This Peloton Instructor Wants You to Ride Outside, Too
You might recognize Matt Wilpers. After all, he's one of only 12 instructors for the wildly popular indoor training program Peloton. That company started up six years ago, offering spin bikes and interactive virtual cycling classes that brought workouts to users' homes, on their schedules. Now, there are more than a million users. We talked with Matt about his favorite kind of class, how he gets motivated, and what cycling means to him.
Bicycling: How did you start cycling?
Matt Wilpers: I grew up bike riding. My mom actually took my sister and me out mountain biking in Georgia down the Chattahoochee River to get us fit to go skiing. My mom was a big skier, and we used to go with her out west when we were little.
After college, I moved to New York City. With my first bonus from work as a CPA, I got a road bike and I joined a road cycling team. Now I'm into triathlon—I've been doing that for about ten years.
Tell me a little bit about your Peloton classes. What kind of experience do you try to provide?
There's a lot of instructor variety between the different classes. The unique thing that I bring to my Peloton classes is power zone training. We focus on specific outputs, like functional threshold power. My goal is to make performance training fun. When I coached athletes in the past, there was a lot of staring at screens and avatars and stuff like that. It's not really a fun, engaging experience—there’s not a lot of music, not a lot of entertainment, not a lot of coaching going on. I like to help people understand what we’re doing and why, and then customize intensity levels so people are quantitatively seeing their improvement. I also teach a simpler version of power zone training, where I call out what cadence and resistance for the riders to be at.
And then we have these all-out fun rides where it’s just a pure music-driven class. We play around, we have a good time with changing resistance and working to the music. If the music has a high part, we’re pushing. If the music has a low part, we’re recovering.
So those are the three different pockets I would teach in. The really technical, middle technical, and then sort of fun ride. That way we get everyone excited about cycling, about fitness. I think that’s important.
Do you ever struggle with motivation to ride?
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been coaching athletes since 2007. I think a lot of coaches, we have a tendency to give all of our energy to our athletes. And it's hard, because as a coach, you need to set an example for people to follow. For me, always in the back of my head it’s like, “Am I doing what I ask people to do? Am I setting the right example?” And that’s motivation enough for me to do what I need to do.
What's your favorite advice for new riders?
Have fun. Every time someone comes to my class for the first time, that’s their job. Because it can get be a lot—there’s a lot of numbers flying around in terms of resistance, output, etc. It can be very overwhelming for people. So do your best to follow along, but don't get hung up on the details. You’ll get it eventually.
Do you still get outside to ride, or has Peloton replaced that for you?
Oh, no. Training inside is fun, but the reward is going outside. And I think outdoor riding is the best in the world. I coach training camps in Majorca, Girona, in the Caribbean, in Jamaica, as well as St. Lucia.
And for me, fitness is my vacation. When I go on vacation I’m riding, I’m running, you name it. I always appreciate getting outdoors. I can ride outside with friends on the weekends and every once in awhile I get coaxed into doing something like a gran fondo.
On your Instagram, you had posted a picture with a group called the Peloton Road Riders. Are there people that ride Peloton together and then go outside as well?
Yeah! When I started Peloton I was always talking about riding outside, and how we can use indoor training to improve our outdoor cycling. And so Road Riders started. They’re Peloton users who meet up and do road rides. They have their own kits, and I think they actually have a schedule of rides that they meet up on around the nation.
And it’s great. In my first year at Peloton, they sent me out to be at the opening of one of our pop-up stores in San Francisco. Early the second morning I’m there, I rode out from San Francisco downtown to Marin County to go ride with a lot of the Road Riders. About 40 people showed up to ride with me at like 7 o’clock in the morning out there. It was wild.
There are Road Riders across the nation. I’m not sure how many—maybe 3, 4, 5 thousand people now? We ride together and we talk about nerdy things like the coolest new gear coming out.
Do you think those are mostly people who were outdoor cyclists first? Or were they Peloton users first?
That’s a great question. Definitely both, however, the one cool thing that I'm super excited about is I just see more and more people being like, “Matt, thank you so much. You encouraged me to get my butt outside and now I’m riding outside and I’m loving it.” And it brings a whole new meaning to my training at Peloton.
I was at this race, this half Ironman event called Rev3 in Connecticut. I’m out there racing and people are like, “Matt, I trained with you for this race!” And I’m like, “That's the best compliment ever.” I’m a coach first and foremost. And what I see a lot of is people are getting outside for the first time.
What does cycling mean to you?
Fitness has always been a way of life for me, and cycling is part of that. Cycling is social, it's how I've developed a lot of relationships in my life, whether it’s business or personal. It’s just a fantastic, healthy lifestyle.
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