Raw milk is natural and brings you closer to the earth. It is also a great way to get sick. And best of all, it’s now a faux health hack/political football, thrown into the limelight by recent reports on bird flu. That’s right, the TikTokers are drinking raw milk out of spite—or maybe just for the affiliate marketing deals. I’ll explain.
What is raw milk?
Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized. The regular milk you buy in the grocery store is pasteurized as a basic safety measure. The milk is heated to kill bacteria; there are different ways of doing it, but the most common is to hold the milk at 161 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 seconds, then rapidly cool it.
Before pasteurization was widespread, milk was frequently a carrier of disease-causing organisms, including tuberculosis, Salmonella, diphtheria, and diarrheal disease. Pasteurization is required by federal law if milk is sold across state lines, and state law requires pasteurization of most or all milk in a given state.
Raw milk is legal in some states, although laws vary. In some, it can be sold at stores; in others, only as direct sales from farms, or only if it is labeled as pet milk, or only if you buy into a cow-share, because then you technically “own” the cow. In many states all of these are illegal.
So raw milk is a niche product, favored by some cheesemakers and some people who believe that “natural” everything is better. The FDA has counted 143 disease outbreaks linked to raw milk since 1987. Besides the illnesses mentioned above, raw milk can also carry Listeria (which can result in stillbirth if a pregnant person contracts it), and E. coli in a form that can pass from person to person after someone contracts it from drinking raw milk.
Why is everybody talking about raw milk?
Two things happened recently to put raw milk on the public radar. One is that there is a bird flu virus that has been going around, and it’s infecting cows as well as birds. RNA from the virus has been found in samples of grocery store milk. It’s not yet 100% clear whether pasteurization kills the virus, but people don’t seem to be getting bird flu from milk—so it’s likely that pasteurization is providing some protection.
This news about bird flu has led to the FDA and CDC emphasizing their already-existing messaging about why it’s a bad idea to drink (or sell) raw milk, especially to vulnerable populations like children and people who may be pregnant (since raw milk can carry Listeria, among other things).
And whenever there is a simple, clear public health message, there will always be people who object to it on principle. The government is trying to take away your natural pure, (bacteria-laden) raw milk! It’s time to fight back! At least one conservative group has been selling “got raw milk?” shirts.
The second news item feeding into this trend is that Louisiana’s state legislature has been debating a bill, recently passed, that would legalize sales of raw milk so long as it is labeled “not for human consumption.” People want their raw milk, germs and all.
What are the TikTokers saying about raw milk?
As you might expect: anything that gets engagement. Often the talking points are that it is more “digestible,” contains beneficial bacteria, or that pasteurization kills the “vitamins and nutrients” in milk.
None of this is supported by scientific consensus. Pasteurized milk has the same nutritional content as raw milk; everything is still in there, it’s just been heated. No nutrients have been removed, and you can’t “kill” vitamins or minerals.
Beneficial bacteria can be killed by pasteurization, but killing bacteria is kind of the whole point, remember? There’s no procedure that only kills “bad” bacteria while leaving the good ones; it’s all-or-nothing. If you want probiotics in your diet, you’re best off drinking pasteurized milk and taking probiotic pills, yogurt, or other probiotic-containing foods separately. (Probiotic yogurt is made by adding known “good” bacteria to pasteurized milk.)
They’re selling something, of course
The TikTokers are also, of course, affiliate marketing up a storm. One of the top #rawmilk videos recommended to me was of a man repeating the above claims, telling you that government and Big Pharma don’t want you to know about raw milk, and endorsing a specific farm.
He said that he’s sure milk from this farm is safe, because they test it. So I visited the farm’s website. They mention in several places that their milk is tested for “pathogens,” but I couldn’t find any explanation of which pathogens they test for, or how. I did find the page where influencers can sign up for their affiliate program, which pays cash to a select few. Gwyneth Paltrow has publicly name-dropped the same farm, so she might be on the list. (California, where this farm is based, is one of the states that allows retail sales of raw milk.)
So I should drink raw milk, right?
Please do not. As the FDA points out, all the major TikTok talking points are wrong. To name a few: the enzymes in raw milk do not aid in digestibility, the bacteria found in raw milk are not the kind that is good for our digestive system, raw milk is not more nutritious, and testing programs “might help to reduce the probability of raw milk contamination but they will not ensure that raw milk is pathogen-free.”
We eat a lot of ultra-processed food. It's everywhere, and the cheapest grocery options are often ultra-processed ones. That's why it's concerning that ultra-processed foods have been linked to a variety of health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, mental health disorders, and everyone's favorite, all-cause mortality. So what counts as ultra-processed food? Let's dig in, and maybe question a few assumptions along the way.
Here's a big caveat worth remembering: When studies look at the health of people who do and don't eat ultra-processed foods, they're not necessarily studying the fact that the food is ultra-processed. We can say that a diet high in candy bars is bad for us, but is that because the candy bars are ultra-processed, or because they're full of sugar? That's not a question that the current research can really untangle, but it's important to ask ourselves as we learn more. Are ultra-processed foods always bad, or are they just a category that includes a lot of food we should eat less of?
Unprocessed or “minimally processed” foods (group 1) include fruits, vegetables, and meats. Perhaps you’ve pulled a carrot out of the ground and washed it, or killed a cow and sliced off a steak. Foods in this category can be processed in ways that don’t add extra ingredients. They can be cooked, ground, dried, or frozen.
Processed culinary ingredients (group 2) include sugar, salt, and oils. If you combine ingredients in this group, for example to make salted butter, they stay in this group.
Processed foods (group 3) are what you get when you combine groups 1 and 2. Bread, wine, and canned veggies are included. Additives are allowed if they “preserve [a food’s] original properties” like ascorbic acid added to canned fruit to keep it from browning.
