Working Out Is Hard. Streaming Just Might Make It Easier

Wendi Weiner likes to start her day with a workout. After waking up at 6:30 a.m., she has a quick breakfast with coffee and changes into a tank top and capris from Old Navy before taking a 45-minute cycling class. Weiner, a 40-year-old writer and attorney who lives in Florida, had a particularly memorable ride on a Friday morning this past January. The instructor blared Weiner’s favorite songs and offered strong motivational cues to the entire class. Weiner watched the calorie count on her stationary bike skyrocket and found her name rising on the leaderboard that tracks participants’ performances. As she stepped off the bike drenched in sweat, the “incredible” sense of pride she felt set the tone for the rest of her day. That arc of accomplishment is precisely why many people pay hefty fees at boutique studios instead of exercising at traditional gyms. But Weiner wasn’t at SoulCycle or Flywheel, two popular indoor-cycling studios with locations around the country. She was at home, in her dining room, cranking away on Peloton’s high-end, high-tech stationary bike equipped with a massive 22-in. touchscreen positioned between the handlebars. The device streams live and on-demand classes to hundreds of thousands of cyclists at home. After some debate, she purchased the bike last Thanksgiving weekend mostly for convenience’s sake. “It’s not the standard piece of gym equipment that [becomes] a clothes hanger and collects dust,...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized fitness gym Powered by Data streaming Source Type: news