Peloton and its Facebook Communities

A Postgame Essay: It's always been more than a bike.

Welcome to the inaugural Fit Cult newsletter! This essay kicks things off and you’ll see more of them in a quarterly section called Postgame, but on a weekly basis, this space will feature The Rundown and Extra Point.

The first spin class I took was at a gym in Sydney, Australia. I was an expat getting my Ph.D., and going to the gym was both a stress release from the rigors of academic work and a place to see actual people after hours spent staring at a screen. I have always been a group exercise person and I thought of spin class as another opportunity to enjoy the feeling of communal achievement and recognition. When I started to improve on the bike, I joined the toughest spin class the gym had to offer. (The instructor liked to say that if you had the strength to do much more than breathe after finishing his class, you didn’t work hard enough). His words were more than a challenge to greatness, they were a marker of my gym identity. For 45 minutes in that class, I was part of a special fitness family.

My experience in Australia was part ego boost, part bonding experience and something I forgot about until I started using Peloton, where the idea of “family” or as the company calls it, “onepeloton,” is a significant part of the ethos. Peloton unites all its members under a brand community, but it has been equally successful in creating a cultural inner circle with various levels of commitment. If you’re in this circle you understand that instructors are more than behavioral change agents. For many members, they are standout performers and leaders who create camaraderie. Hashtag subcommunities form within the Peloton family, like Cody Rigsby’s #BooCrew, Emma Lovewell’s #TeamLovewell and Robin Arzon’s #RobinsWolfPack, to name a few. (There are also hashtags that identify members’ devotion to a certain type of workout, such as #PowerZonePack).

Choosing to join a specific instructor’s hashtag group is one marker within the broader notion of identifying yourself as a Peloton user. So is joining a Peloton Facebook group where connected fitness moves from interactions on a leaderboard to a social network. In these spaces, the branches of the Peloton family tree take shape and allow members to perform their fitness identities in specific ways.

Until recently, I had never joined a Facebook group because I mainly use the platform as a lazy way to keep up with friends’ news and occasionally announce my own. But after taking Peloton classes for a few months and following some instructors on Instagram, I got curious about the “onepeloton” family. Who are these people that I almost died with during a 30-minute Tabata ride? Discovering the answers to this question on Facebook turned out to be more impactful than spending time with fellow spin enthusiasts during an in-person class. Peloton turned the group exercise experience into a screen on my bike, making the fitness family virtual. Social media makes it personal. On the Peloton screen, users share a sense of accomplishment and an understanding of physical discomfort. On other screens, they share themselves.  

Peloton’s more popular Facebook groups are: Official Peloton Member Page, Peloton Digital App Users, Peloton Nutrition, and Official Peloton Mom Group. All of these groups are private, so posters have an expectation of a “safe space” to share their thoughts, ask questions and voice complaints. Each group offers its participants a unique way to perform their online Peloton identity and within this culture of sharing are ideas about how Peloton members see themselves beyond “people who exercise.”  

The Official Peloton Member Page is the largest of the Facebook groups with over 400,000 members. The number of posts related to the bike suggest that most in this group cycle but there are topics related to other Peloton classes. Posters ask technical questions (How do I calibrate my bike?), seek advice on class types and instructor styles, and offer opinions on the latest Peloton news. When the company’s share price dropped significantly in November, there was a running commentary on what it meant for the future. The members of this group generally project confidence about their physical abilities, celebrate their fitness goals and expect others to do the same. They are a loyal brand community—Cody’s longevity on “Dancing with the Stars” was widely credited to Peloton users’ votes and posters often reminded others to vote. This is a community that is deeply committed to the Peloton experience in all its forms and the private group’s safe space gives those who join it a comfort level that often leads to deeply personal posts. Members talk about overcoming traumatic health obstacles and life events and what it means to make their way back to classes. Fitness identity in this context is spiritually and emotionally transformative. It’s a familiar narrative on the platform because many instructors offer a bitesize version. Yet, in-class catchphrases, however motivating, are a far cry from reading a fellow member’s compelling story. On this platform, the shared physical experience of exercise is suddenly made intimate.  

On the Official Peloton Mom Group (90,000 members), comments also take the fitness connection into real life but rather than focus on empowering moments that are enabled or enhanced through a relationship with Peloton, the majority of posts seek support for life’s practicalities. From asking for gift ideas to recommendations on the most comfortable pair of jeans to strategies on how to deal with unruly kids, many of this group’s members use Peloton to share their identity as parents who also happen to keep fit. Reading posts here is like having coffee with a new friend, chatting about where to go on vacation and what to feed your picky toddler. Fitness and fit bodies mostly exist in the background, as one part of your day and one part of who you are.  

For those in Peloton Nutrition (83,000 members), the fitness experience is intricately tied to what you put in your body and these group members identify themselves as seeking health beyond physical movement. The posts mainly focus on knowledge sharing. And just like any conversation where food is concerned and weight loss is often a goal, the tone can sometimes get contentious. People debate the merits of nutritional recommendations that are sometimes based on a “this worked for me” type of sharing. The fitness culture here is both process, or the act of becoming healthy, and result.

If the Official Peloton Member Page is a representation of the cool kids, Peloton Digital App Users (56,000) are the kids who talk to the cool kids but maybe don’t get invited to all the parties. And I say this with much love, as a digital app user myself. While I’m devoted to my choice of bike (shout out to the Keiser M3!), the Peloton digital app experience is, well, less. Less metrics, less high fives, less love from the instructors. And according to some posters, even less kindness from Peloton retail associates who have reportedly been rather dismissive once finding out that their potential customer does not in fact own the equipment. Because the group’s commonality is based on a streaming experience rather than a hardware/software connection, posts tend to focus on technical questions (How do I get the app to do xyz…?). The emphasis on problem solving creates a more impersonal community than other Peloton groups but it doesn’t create a weaker one. App only users may be less likely to share their personal struggles as part of their online fitness identities, but they still prioritize a Peloton class as the primary way to claim who they are as healthy bodies.

A workout with Peloton is a real event, virtually shared, and when the lived experiences that go along with the physical performance of exercise are transferred to socially networked conversations, bonds form that are based on more than the collective gratification of showing up and getting through a class. In Peloton’s Facebook groups, the work of fitness is more than labor, connection is more than a high five on a leaderboard and the expression of a fit body is whatever you choose it to be.