225th for output out of 750 riders. Not bad for someone who started out down the bottom.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m actually shocked to say I like bike riding now. I looked forward to every ride. Could I even be good at it finally?<\/p>\n
My verdict?<\/p>\n
I loved how the Peloton made exercising easier to fit in exercise. That was the biggest difference I noticed over the four months. There were plenty of features to keep me motivated and I pushed myself really hard every time I used it. But, although there is a virtual sense of community, I missed the social aspect of being at a gym. For most of us it isn\u2019t possible to afford both, so it is something to weigh up, depending on your needs.<\/p>\n
Disclaimer: I was loaned this bike free of charge for three months, but paid for the last month of membership after there was a delay in it being picked up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m not good at bike riding \u2013 when I attempt it I\u2019m that wobbly person holding on for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[337,97],"class_list":["post-725030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}