Ultra-processed foods (group 4) don’t have a strict definition, but NOVA hints at some properties. They “typically” have five or more ingredients. They may be aggressively marketed and highly profitable. A food is automatically in group 4 if it includes “substances not commonly used in culinary preparations, and additives whose purpose is to imitate sensory qualities of group 1 foods or of culinary preparations of these foods, or to disguise undesirable sensory qualities of the final product.”
That last group feels a little disingenuous. I’ve definitely seen things in my kitchen that are supposedly only used to make “ultra-processed” foods: food coloring, flavor extracts, artificial sweeteners, anti-caking agents (cornstarch, anyone?) and tools for extrusion and molding, to name a few.
Are ultra-processed foods always bad?
So we've learned that packaged snack cakes are ultra-processed, and so is a factory-baked loaf of bread that has 20 ingredients. Orange juice whose flavor has been manipulated would count, too. Coke and Diet Coke are both solidly in this category. It seems logical that we should eat less of these things.
But you could argue that the real problem with these foods is that they’re often sugary and high calorie, and many of the less-healthy members of the category are what stock the vending machines and convenience stores that beckon to us when we’re hungry and haven’t packed a lunch. The problem with these foods is that a diet full of them is unbalanced, due to the nutrition they do or don’t contain. The processing itself isn’t the problem.
So when we talk about ultra-processed foods, we have to remember that it’s a vague category that only loosely communicates the nutrition of its foods. Just like BMI combines muscley athletes with obese people because it makes for convenient math, NOVA categories combine things of drastically different nutritional quality.
Why the level of processing isn't always the most important thing
Illustrating the point above, the USDA published their own study showing how you can create a healthy diet out of ultra-processed foods. A homemade breakfast burrito, for example, might contain canned beans, liquid egg whites, shredded cheese, and a store-bought tortilla. Those ingredients might be ultra-processed, but they're nutritionally nothing like grabbing a Cinnabon on your way to work.
A pet peeve of mine is that the NOVA classification sometimes draws distinctions between things that aren’t really nutritionally different. Wine is in group 3 next to cheese and fresh bread, but cocktails are in group 4 with the Twinkies. Hard liquor has been distilled, you see, so it’s ultra-processed.
Canned vegetables are in group 3 (processed) while their fresh counterparts are in group 1. But canned veggies aren’t any less nutritious. Meanwhile, dried fruit is in group 1 (so wholesome!) even though it can be more sugary than cakes or cookies.
There's a lot of overlap between unhealthy(?) foods and ultra-processed foods, so I understand why scientists are studying ultra-processed foods as a group. But demonizing UPF, as they're sometimes called, often ends up putting the cheapest, most widely available food in the most shameful category. Is that fair, or does it just make you feel better when you’re eating fresh green beans and scoffing at people who buy canned?
The NOVA scale isn’t totally useless: It helps researchers keep an eye on how much of our food is coming from large-scale manufacturers. But it’s not a great way to evaluate what’s in our grocery bags, or on our plates.
To continue my series on the best running apps (see also: Runna, and going app-less), I spent some time this week with my old love, Nike Run Club. I’ve always been a sucker for Nike’s aesthetics (go ahead, roast me) and this is an app I’ve come back to again and again. It has guided runs, training plans, and an incredibly good companion app for the Apple Watch.
What is Nike Run Club?
Nike Run Club is an app for both iOS and Android. It can track runs from an Apple Watch or directly from your phone (put it in your pocket or running belt, and let it use your phone’s GPS). It has a library of guided runs and a few training programs, but you can also use it to track runs you do on your own (as long as you track them from the app).
Nike Run Club has an excellent Apple Watch app
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Nike Run Club
The iOS version also comes with a full-featured Apple Watch app. Besides the basics of tracking your run and playing music, the Apple Watch app lets you view your workout history, choose a guided run, do the next run from your training plan, or start a new run with a time or distance goal. There’s a “speed” function that gives you a lap button if you’d like to do a homebrew interval workout, and a “match it” function for when you want to do the same run you did last time.
The Apple Watch even has special Nike faces and some cute complications, like one that can tell you how many runs you’ve done from your training plan this week.
What Nike Run Club is good at
Guided runs with a variety of lengths, types, and coach personalities
Full-featured Apple Watch app
Big, bold numbers to focus your attention on basic metrics, like the current interval time (during a run) or your weekly mileage (when you check your stats in the app)
Training plans are barebones, but get the job done
Where Nike Run Club falls short
Doesn’t have full integration with Garmin or other wearables—just the Apple Watch
Training plans aren’t personalized, and don’t give you a choice of guided runs
Not customizable enough for the most serious runners
Setup
Unlike Runna, you don’t need to tell Nike Run Club anything about yourself, or create a training plan, or look at your subscription options. You do need to create a free account, but that’s it.
If you’d like to track the mileage on your shoes, you can add your shoes to the app. Many running apps have this feature, but Nike has images of all its shoes saved in the app and will use an icon of your current shoe to show your location on the Start Run screen. Yes, it’s cheesy, but I found it useful to see that it’s about to log my miles on my pink shoes, not my black shoes—so if I’m wearing the black ones, I’ll need to tap to change that.
Using the app
The app has five tabs along the bottom:
Home, where you’ll see articles and announcements about new guided runs or challenges. (You can safely ignore this tab.)
Plans, where you can check the status of your current training plan (more about those in a minute)
Run, the screen where you’ll start a run. You can access the library of guided runs from here.
Club, where you can find challenges and view the leaderboard comparing your weekly mileage to your friends’
Activity, which shows runs you’ve already done, and badges you’ve earned
Most of the time, you’ll open the app and go straight to the Run tab or, if you’re using a training plan, the Plan tab. To find the guided runs, choose one of the suggestions on the Run tab, or tap "Guided Runs" at the top to see the whole library. There are folders automatically created for runs that you have downloaded (you have to download a guided run before using it) and for runs that you've saved and that you've already completed.
