I Did Peloton For Two Weeks Straight And Here’s What Happened

Benji Jones: This bike costs $2,000 and is taking the cycling world by storm. It is sold by the company Peloton, which reportedly now has more customers than even spinning giant SoulCycle. But

what

really sets it apart is the comfort. Using a monitor attached to the bike, you can join a spin class from anyw

here

and, according to the company, get a studio workout. Now, that sounds pretty good, but is it really worth all the hype? To find out, I took a Peloton bike for a spin. Over the course of two

weeks

, I did a 45-minute Peloton class every day.

And how did it go? Well, let's just say I'll probably never be this fit again. First things first: To find out how good a workout I would be, I visited athletic trainer Sean Kuechenmeister before my first class. Sean: Hopefully, you'll establish your baseline fitness level for biking specifically. Benji: Sean works at the New York Sports Science Laboratory on Staten Island and t

here

he evaluates the physical capacity of professional athletes. And now me, your most average gym goer. Alright, ready. We start by collecting some basic metrics like weight and body fat. Below were some not-so-basic measurements. I feel like I'm in an ejection seat.

That's an isokinetic limb machine. Measure the strength of my quadriceps. After that, we tested leg power, Sean: Jump. Benji: Mobility and something called muscle drive. Sean: So the impulse would be the amount of electrical current that you receive from the brain through those nerves. Muscles are actually like mindless meat. Nerves are

what

determine how efficiently muscles move. - But the most difficult test of all? A measurement of what is called VO2 max. Sean: The reason VO2 max is so relevant to cyclists is that it is a measure of how well the body uses the oxygen it takes in when breathing.

The better you use oxygen, the more it will be transported throughout your body and the more efficiently you will be able to move and perform whatever exercise you are doing. Benji: I scored below average in VO2 max, in the 47th percentile, which was kind of a shame. But overall I was in pretty good shape and with the judging behind me it was time to ride. This time, fortunately, without a gas mask. I had a bit of a rough start because I couldn't get on the bike at first. I just didn't feel the music at all, I just liked old songs or rock.

I'm not going to ride my bike to rock. I ended up joining a pre-recorded class and I thought I was doing really well in the class and then I looked and saw I was ranked 589, I think. Admittedly, there were like 2,500 people in this class, and that made me feel pretty normal, which is totally fine. My quads are already starting to feel it. I can definitely feel a burning. I did a little better today, look at that. Rank 2,136 out of 10,000. I mean, it's not terrible! I was tired almost from the beginning, but the days passed quickly and soon I was already a week old.

I'm proud to say I made it seven days in a row! But I wasn't exactly seeing much progress. Instead, he was actually feeling some pain. I'm definitely starting to feel some pain in my right knee. You know, to be honest, all my stats look exactly the same today as they did on my first trip. I was burning a little over 500 calories per class, no matter how exhausted I felt at the finish line, but I wasn't about to give up, especially since Sean had predicted some pretty spectacular results to expect. Sean: I think if you're going to lose fat and then potentially burn some muscle, I think we can see you go from 143 maybe to around 141, 140, um, but I hope your endurance increases, and I do.

Expect this number at your VO2 max to go from fair to good. Benji: For my eighth trip, I changed it. Instead of riding at home, I went to the Peloton studio in Manhattan where the classes are filmed. I was curious to see if I would try harder in front of an instructor and in the presence of what appear to be some of the fittest and most attractive people in New York City. It has been a beautiful moment. It's the day before Valentine's Day, so there were a lot of breakup songs, which was great. But it turns out that all bikes are calibrated differently, so my reading on my bike in the studio was very different than the bike I have at home.

There was probably a 200 calorie difference. So I tried harder in studying. My average heart rate was 10% higher than at home, but according to the display on my studio bike, my calorie output and count were the lowest yet. One warning: the calorie counters may be different if you don't ride the same bike each time. By the time I got halfway through the second week, my performance was finally starting to improve. I feel pretty good. Losing body fat, feeling like my legs are probably a thousand times stronger. I hope that is the case. I also smashed 600 calories on a ride today, which means I'm getting better on my way to strength on the bike.

Wait, journey to the force? Side note: If I have any criticism of Peloton as I neared the end, it's not the quality of the training... Instructor: If anything came up in the form of energy Benji: It's the language instructors use to motivate you. It may be personal, but it feels so inauthentic. This is an exercise class, not therapy. Anyway. A few days later the moment I was waiting for arrived. The end! Court! 14 classes! Yeah, it feels really good to have done it, probably because I accomplished my goal of doing this, partly because I'm so excited to not feel so exhausted and not have to ride my bike every day.

It's not that it hasn't been rewarding, it's just obviously too much to do this every day. Let's see, 14 workouts, 10 1/2 hours, 194 miles, 7745 calories, that was the best result I've gotten so far. I also broke 600 calories on a run today which means I'm getting better, and you can see I started really strong and then I took a shower and then started working again. The next day, I returned to the lab for my follow-up evaluation. Sean: Your initial measurement was 143.5. You're 142 today along with that zero point, but your lean body mass, which is your muscle, your bone, you know, the connected tissue, the first time was 125.2.

The second time, it's 125.4, so you lost nothing but fat. You kept your muscle. In fact, you gained 0.2 pounds of muscle during all of that. - Interestingly, all that new muscle I had gained ended up in one place: my left leg. Remember that pain I was talking about in my right knee? Well, I adapted by relying more on my left to pedal and, as a result, I built muscle there. On the rest of my body, I lost muscle weight. Sean: You lost weight in the trunk. You lost weight in your left arm and you lost weight in your right arm.

Benji: And that's because I only did one type of activity every day. But the biggest change came in my VO2 max. Coach: So this was your initial one, and this is the new one, where it now occupies only 79%. Camera Operator: That's amazing! Dean: 47 to 79. Benji: So I'm better than most people? Sean: Yeah. You went from being worse than most people to much better than most people. Benji: Wow. That's amazing, wow! Well, more muscle in my left leg, less muscle everywhere and a lot more endurance. What about strength? Sean: You actually lost power. You increased your strength in terms of endurance, in terms of aerobic capacity, but in terms of anaerobic, the system in our body that uses the most sugar, uses glycogen, what we use to produce power and strength, you actually decreased in that. .

Benji: And in terms of just trying to understand these numbers, over two

weeks

, are these changes pretty big? Sean: Oh yeah, sure, sure. I think most doctors will recommend that about a pound to a pound and a quarter of fat per month is a healthy pace for fat loss, so you're actually way ahead of that, so I think if you continued with This, you would probably lose more fat, you might gain some more muscle, but eventually there would come a point of diminishing returns where we would need to change something in the routine. Benji: Got it, okay.

Sean: This was fine for a two-week challenge, but I don't think it's sustainable long-term. Benji: Okay. And that's a good thing because the idea of ​​riding a bike right now, well, it's kind of terrible. But if I ever need to lose weight again and find myself with a mountain of cash, I'm sure two weeks of intense cycling like this will do the trick.