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My Experience With the Peloton Bike, the Peloton App, and Affordable Alternatives

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In this post I’m going to provide my completely amateur opinion on indoor cycling apps and bikes. I’m not a professional trainer and everything that follows is just the opinion of a 40-something guy who did a whole lot of bike riding last year.

Bike on an indoor stationary trainer.

This morning on Instagram I answered the following question from a follower about the Peloton app.

“I didn’t buy a Peloton but just got a Schwinn. Do you still recommend the Peloton subscription? Or there’s plenty of free rides? “

My short answer was that the Peloton app is good if you’re a person who needs or likes having someone coaching them through a workout. Otherwise, depending on the bike and trainer I’d look into a program like Zwift or Sufferfest.

Peloton vs. Peloton App

If you live in the U.S. you have probably seen the Peloton indoor bike advertised on television and online. Their ads all have perfect-looking people who get into even more perfect shape by riding the expensive Peloton bike. What a lot of people don’t know is that there is also a Peloton mobile app that you can use even if you don’t have one of the bikes.

The Peloton mobile app requires a subscription to the Peloton service at a minimum cost of $12.95/month (first 30 days are free). The app gives you access to all of the classes that Peloton offers. You just have to follow along on the stationary bike you’re riding or the treadmill that you’re running on. The app won’t track your power output, heart rate, or speed like you could if you were on a Peloton bike or treadmill. But you can sync your workout time to other apps like Strava or Garmin Connect.

One of the things that you might not know about the Peloton mobile app unless you tried it is that in addition to cycling and running workouts the app offers guided stretching routines, yoga sessions, and strength training workouts.

About the Peloton Bike

They’re very expensive compared to the rest of the indoor bike market. So I was skeptical of it when my partner bought one last July. She loves it and in December I finally tried it one day instead of riding my bike on a stationary trainer.

I’ve done 22 sessions on the Peloton bike in the last month. My favorite workouts are the ones that I’ve planned myself and executed while using the “scenic rides” in Peloton. Scenic Rides are simply street level views of interesting places around the world. The scenes move while you pedal.

I’ve also taken a handful of complete structured workouts on the Peloton bike. I haven’t enjoyed them as much as other people do. That’s probably because I generally prefer silence to someone trying to encourage or coach me through a workout. Most of the instructors I’ve tried to follow are a bit too “rah rah” or overly enthusiastic for my taste. But if you’re the type of person who likes that style, then the Peloton structured workouts are for you.

Affordable Alternatives to the Peloton Bike

Prior to the arrival of the Peloton bike our house, I did lots and lots of workouts on one of my older road bikes that was hooked up to an inexpensive Travel Trac stationary trainer. I use it for at least half of my workouts. To the right of my bike I have an old Chromebook on a small table. From the Chromebook I play YouTube videos. Usually, I follow along to a Global Cycling Network training video (I’m partial to the ones led by Matt Stephens and Dan Lloyd). The Wahoo Elmnt computer that I use on all of my bikes displays my cadence, time, and speed throughout the ride.

I tried using Zwift with my current stationary bike set-up. I was able to make it work through a series of steps that seemed more complicated than necessary. Since I didn’t have a smart trainer that automatically adjusts resistance I had to manually adjust resistance by shifting up or down. Doing that took away some of the perceived benefits of using Zwift. But the real reason that I didn’t stick with it was that I prefer to look at real landscapes and people than Second Life-like scenes and people. The bottom line was that at $14.99/month I didn’t think it was worth it to me without a smart trainer.

A friend of mine gave me a promotional code to try Sufferfest so I gave it a try. Like Zwift, Sufferfest works best if you have a smart trainer. Since I don’t have a smart trainer I had to hook up my bike computer to my Windows 10 laptop through a Bluetooth dongle (worth noting that I couldn’t get it work at all on my Chromebook). Again, this was cumbersome and glitchy. I did a few workouts with Sufferfest then went back to old method of non-smart trainer and YouTube videos.

Admittedly, my attempts at using Zwift and Sufferfest were limited because of the equipment that I have. That said, both companies do advertise that you can use their services without a smart trainer. The reality is that you really do need a smart trainer to get the full benefits of Zwift or Sufferfest.

Bottom Line

My partner, Jess, tells me that I’m unique in that I like to suffer in silence on the bike and that I can stick to a workout plan without someone coaching me through it. That’s probably why I enjoy Peloton’s scenic rides and why I like riding my stationary trainer with or without YouTube on. If that doesn’t sound like you, then the Peloton app might be what you need to keep yourself motivated throughout a workout.