Training plans
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Nike Run Club
Nike Run Club has a barebones feature for training plans. Your options are “get started,” 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon race distances.
When you set up the plan, you’ll tell it the date of your race if you have one, and … that’s it. You have a plan now. Enjoy!
It doesn’t tailor the plan to your schedule or your fitness level. It just assumes that if you choose the 10K training plan, you’re ready to do most of the runs it programs for you. Fortunately, it’s easy to skip any runs you don’t want to do, and the app suggests this, with a note that says “You’re in charge of your plan, so you can take days off when you need to. You can adjust workouts to fit your weekly schedule, or modify pace and distance based on how you’re feeling.”
When you do a run from the training plan screen, you’ll earn an orange checkmark next to it. Each day’s workout comes with a suggested guided run, or you can choose to run unguided. So far, so good.
But the plans have two major drawbacks, besides the lack of personalization. One is that you have to use that specific guided run to get the checkmark. With so many guided runs in the library, it’s a shame that you can’t explore and choose something different. And what do you do if you train for two 10Ks in a year? You’ll just have to hear the same guided runs all over again.
The other problem, which is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of serious runners, is that the plans don’t sync with Garmin devices. The app has a Garmin sync feature, but that’s only to get your Garmin Connect runs to show up on the Nike app; it doesn’t go the other way. And those runs won’t count for your training plan, either. People who like the Nike app and own a Garmin watch will have to use two devices at the same time and double-log their runs.
My experience running with Nike Run Club
If you don’t ask for much from this app, you’ll have a smooth experience, with lots of thoughtful touches. The Apple Watch app is great, as I mentioned before, and the guided runs are really well done.
You get a choice of coaches with different personalities (Coach Bennett shows up a lot, but personally my fave is Coach Frankie) and different vibes (the “Don’t Wanna Run Run” is exactly what I need to hear when I’ve dragged myself out of bed).
The app can pair with a heart rate chest strap if you’re running without a watch. If you’re running with both your phone and your watch, you’ll need to start the watch from your phone if you want to view metrics on both. This can be handy for interval runs, since the app gives you a screen showing your times and paces for all the intervals you’ve done in that workout.
Social features and privacy
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Nike Run Club
You can connect with friends in the app, and you’ll see their name on the leaderboard for weekly mileage. You can choose whether your own profile and activities are viewable by everyone, or if you’d like to keep everything private. There is a middle ground, labeled “friends (social),” where your friends can search for you and find you, but they won’t see your activity unless you accept their friend invitation.
There’s also a feature where friends can send you “cheers” during your run, as a canned message or a voice note that you record. I wasn’t able to test this, since I don’t have friends using the app right now. Years ago, you could share a special link on Twitter or Facebook where your friends could click to send you a cheer; it’s unclear whether that still works. Nike’s documentation about the app tells you how to receive cheers, but not how to send them.
When you want to share a run on other platforms, Nike provides a handful of nifty templates that can overlay your pace, an abstract map of your route, or other details like elevation, over a photo from your camera roll. The options are limited, but I think they look kinda cool. (Again: Roast me.)
What you can do with and without a subscription
Good news: no subscription for this app! All the features are available on the free tier, and there is no paid tier.
What this app does well
Nike Run Club is a great app for runners who don’t need to do specific, complicated workouts, or follow specific training plans. If you just want to go for a run, and are willing to make a spur-of-the-moment choice about what to listen to, this is a great app. If you want a running app that works well on the Apple Watch, this is a great app.
I’m going to take another minute to talk about the guided runs. The coaches sometimes take the role of motivational speakers, sometimes meditation guides (Andy Puddicomb from Headspace narrates several), and sometimes just a straightforward coach (especially in the interval workouts). The motivational talks are cheesy, but they work on me. I remember Coach Frankie telling me on one run: “I like your dedication. And I like the ease with which you’re handling this pace.” It’s a canned speech! He doesn’t know me! And yet, I felt seen, and appreciated, and encouraged.
Downsides and drawbacks
Don’t choose this app if you want personalized training programs, or if you want the app to acknowledge your own training as being part of a program. (It will keep track of your weekly mileage, though.)
Don’t choose this app if you’re a Garmin devotee. You’ll have to log everything on two devices at once. And even though the Apple Watch app is great, it’s not going to appeal to data-enjoying runners the way a Forerunner will. You’ll get pace stats and a little map of your route, but nothing compared to the detailed charts or in-run data you might be used to.
The bottom line
If you’re new to running, or if your main focus is just having fun and staying consistent, this is a great app for you. Same if you love guided runs; this isn’t the only app that provides those, but it does them particularly well. Serious runners should probably stick to an app that focuses more on performance metrics and personalized training plans.
Heart rate zones are big in the fitness world right now, and every smartwatch and fitness tracker will happily tell you what “zone” you’re in when you do a workout—any workout. Even strength training. Even yoga. So you might be tempted to interpret this data in terms of the benefits of zone 2 training. If my heart rate is in zone 2 when I’m lifting weights, that means I just did an hour of zone 2 training, right? Unfortunately, no.
The idea behind dividing up your heart rate into “zones” is an idea that comes from cardio training. In fact, the whole idea of monitoring your heart rate for athletic (rather than medical) purposes originated with a Finnish ski team, and then spread to other athletes. Your heart rate can tell you how hard you are working, relative to your past performances, and you can use that information to gauge whether you should go harder or ease up. Or, as Finnish triathlete Pauli Kiuri is quoted saying in this article at Polar, “At some point during your run, you get the feeling that you can’t push any further. But if your rate is still only 160 bpm, you just have to believe that yes, you can!” (Polar was the maker of those early heart rate monitors.)
