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Psychologists explain why at-home exercise machines like Peloton have what it takes to keep people moving
Social media, gamification and VR give these exercise tools more staying power.
Home is the new gym.
Peloton, a company that makes high-end stationary bikes and treadmills that stream live classes, is snapping up new users and is currently valued at $4 billion. Similar devices replete with plenty of venture capital funding — Tonal, Hydrow, Mirror — are popping up every day, each with the promise of being the exercise routine that you’ll actually stick with.
But as many people know from failed New Years’ workout resolutions and weight machines gathering dust in the basement, fads change. Remember Zumba? Of course everyone knows they’re supposed to work out. But most people don’t make it past six months in any exercise regimen, according to Mark Eys, a professor in the kinesiology and psychology departments at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Why is it so hard to sustain exercise?
“People have to have a positive attitude toward the activity,” Eys said. “These are activities that people have to enjoy, that they can self regulate, that are convenient. Ultimately, people have to find the time and motivation to do these activities and put aside competing activities like Netflix or other things that are easy and quite attractive.”
People quit because they don’t enjoy the activity, or that “initial surge of optimism” passes, said Eys.
Even if people find an exercise that compels them, time is a major roadblock. Eys said the biggest issue with getting people to exercising is that they don’t perceive themselves to have enough time.
Enter these new, tech-laden, at-home brands — which are trying to create the gym experience without having to leave home. Classes vary in length but are usually about 30 to 45 minutes, and are marketed as workouts people can fit into their busy schedules.
There also are a number of other reasons the new crop of at-home work equipment might have longer staying power than previous generations.
These new companies combine at-home exercise devices with screens that stream live and pre-recorded classes, for which users pay a monthly access subscription.
In many ways, this is the natural progression of the old-school workout tape. But in addition to better screens, these companies are integrating other buzzy tech terms — social media, gamification, VR — to make exercise more habit forming and fun. Or at least less arduous than other forms of exercise.
“I think the reason this might be different is because of the zeitgeist we find ourselves in: We relate to people digitally and have conversations over social media,” Dr. Sari Shepphird, a sports psychologist with a private practice in LA, told Recode. “Now we can have a way to have the social aspect of working out in a way we’ve become used to.”
The social element could help people stick with exercise.
These exercise devices allow varying levels of interaction with other riders, from Facebook integration to being able to communicate with others during your classes.
“Theoretically, the coaching/social features should positively influence motivation while removing the potential for intimidation that comes with the physical presence of other people, who might be critical observers,” said Panteleimon Ekkekakis, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University, who studies what makes exercise pleasurable and what contributes to sustained behavior.
Eys, who studies group workout dynamics, agrees.
“A lot of the work we do focuses on the social component, so we would be the first to say that building a social aspect, if done correctly, would be a step in the right direction toward maintaining physical activity,” he said.
Still, he warned against “pseudo social environments” that might exist in online exercise groups. “We don’t know how genuine those interactions are,” Eys said.
Shepphird thinks the social groups geared around these devices might serve as an alternative place for people to post about their workouts, since it’s become passé on other social media.
Both she and Eys said that working out with your actual friends would be ideal.
“Having an app to do this with my friends and connect versus always having different partners would be a lot more successful,” Eys said.
At-home device makers are promoting their “community” in pages and pages of ad copy. These communities connect riders in the app, on social media and in real-world events. Riders can talk with each other and even in some cases with their instructors.
A number of these at-home devices are also adding in elements of gamification to capture people’s attention. Many include some form of public leaderboard. That means in addition to quantifying your own workout, you can see how well you performed compared to others — friends or total strangers.
Flywheel, which began as a studio-only bike workout but has recently branched out into selling bikes and live class subscriptions for at-home use, lets you compete against friends and strangers alike who are currently taking or have ever taken the class.
“We engage our at-home community in our broader community initiatives,” Matt O’Connor, Flywheel’s general manager of the company’s home fitness business, told Recode. “Later this month, one studio will be able to compete against another.” All at-home users constitute their own “studio.”
Turning activities into games has been used in everything from sales to education, and it’s shown some promising results, but it still needs more scientific study.
Instagram’s founders don’t think breaking up Facebook will fix tech’s problems
“We live in a time where the anger against big tech has increased tenfold,” said Kevin Systrom. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all of the companies up.”
Elizabeth Warren wants to unwind the Facebook-Instagram marriage that has turned Facebook into a $55 billion-per-year advertising behemoth.
