Love it. This is exactly what I always found absurd about their other commercials.
Also them having the gall to charge $40/mo or whatever it is for the service after selling people a $2,000 exercise bike is amazing. I think Peloton is a great symptom of late stage capitalism, though. The money is so concentrated at the top that you have to find creative ways to get the rich people to shell out for absurd shit, super luxurious services or brands that help them craft an identity they value.
Like how many people right now could/would afford to spend $500 on a normal exercise bike? How many millennials even have space for one if they can afford it?
It’s coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It’s coming from the feel
That this ain’t exactly real
Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
Of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
It’s coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay,
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the USA
It’s coming from the women and the men
O baby, we’ll be making love again
We’ll be going down so deep
The river’s going to weep,
And the mountain’s going to shout Amen
It’s coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
That Time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
Meh. Road bikes can get expensive. I spent over a grand on a rowing machine and am not a millennial or wealthy. The screen only really working well with their service turned me off of the bike more than the monthly charge for the training.
It’s a luxury item and they are advertising it as such. Do you get just as pissed off at the luxury car with a bow on it for Christmas commercials?
I spent in the neighborhood of $1,500 on a squat stand, bench, barbell, etc a few years ago. I figured it would pay for itself in saved gym membership fees and I’d work out more. I can’t fit it in my current apartment, unfortunately, but it still saved me three years of gym memberships (so probably $1,100 to $1,800)… and I have it stored so it’ll be with me after I move out of this place and will keep saving me money.
Of course I worked out more, too, so that was good. So it’s not like spending a big chunk on fitness equipment can’t make sense for people, it’s just kind of offensive when they ding you for like 3x the cost of a normal stationary bike then a monthly fee equivalent to a gym membership fee on top of it.
Gym memberships are some of the best deals around if you work out regularly. The entire gym economy is subsidized by people who sign up for a membership and come in once every three months. And honestly I think your basic McGym will give you everything you need, lol at these fancy-ass Equinox gyms.
Honestly, a $500 exercise bike is a good deal if you ride it a lot.
Planet Fitness is $10 a month. They don’t have any free weights though. Always assumed it’s because they don’t carry liability insurance if you got injured.
Agree with a lot of this. One of the guys I play poker with has a gym membership and he’s been like twice this year. When he goes he hits the smoothie bar then sits in the sauna…
It’s not working out for him.
I assume the same as far as the reason… and yeah, when I lift I am a big believer in compound movements with free weights, so having a squat rack (in my case a half rack, that’s all you need if you’re not stupid) is pretty essential. I loathe doing squats or deads with a Smith Machine. It’s pretty annoying for benching, too, but the ability to crank out a 1RM that’s like 10-15% higher makes up for it a bit.
My current free gym in my apartment building has a lot of dumbbells, an EZ-curl bar, a smith machine and some kind of squat machine that works surprisingly well. So far I’m loading up the EZ-curl bar for deadlifts and bench press as I work my way back up in my Stronglifts 5x5 routine. Sometime relatively soon I’ll probably have too much weight for the bar and I’ll have to put together a different routine.
I currently mix HIIT on an elliptical with Stronglifts, then a few extra “vanity” lifts on days I have extra energy. Ones that probably aren’t doing a ton for my goal of losing fat and changing body composition, but make me feel like I look better - curls, shrugs, triceps extensions, etc…
Ever since I woke up to the fact that compound lifts >>>>>>> targeted stuff for overall health, overall muscle mass, strength, sports performance, etc, I do very little of the smaller isolated lifts.
Stronglifts 5x5 is two alternating workouts, five sets of five on squats and overhead press, 1x5 on deadlifts in one workout and 5x5 on squats, bench, rows in the other.
The one that’ll be a problem for the EZ-curl bar first is the deadlift, given that I’m using a squat machine. I don’t know what I’ll do for deads at that point. My grip strength sucks, and the dumbbells don’t go that high (don’t remember if the biggest are 50s or ~70), so I won’t be able to put up enough weight with those. I expect the EZ-curl bar to handle a plate and a 25 on each side, maybe two plates, so that’s 160-200. I’ll be back up to that (you start super low when you go back in) in early January probably. If the bar doesn’t bend on that, I’ll keep going with it until it’s problematic.
Then I’ll need a deadlift alternative (anyone have any suggestions?). Or I could try to talk the complex into getting a trap bar, or even letting me loan one to the gym while I live here and just buying it myself. I assume that’s not a big liability like having a regular barbell is.
Someone should actually invent something for this exact problem (gyms that don’t have barbells for liability reasons). You could basically lock the barbell into a space that was about 40" high and a foot deep and you’d have plenty of room for deadlifts without the liability of people getting under the bar without a spotter and/or without knowing what they’re doing.
I may also try to talk them into getting a straight curl bar, knowing full well I’ll use it to bench without any spotting, but without telling them that. I always used the spotting arms with my home setup to bench, but that said, it’s pretty hard to hurt yourself benching without a spotter or spotting arms if you’re smart about it (ie don’t go for a 1RM and if you start to get stuck on the way up, take the L instead of trying super hard to crank it out and losing control on the way down - as long as you bring it down to your chest you can get out from under it pretty easily/safely even if you’re totally spent).
Okay, when you put it that way it’s slightly less bad. Soul Cycle would actually cost more than buying a Peloton if you went regularly. I didn’t realize Soul Cycle was that absurdly expensive. They must have some kind of package deal, right?
Is Orange Theory like that? I have no plans to sign up, but there’s one I pass fairly often. From what I understand it’s circuit training for well off millennial women.
Sort of… The percentage of people who do really stupid shit with a free barbell and/or don’t have a clue what they’re doing with it is way higher. And the range of serious injuries with a treadmill is probably way more capped - like it’s a lot easier to break your neck or kill yourself as an idiot with a barbell.
Edited to add: It’s also a lot easier to badly hurt random other people in the gym with a barbell than by falling off a treadmill. If someone uses a barbell to bench or squat without clips to hold the weight on, and loses balance of the bar, you have heavy/dangerous objects moving around out of control at a high rate of speed and whoever is nearby can get messed up pretty badly if they catch a barbell to the chin or a plate lands on their foot.