Heart rate training makes sense for endurance sports, because the harder you work, the faster your heart beats. So you can use that relationship in reverse: the bigger the number on your heart rate monitor, the harder you must be working. Your heart rate is a good gauge of the work you're doing.
But that relationship with heart rate doesn’t hold for other types of exercise. Your heart rate during a yoga session doesn’t tell you how deep into a stretch you are getting. Your heart rate during a strength training session doesn’t tell you whether you are lifting light or heavy. That’s why your heart rate during a strength training session does not matter.
Heart rate zones tell you what your whole body is doing, not what your heart is doing
Heart rate, properly used, is what’s called a proxy metric. We don’t track heart rate because heart rate matters; we track heart rate because it tells us about something else that matters—in this case, the intensity of cardio exercise.
We get certain benefits from zone 2 cardio: low-fatigue calorie burn, increased mitochondrial and capillary density, and improved VO2max, to name just a few. These benefits come from the fact that our entire body is doing exercise.
Our muscles are contracting repeatedly, requiring our mitochondria to work harder to power them. Those mitochondria need more fuel, so our cells become more responsive to insulin so they can pull in blood sugar more effectively. To do all of this, we need more nutrients and oxygen to reach our muscle cells, so we grow more capillaries to supply them, and to take away metabolic byproducts.
That big picture is what “zone 2” training is all about. Just increasing our heart rate, without doing all of that other stuff, isn’t going to get all those good zone 2 adaptations.
That’s why sitting in a stressful meeting at work for 30 minutes is not the same thing as going for a jog. Nor is watching a scary movie the same thing as doing a HIIT workout. And, sorry to sauna enjoyers, but a sauna is not a replacement for exercise. (Sauna sessions do seem to improve the health of your blood vessels somewhat, but they don’t do all the other stuff.) When you think about it, zone 2 cardio has a lot more in common with zone 3 (or even zone 5) cardio than it does with “zone 2” lifting.
What zone should strength training be in?
Trick question! Zones don’t matter for strength training. There are a bunch of ways you can gauge how hard you’re working when you lift weights, but none of them require a heart rate monitor. Here are some common ways to judge your effort:
How the weight on the bar compares to the most you’ve ever lifted: for example, you might do squats at 80% of your max.
How many reps you are doing at a given weight: five reps at 80% is harder than one rep at 80%.
How fast you move as you complete the rep: the harder it is, the slower it will move; there are even gadgets to measure this. Sometimes this property is called “bar speed,” as in, how fast the barbell is moving.
How many more reps you think you could have done: if you had three reps "in the tank," that's an easier set than if the last rep you did was the last rep you could possibly have done.
How sore, fatigued, or “pumped” a muscle feels: within some styles of training, this can help you to figure out how much work a muscle group has gotten during the day’s training.
Some things that do not correlate with how much strength you are building include how out-of-breath you feel after a set of exercises, or how fast your heart beats during or after the exercises.
The truth about heart rate when lifting is that your heart rate may be higher, your breathing harder, and your rest times longer, if your cardio fitness kinda sucks. This is a sign that you may want to improve your fitness by doing actual cardio (zone 2 or otherwise), so that you gain those adaptations and don’t have to sit around as long sucking wind between sets. But your cardio fitness is only playing a supporting role here; it’s not the point of the strength session, and it’s not a useful metric for gauging your effort.
Or to put it another way: when you do five sets of five squats at 80% of your max, you get the same strength benefit whether you do it with three-minute rests and a smile on your face, or eight-minute rests and a sky-high heart rate.
OK, but what zones are normal for strength training?
Realistically, you’ll see your heart rate jump up and down throughout your strength training session. During rests, your heart rate may be in zone 1 or 2; during short sets of an exercise, you may see your heart rate spike into zone 3 or higher.
You’ll likely see a higher heart rate during sets of many reps (sets of 10 reps may result in a higher heart rate than sets of three reps). It doesn’t really matter what heart rate zone you find yourself in.
The only thing that really matters, if you’re checking your heart rate chart afterward, is that your strength session has big spikes and dips. If it looks relatively even, you’re probably not resting enough. For comparison, here are my charts for a recent jog (at the upper end of zone 2/lower zone 3) and for a strength training workout that included snatches, deadlifts, and squats. Note the longer rests and higher spikes toward the end of the workout, when I squatted heavy for six reps at a time.
If zones don’t matter, why does my app tell me what zone my strength training was in?
The short answer is: because they can, not because they should.
When endurance athletes first adopted heart rate training, it was a replacement for running by timed paces or just by feel. They understood that it was a measure of how hard their whole body was working during a run or a ski session.
It’s different in the modern era, when every watch measures heart rate. The truth is that heart rate zones are on all your result screens because heart rate is easy for your watch to measure, zones are easy for your app to calculate, and because the company that makes the app and watch wants to please you with a bunch of cool looking charts after every workout.
Heart rate zone charts make your workout feel more important, and getting to see them is like a little reward sticker to keep you in the habit (and, from the company’s point of view, using its product). Enjoy the charts if you think they’re pretty, but keep your eyes on the metrics that matter—which, for strength workouts, includes pretty much everything except your heart rate.
Oysters, bay clams, and other shellfish harvested in Washington and Oregon could cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, the FDA recently warned. This type of poisoning can be fatal. Here's what you need to know.
Which shellfish is the FDA warning us not to eat?
According to the FDA, shellfish that may cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), and which restaurants should not serve and consumers should not eat, include:
Oysters and bay clams harvested from growing areas in Netarts Bay and Tillamook Bay, Oregon, harvested on or after May 28, 2024.
All shellfish species from growing areas in Willapa Bay, WA, including: Stony Point, harvested between May 26 and May 30 2024; Bay Center, harvested between May 29 and May 30, 2024; and Bruceport, harvested between May 29 and May 30, 2024.
