Thanks to a new Peloton app update, you can now more easily engage with members of the in-app teams you’re on by sending class suggestions straight to your team feed. This is an easy way to keep people motivated to meet shared goals, plus it gives the entire “teams” function a more concrete sense of community.
First, what are teams?
If you’re a Peloton user but don’t know about teams, I’m about to introduce you to one of the app’s more useful features—provided you’re someone who craves some kind of communal workout experience even when you’re grinding away in the privacy of your own home. I’ve covered the teams feature in-depth before, but in short: It’s a way for you to join forces with other likeminded users and work together toward a goal. You can create a team with your own friends or join a public team based on interests, location, or other identifiers. Teams participate in challenges, which are either competitive or collaborative. In a competitive challenge, the people on your team may have a goal of, say, being the one to complete the most cycling workouts in a single week. In a collaborative challenge, your team’s goal could be something like jointly completing 25 stretching workouts in five days. These goals are set by the team owner. You can see teammates’ progress in the feed tab once you’ve accessed your team overview by tapping the button at the bottom of your home screen—it looks like the silhouettes of two people.
What’s the new team feature?
The new feature is small but, in my opinion, impactful: You can share class links directly to your team feed, offering up a suggestion for your teammates about what kind of class they should consider taking that day. The easiest way to do this is in Peloton’s robust mobile app. First, find a class you like, tap on it to reveal the class details, and look for the share button. It’s a button on the top right of the screen that has a rectangle with an upward-pointing arrow coming out of it and it’s what you’d normally press if you wanted to share the link by text or email.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
You’ll see the usual option to copy the link, but you’ll also see your teams and the option to share it directly to one of them. Select the team you want to share the link to and hit Continue. From there, you’ll have the option to add a message to accompany the link so when it appears in the team feed, there’s an element of personalization.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson
Why this feature is great
The teams feature is a solid motivator if you enjoy working with or against someone toward a goal, but it’s a little impersonal. You can see teammates’ progress in the feed, but you can’t post in the feed; all you can do it add a high-five reaction or a comment after someone’s completed a workout. With the addition of the option to recommend a class and add a message, the teams feature just became more social.
Sharing classes you think teammates might like can obviously encourage them to hop on their Bike or Tread, to take a walk, or to otherwise engage with the app and get a workout in. But it can also build a stronger sense of camaraderie, which is sorely missing when you’re working out on your own, even with Peloton’s famous virtual classes.
It’s especially useful if you’re on a team that works toward collaborative goals, like completing a certain number of cycling workouts in a week, because it’s in your best interests to rally the troops toward completing the goal—and providing everyone with a class suggestion can be the push they need to hop on the bike.