The guys who built Instagram don’t think that’s actually a great idea.
In their first public interview together since abruptly leaving Facebook last fall, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger shared their thoughts on a number of issues at the South By Southwest conference Monday afternoon, March 11.
Do they regret selling to Facebook despite reports that their exit wasn’t exactly amicable? No.
Do they like Facebook’s idea to combine all of its messaging apps? Yes.
Do they think Facebook and Instagram need to be broken up? Not exactly.
“We live in a time where the anger against big tech has increased tenfold,” said Systrom, Instagram’s former CEO. “Now whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether that’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections, whatever, there are a long list of reasons why people are angry at tech right now. Some of them I think are well founded.
“That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all of the companies up.”
Systrom and Krieger seem to agree that breaking up tech companies doesn’t actually solve many of the problems that tech companies are creating. They want politicians to start thinking, more specifically, about what problem they actually want to solve.
“Is it about Amazon white-labeling products and selling them on Amazon? Because that is a very different problem from whether Facebook should also own Instagram, which is a really different problem than, you know, whether Apple has the right to be one App Store only,” Krieger said.
“Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription to a very specific problem,” Systrom echoed. “If you want to fix economic issues, there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling, there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those specific problems.”
To be clear, that doesn’t mean Systrom thinks breaking up tech is necessarily bad. (He jokingly asked if the duo would “get our job back” if Instagram did get spun out.) Systrom just doesn’t want to see Facebook broken up for the wrong reasons.
“My fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do, which is address real problems and give real solutions,” he said.
The hour-long interview included a number of other nuggets about the founders, who are widely believed to be two of the most successful entrepreneurs of the past decade. What might be most newsworthy, though, are the two things the interview didn’t reveal.
The first is what Krieger and Systrom plan to do next. “We’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again,” Krieger said.
The second is why Krieger and Systrom left Facebook so abruptly last September, a decision that shocked many of their Instagram and Facebook colleagues, and created a dramatic scrambling behind the scenes. After news of their departure leaked to the press, stories started to come out confirming the founders were upset with their eroding autonomy inside Facebook’s broader empire.
Systrom basically confirmed that, yes, the founders did lose their independence over time. “In some ways, you could have predicted that from the beginning,” he admitted. Instagram got so important to Facebook, he added, that leaving it alone just wasn’t smart business. “It got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company.”
What he didn’t confirm, though, was what specifically happened internally that made the departure so sudden.
“That’s not a topic that I’m interested in recounting in front of everyone,” Systrom said.
The Instagram founders were also asked what they thought about Facebook’s new plan to reorient the company around private messaging, a strategy that CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled last week.
Part of that plan, Zuckerberg says, is to combine messaging services for all Facebook’s apps. That way, users could send a message from Instagram to a user on WhatsApp, for example.
“The thesis is that the more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis,” Systrom said. “I think the question is whether or not people who sign on to separate platforms ... want, in fact, to talk to people on different platforms.
“I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know, but bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”
tal;king of 1.3b vs 500mil makt cap
Goldman Sachs Opens Up In-House Money-Maker to Outside Investors
Bank plans to raise outside money for its special-situations group
A Goldman Sachs GS +0.33% Group Inc. profit machine that has invested the bank’s own money in Asian property, African startups and troubled U.S. retailers, among other ventures, is opening up to outside investors.
Goldman plans to raise outside money for its special-situations group, according to people familiar with the matter. Also under discussion is a broader reorganization of the firm’s various private investing activities into a new unit that would seek to raise new funds across a variety of strategies, the people said.
The special-situations group has been run since 2013 by Julian Salisbury, a detail-oriented Brit who joined the firm’s management committee two year ago. It has grown from about $20 billion on the eve of the crisis to about $30 billion today, people familiar with the matter said.
In the early 2000s it pioneered the sort of go-anywhere investing that has caught on at private-equity firms such as TPG and Blackstone Group LP, and it remains one of the most profitable businesses at Goldman.
It will likely be combined with Goldman’s merchant-banking group, the historical home of the bank’s private-equity investing.
“Based on our track record, there is an opportunity to raise additional third-party funds across equity, credit and real estate,” Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon told analysts earlier this year. “We have a world-class alternative investing franchise, which has generated strong returns over three decades [and] presents us with extraordinary opportunities to partner with clients to invest their capital alongside our own.”
In a memo to employees last week entitled “Our Forward Strategy,” Mr. Solomon said growing the bank’s alternative asset-management business is a priority.