The affected shellfish may have been sold in these eight states:
Arizona
California
Colorado
Hawaii
Nevada
New York
Oregon
Washington
If you live in these states and have recently bought shellfish, check whether it may have come from Oregon or Washington. If so, the FDA recommends that you don’t eat it. (It is also advising restaurants and retailers not to sell it.)
The toxins in these shellfish cannot be destroyed by freezing, so the warning applies to frozen as well as fresh shellfish from these growing areas and harvest dates. If you notice symptoms of PSP, seek medical care.
What are the symptoms of paralytic shellfish poisoning?
According to the CDC, symptoms usually begin within 30 to 60 minutes of eating the shellfish, and may include tingling and numbness of the lips and tongue. You may also have these symptoms in the face, arms, and legs.
In severe cases, there may be more symptoms, and they can progress quickly. There can be gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea and vomiting, and neurological (nerve and brain) symptoms that may include headaches, dizziness, weakness, or a feeling of floating.
Severe symptoms include trouble walking or swallowing, and PSP can be fatal if it paralyzes the breathing muscles. If somebody has any of these symptoms, seek medical care immediately. There is no antidote to the toxin, but medical care can help a person to keep breathing until they are able to recover.
How do shellfish become poisonous?
The toxin that causes PSP is made by dinoflagellates, microscopic creatures that clams, oysters, and other sea creatures like to eat. Normally, there aren’t enough dinoflagellates in the water for toxins to build up to levels that would hurt people. But when there are toxic algal blooms (dinoflagellates are a type of algae), the sea animals that eat them can build up dangerous levels of the toxin.
This seems to be what happened to spur the current FDA warning. High levels of PSP-causing toxins were detected in samples of shellfish from the areas and dates of the warning.
You can’t tell whether shellfish are toxic from the way they look, the Washington State Department of Health says, and neither cooking nor freezing will destroy the toxins. If you collect your own seafood, check maps and warnings (like this map of Washington coastlines) to know whether harmful algal blooms are happening in your area.
Belts are useful tools for weightlifting (and I have recommendations on my favorites here), but who should be using them? And when? And how? Read on to get all your belt-related questions answered, and to figure out whether you, personally, could benefit from wearing a belt when you lift weights.
What a weightlifting belt does
The main purpose of a belt, when lifting weights, is to help you brace better. Bracing, as I’ve written before, is when you contract the muscles all around your torso. It feels like what you’d do if you were lying on your bed and saw your cat or toddler running in to jump on your belly. You’d tense your abs and hold your breath, trying to make your torso rigid instead of squishy.
When you’re about to do a heavy squat or deadlift, you’ll do something similar. Bracing involves tensing the muscles all around your core (including your back and the sides of your belly), and visually it may look like you’re expanding your belly, pushing it outward in all directions.
When you wear a belt, you’ll find that bracing your torso results in you pushing your belly against your belt. The belt helps to make your torso even more rigid, like a stone pillar standing strong. Good bracing helps you lift more than if you didn’t brace; bracing against a belt helps you lift even more than bracing without one.
To put this another way, when you tense those core muscles and hold your breath, you’re creating intra-abdominal pressure. Think of how a pool raft can hold more weight if it’s fully inflated than if it’s got a slow leak. The belt helps you to keep a strong, solid amount of pressure in your torso.
This, in turn, helps you to lift more weight, whether you’re stacking that weight on top of your torso (as in a squat or an overhead press) or leaning your torso over to move the weight like a crane (as in a deadlift). In short: the purpose of a belt is to help you lift more weight. If you’d like to geek out about the science behind this increased performance, I’ll refer you to the Belt Bible, which details the results of several studies on belted versus beltless performance.
But a belt also protects me from injury, right? (I can read your mind. I know this is what you’re thinking about.) Unfortunately we actually don’t have evidence that a weightlifting belt will protect your back when you lift heavy.
Most of the evidence we have on belts and injury risk comes from occupational studies. The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) explains here why we shouldn’t expect belts to prevent back injuries. A 2005 review article agrees that “there is no conclusive evidence” that belts prevent back pain.
But if you believed that belts prevent injury, you’re not alone! A 2003 survey of health club members found that 90% (!) of belt-wearers said they wore the belt to prevent injury.
Basically, even though it makes sense that increasing intra-abdominal pressure should help to protect the spine, studies just don’t tend to find that people using belts get fewer injuries than people who go without.
More benefits of wearing a belt
Even if they don’t actually prevent injury, many lifters feel more secure or comfortable when lifting a belt. You’ll commonly hear lifters say that:
They like the feeling of something to brace against.
The belt provides feedback so they know when they’re bracing well.
Putting a belt on is part of their routine when they lift heavy, so it counts as mental preparation (which can help performance).
Believing the belt prevents injury can increase confidence, even if it’s not really true.
Since most people can lift more with a belt than without, putting on a belt is a way of decreasing the difficulty of a lift. For example, if you can squat 200 pounds beltless and 220 pounds with a belt, a beltless 200-pound lift is a maximal effort. But a belted 200-pound lift is just 90% of what you’re capable of. In that way, putting on a belt can mean you’re doing a slightly easier lift, which you could argue helps to manage the stress on your body in a way that might reduce your risk of injury in the big picture.
I’m not going to say it does reduce injury, since we don’t have direct evidence of that. But an experienced lifter who uses a belt appropriately is probably being smart about their training in a way that may well keep them healthier and stronger in the long run.
How much does a belt help?
As a rule of thumb, you can probably expect to lift about 10% more with a belt than you can without. (Some lifters say 5% to 15% is the expected range.) So that would bring your 200-pound lift up to 220 pounds, for example. Or to put it another way, if your best squat is 285 pounds, you can probably hit that three-plate milestone (315 pounds) just by putting a belt on and learning how to use it.