An Easy Way to Design & Print Tee Shirts for School and Club Events

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Canva is a great tool for making all kinds of graphic designs from social media posts to slideshows to infographics and much more. One of the relatively new options in Canva is to apply your designs to tee shirts. Apply your design to a tee shirt template in Canva and they’ll print it and ship it to you at a rather affordable price. Watch my video below to see how it works.

Applications for Education

As I wrote in the headline and said in the video, Canva’s tee shirt service could be good for making tee shirts for school fundraisers and club events. I’ve designed and printed a handful of tee shirts through Canva’s service and I’ve been quite happy with the results.

Three Ways to Remove Image Backgrounds With Just a Click or Two

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Not that long ago it was a tricky and time-consuming process to remove the background from pictures. Today, there are free tools that enable users to quickly remove the background from images. Here are three that are free and easy to use.

PhotoScissors

PhotoScissors lets you upload any picture that you own then specify the elements you want to keep in the picture and those you want to remove. Once you made your selections you’ll be able to download a new image with the background removed. Watch the following short video to see how it works.

Remove.bg

Remove.bg is a tool that removes the background from images that you upload. Remove.bg is completely automated in that you don’t specify what to remove and what to keep, Remove.bg does that for you.

Canva

Canva recently introduced a new menu of image effects. In the effects menu you will find a tool that lets you remove the background from any image. Like Remove.bg the tool is completely automated. This will work with images that you upload as well as images that you find through Canva’s integrated image search tool.

Applications for Education

With the background removed from pictures of themselves students can then layer their new image onto an image of any landmark in the world. Students can then use those images in stories and reports that they write about those landmarks. For example, students could write travel narratives where they place images of themselves in front of a series of landmarks.

Keep the Streak or Start a New One – Junk Free January

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If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you might have seen this ridiculous picture that I shared on Saturday morning.

The backstory of the picture is that I was playing with my kids in our kitchen and having trouble keeping my jeans from falling down. It was then that I remembered that at this time last year they were the only jeans that I could fit into.

In 2019 I either ran or rode a bike (stationary and outdoors) on 305 of 365 days. Along the way there were lots of days that I didn’t want to exercise at all. In fact, I’d guess that 100 of those days I didn’t want to exercise but I forced myself to do it because afterward I felt better for doing it. And when I did give in and skip a day that I shouldn’t have, I felt bad but I didn’t let it stop me from starting a new streak the next day. The same is pattern is true for diet.

I’ve been promoting this Junk Free January challenge for a couple of weeks now. I cracked on Saturday night and ate a cookie while playing board games with our friends. I felt bad about it all day on Sunday. I could have chosen to say “well the streak is over, might as well have another cookie.” Instead I chose to start a new streak.

If you’ve kept your Junk Free January streak going, awesome! If not, start a new streak. The key to improving your fitness is to have many more good days when you make the right choices for exercise and diet than bad days when you make the wrong choices. Get up and keep going! We can do this!

Time-saving Google Forms Features You Might Be Overlooking

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Anyone who has turned on the automatic grading feature in Google Forms can tell you that it is a tremendous time-saver compared to grading quizzes by hand. But what they might not tell you is that there are more features than just automatic grading that can be great time-savers.

Banner image with the text "time-saving Google Forms features" followed by an image of an alarm clock.

Set Default Point Values and Question Requirements

One of the annoying things that I did to myself for years when making quizzes in Google Forms was to forget to assign a point value to one question or to make one of the questions required. Usually, I’d notice this about half-way through looking at my students’ quiz scores. That changed when I realized that I could set a default point value for every question and make every question required by changing my Forms preferences.

In Google Forms preferences you can set a default point value that will be applied to every question that you write. In that same preferences menu you can also make all questions required. Once set they are set those preferences apply to the form you’re currently working on and all future forms.

Combine Questions from Multiple Google Forms Into One

When you’re making a quiz or a survey that will ask questions you’ve asked on prior quizzes or surveys, don’t re-write or copy and paste. Instead, you can use the import function in Google Forms to pull in questions from your existing Google Forms.

This is a feature that I use when I’m making practice quizzes for my students. I use the import features because it lets me select questions from all of the quizzes my students have previously taken and then combine them into one comprehensive practice quiz.

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