And, yes, you do have to learn how to use it. If you’re good at bracing, you’ll pick it up quickly. But coaches often recommend beginners learn to lift without a belt first, to make sure they have good habits and technique.
How heavy should I be lifting to need a belt?
There’s no hard-and-fast rule about how many pounds your lifts need to be (or how heavy relative to your body weight) before you start belt shopping. In my opinion, if you’re squatting and deadlifting regularly, and you can already brace effectively, it’s worth getting a belt and starting to train with it at least some of the time.
Which lifts benefit from a belt?
Squats and deadlifts benefit the most from using a belt. For standing lifts, like overhead press, most people find that a belt helps there as well. Olympic weightlifters often use a belt for clean and jerks, but not usually for snatches.
It’s less clear for bench press. Some lifters find that a belt helps; others go without. (Note that people who wear a belt for this purpose for bench press wear a normal belt, the same one they use for squats and deadlifts. Skinny “bench belts” are a completely different animal, used in equipped lifting to hold your shirt down, and have nothing to do with what we’re talking about here.)
If you are not supporting a large weight on your body, you don’t need a belt for that lift. People do not typically need a belt for pullups, curls, rows, or most dumbbell work. That said, you can always try a lift with and without your belt, and see if you feel stronger when you wear it.
Should I always use a belt when lifting heavy, or only sometimes?
This is a matter of preference and coaching philosophy. I can’t give a universal answer, but I will say that a typical way of wearing a belt is to wear it for your heaviest “regular” squats, deadlifts, and presses.
I say “regular” because it’s pretty common for a program to have a belted squat as your main type of squat, and then squat accessories (like tempo or pause squats) done beltless. You can’t move as much weight without a belt, so this is a clever way to reduce the load on your body while still asking your muscles to work hard.
You may also be advised to lift without a belt sometimes to strengthen your core. It’s arguable whether that’s true (your core is very active in bracing whether you wear a belt or not), but regardless of the reason, some coaches like to program beltless lifts. Beltless lifts can also build your confidence: if you can lift this weight now without a belt, that you could previously only lift with a belt, that’s a clear sign that you’re getting stronger. Definitely celebrate your beltless PRs.
Finally, there’s the question of which lifts in a session should be done with and without a belt. If you want a rule of thumb, many lifters put on a belt when the lift is over 85% of their max (for example, lifts over 191 pounds if their max is 225). That said, plenty of lifters will put the belt on for any heavyish lift.
Is it bad to lift heavy without a belt?
No, because the belt isn’t protecting you from injury, remember? It is fine to lift heavy without a belt. Just remember that if you forgot to pack your belt in your gym bag, you won’t be able to lift the same weights beltless that you do belted. So if you’re used to lifting heavy with a belt, but you have to go without, remember to reduce the weight by about 10%.
On the other hand, if you don’t normally lift with a belt, it’s fine to continue going beltless. Just be aware that you would be able to lift more—thus giving your muscles more work—if you did start using a belt.
How should a weightlifting belt fit?
A weightlifting belt should fit tightly enough that, after the lift, you’ll want to take it off. You don’t wear a belt for your whole gym session; you tighten it, lift, then take it off or loosen it. (I like to leave mine buckled on the loosest hole between sets, just so that I don’t set it down and then forget where I put it.)
When the belt is buckled, it should feel snug. You should be able to shove a few fingers under the belt, but it won’t be comfortable to keep it on that tight for that long.
When you do your squat or deadlift, the belt should be in a place where it doesn’t pinch against your skin. You may want to wear the belt higher on your torso for deadlifts than for squats; try different positions for each lift and see what works best for you.
It’s okay for the belt to cover your lower ribs, as long as it’s not uncomfortable there. Most belts made for lifting are four inches wide. Some people, especially those with shorter torsos, may prefer a three-inch belt. Speaking generally, almost everybody likes a four-inch belt for squatting, but some people prefer three inches for deadlifts.
What kind of belt do I need?
You’re in luck—I have a whole guide to buying your first lifting belt. Most people will want to go with a belt that is either three or four inches wide (and the same width all around), either velcro or leather. If it’s leather, 10 millimeters is a good thickness for most people. And for a closure, if it’s a leather belt, you’ll probably want either a single-prong buckle or a lever. Read my recommendations here.
When you lift a weight, how many times should you lift it? Supposedly, there’s a correct “rep range” to use to build strength, and a different rep range to build muscle size, or endurance, or to “tone.” But how much of the oft-repeated wisdom is true? Not as much as you’d think.
What are reps and sets?
Just so we’re on the same page here: if you pick up a dumbbell and do eight curls before putting the weight down, you have just done one set of eight reps. (Rep is short for repetition.)
Typically a workout will call for several sets of each exercise, separated by a rest period or by another exercise. Typical schemes include three sets of 10, four sets of eight to 12, or five sets of five. These are often written in the format [sets]x[reps], so 5 x 5 would be five sets of five reps each, and 3 x 10 would be three sets of 10.
There are many factors you might consider (or that an experienced trainer might include when writing your program) when deciding how many reps you should do, but often people try to stick with the “rep range” that they are told makes sense with their goals.
Here’s what you’ll hear from many trainers, influencers, and online resources. Beware that you need to take these with a grain of salt, and I’ll explain why in a minute:
Smaller numbers of reps, like one to five, are said to be for strength.
Medium numbers, like six to 12, are said to be for building muscle size.
If you’re a woman and want to “tone,” you may be told that eight to 12, or maybe 10 to 15, will give you definition while keeping your muscles from growing too much.
A rep range of 15 or more is usually held to be for muscular endurance.
The exact numbers will vary depending on who you ask, but no matter how you slice it, something isn’t adding up. If you do 10 reps, are you building muscle size, or are you keeping your muscles “toned”? It can’t be both—unless 10 can work for either goal, in which case the number of reps isn’t what determines the outcome. (Hmm…)
It’s also wrong to think that strength and muscle growth are completely separate from each other, with different ways to build each. So let’s go over some practical advice for deciding what rep ranges you should actually work with.
Strength and muscle size don’t (always) require different training
Beginners in the gym often spend a lot of effort figuring out the “optimal” routine to meet their goals. But as I’ve said before, optimal is optional. Getting the details right is not nearly as important as getting the big picture right.
And the big picture for most beginner and intermediate lifters is that pretty much everything will build both strength and muscle size. You can lift in the “strength” range and still build muscle. You can lift in the “size” range and find yourself gaining strength.
You can read a deep dive on this idea here. The author, powerlifter and coach Greg Nuckols, does conclude that lower numbers of reps (like 1-5) have a bias toward strength, and higher reps (15+) have a bias toward muscular endurance.
But for growing muscles in size, just about anything works. He summarizes: “The ‘hypertrophy [size gaining] range’ of roughly six to 15 reps per set may produce slightly better results per unit of time invested than low rep and high rep work. However, on the whole, the advantage you get from working in the hypertrophy range isn’t nearly as big as people seem to think; maybe a ~10-15% advantage per unit of effort invested at most.”
He recommends training in a variety of rep ranges if you want bigger or more defined muscles, rather than using the same narrow range every time. That’s pretty much the consensus among good trainers, anyway: most effective training programs have a mix of high and low rep exercises. That’s because each rep range has its pros and cons when it comes to particular exercises and purposes, not just a person’s overall goals.
When to use low reps (1-5)
This is traditionally the strength range, and to be fair, it is a good rep range to work on strength. Here, I’m using “strength” to mean increasing the amount of weight you can lift, even if you can only lift it once.
For strength
If you want to show off in front of your friends by benching more than them, or if you want to enter a weightlifting competition and place well, or if you want to achieve your first pullup, you want to work on strength.
This means you need to practice with heavy weights. A weight that you can lift 10 times in a row is going to be fairly light, relative to your ability, and it won’t teach your body everything it needs to know for a heavy lift. So you’ll need to work with low reps (at least sometimes!) if you’re aiming for a strength goal.
To learn technique
Low reps also help you to focus and avoid fatigue. You might get tired or sloppy by the 10th rep of a set, but that’s less likely to happen in a set of three. Olympic weightlifters typically do their tricky competition lifts in sets of just one to three.
Beginners who are learning a new exercise, like squats or barbell presses, may also want to work in this range. Do a few reps, take a break, then come back fresh.
For muscle size, alongside other rep ranges
Heavy weights put a lot of mechanical tension on your muscles, and they help you get stronger. These factors mean low-rep sets can still help your muscles to grow, even though they aren’t the traditional muscle-growth rep range. After all, the stronger you are, the heavier the weights you can handle—which means you can go even heavier in your moderate- and high-rep sets.
When to use moderate reps (6-12)
This is a good middle ground that will build strength and size, and will give you plenty of practice moving weight around. Pretty much everybody can benefit from working in this rep range, at least some of the time.
For strength and muscle size
This is the range that’s probably ideal for gaining muscle size, and it will help a lot in supporting your efforts to build strength.
Even athletes who focus on strength will include plenty of work in this rep range for the purpose of growing some extra muscle mass. After doing squats in sets of three, you might go and do sets of 10 on lunges or leg extensions or the leg press machine.
For beginners and for general fitness
While low reps are best for learning an exercise that is complicated or that is brand new to you, beginners are often recommended to work in a medium rep range as soon as they’re comfortable with it—and that makes a lot of sense.
Doing eight or 10 reps of the same exercise gives you plenty of practice (there are 30 reps in three sets of 10), without having to strain to handle a heavy weight that you haven’t mastered the technique for yet.
That’s why the same exercises that build muscle in people who want to “bulk” are also appropriate for people who want to “tone.” Or to put it another way: any resistance training that builds muscle will be appropriate for both goals.
So what makes a “bulky” body different from a “toned” one? Partly nutrition (the more you eat, the bigger your muscles can get) and partly just how long you’ve been training and how hard you’ve worked. It takes a lot of time to build a lot of muscle.
Traditionally this is described as the “muscular endurance” range, but that’s a misnomer. Higher reps aren’t great at building strength, and may not be your best option for building muscle size, so just about all they have left to offer is that they might help you do high numbers of reps.
For muscular endurance, alongside lower rep ranges
The thing is, if you want to build muscular endurance—say, you want to be able to do 100 pushups in a row—you will also benefit from using lower rep ranges to build strength. The stronger you are, the easier each pushup will be for you, and the longer you’ll be able to keep going.
Studies have found that you don’t need to stick to the 15+ rep range to build muscular endurance—the three-to-five and six-to-eight ranges may work even better than spending your training time on high reps.
If your ultimate goal is to do 100 pushups, I wouldn’t tell you to only do high-rep sets; those low-rep ones are useful too. But I’d still expect you to practice high reps for the skill, conditioning, and mental toughness that will be required to execute your goal.
For muscle size (and “toning”), if you only have light weights available
To do heavy or moderate reps, you need appropriate weights. So if you’re working with limited equipment, you may have no option but to make the best of what you’ve got.
Fortunately, research has found that muscles can still grow in size if you use light weights and high repetitions, so long as you take each set to failure. So if it takes 20 or even 30 reps to tire out your arms when doing bench press with a set of light dumbbells, that’s still workable.
If you’re able to do more than 30 reps, though, we’re starting to leave the realm of strength training and enter a territory that’s more like cardio. At that point, you should really look for harder exercises or find a way to get your hands on heavier dumbbells.
The bottom line: variety in rep ranges is good
Ultimately, you don’t need to decide on one rep range for all your training. You won’t see powerlifters only working in the strength range, or bodybuilders only working in the size range. The guy in your neighborhood who can do 25 pullups at the local park probably isn’t doing 25 of everything in his workout routine.
So when you go to the gym, you’ll probably want to use low reps for a strength-focused exercise or two, moderate reps for most of your other work, and occasionally some higher-rep work for variety or to make do with lighter equipment.
There are a lot of things a running app can do, but Runna is an overachiever: it tracks your runs, talks you through interval workouts, and gives you a plan to follow to meet your race goal. It even coaxes you to do your mobility and strength training along the way, and everything comes with a satisfying checkbox that you can fill in when you complete each workout. Let’s dig in, and see what’s inside this app—and whether it’s worth the $17.99/month subscription fee.
What is Runna?
The Runna app is available for iOS and Android, and its main function is to give you a personalized training plan for your running. Runna can sync with your Garmin, Coros, Suunto, or Apple Watch, or you can use it without a watch and simply “record” the run by carrying your phone in your pocket or belt.
The app is free to download, but Runna’s main features all require a subscription. It runs $17.99/month, with a one-week free trial. (Do yourself a favor anytime you use a free trial and cancel the free trial immediately after signing up; it will still work for the whole week, and then you can decide whether you want to renew.)
Runna will supply you with a training plan for the goal of your choice, from 5K distances all the way up to marathon training. There are also plans for non-race-related goals, like a Get Fit Plan and a Post-Injury Plan for those who are easing back in after time off. The plans all come with optional strength, mobility, and Pilates workouts, and they’re all customized to your fitness level, time commitment, and preferences.
What Runna is good at
Structured programming that updates as you get faster.
Plans are personalized.
The app syncs seamlessly with other apps and devices, like Strava and fitness watches.
Plans include warmups, cooldowns, strength sessions, and mobility sessions—all optional.
It’s satisfying to check off runs you’ve done, and easy to rearrange or make up missed sessions.
Where it falls short
You need to know a recent race time to set your starting paces.
Need to be conversant in minute-per-mile (or km) paces to follow the workouts.
Some beginner runners say the workouts can be too hard.
You can’t choose plans by looking at them, only by adjusting the personalization options.
Setup
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Runna
The first thing you’ll be asked to do, once you install the Runna app, is to set up a training plan. I don’t have a race on my calendar, so I appreciated that there were options for building fitness without targeting a race. The app recommended the Get Fit Plan for me, but I ended up going with the Functional Fitness plan (which I assume is for Crossfit-style athletes looking to build their cardio endurance).
Runna needs a race time to set your paces
I told it how often I’d like to run (five days), which days I had available (Monday through Friday), and which day I’d like to designate for long runs (Wednesday). All good, until it asked me for a recent race time. I’ve been jogging regularly for maybe two months, and I’ve run races in the past, but I have no idea what my current 5K time might be. (I haven’t even been running with a watch lately.)
I erred on the side of caution by giving it a 35-minute 5K time. I knew that was probably slower than what I’m capable of, and sure enough a few days later the app pointed out that I’d run five kilometers (about three miles) in 32 minutes on one of my training runs. Would I like to update my Personal Best so that my plan could use this new data? I sure would.
The programmed runs use minutes-per-mile paces to tell you how fast to run. These are based on the Personal Best you give the app, so someone who runs a 32-minute 5K won’t be given the same target paces as a person who runs a 25-minute 5K. This is accurate and useful if you’re used to working with minute-per-mile paces, and probably a little bewildering if you aren’t.
My one tip, if you aren’t sure how to fill out this section in the setup: do what I did and give it a time that is slower than you can probably do. It’s easy enough to update when the app figures out that you can run faster.
Using the app
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Runna
When you finish setting up your plan, you’ll get to see the app’s main screens. The first one, Train, shows your plan for this week. This is where you’ll see the checkboxes. There is a little card for each workout, color-coded according to type. I had an interval workout (yellow) on Monday, intended to be 2.4 miles. Then a 2.5-mile easy run (blue) on Tuesday, and so on. If you enable strength and mobility workouts, you’ll see those on your schedule here as well. Once you do a workout, it’s checked off, and you’ll also see your actual stats for that run on the card—for example, my 2.5-mile easy run ended up being 3.2 miles, and I can see both the programmed and actual distances on the same card.
At the bottom of the screen there is also a button to record a run. Normally you would start a run by tapping on the card for the workout you want to do and starting it there. But you can also start runs from that button at the bottom if you want to do an extra run that is not part of the program, or if your subscription has ended and you still want to use Runna to track runs. (The “record run” feature doesn’t require the subscription.)
The Activities screen shows your past workouts, including ones that you did with another device or app. The Community tab is a Facebook-like feed where people share their runs, and mine was already populated with strangers. (I did not share anything to the feed.) The one thing I got out of this feature was seeing the data tiles people were sharing. This told me there was a place elsewhere in the app (under “share run”) that could generate this nifty readout.
Finally, there is a Support tab, which not only includes troubleshooting advice for the app, but also a library of information and articles. You can read about how much protein to eat, how to manage Achilles tendinitis, or how to improve your running form.
The training screen is peppered with “comments” from “coaches,” which don’t seem to be personalized at all, unless I missed something. They just explain the workouts you’ll be doing, or give tips about running. Often a little video will appear at the top of a page, and a talking head with a British accent will start telling you the same information that’s in the screen below. I found this unnecessary and would quickly mute and scroll past, but maybe you’ll find it gives the app a friendly feel.
My experience running with the app
I used the app for a week and did all the workouts—minus a strength workout that didn’t fit into my schedule, but I looked it over and it seemed pretty solid.
I did one of the runs on an Apple Watch, and found the display helpful for following the day’s somewhat complicated plan. I was supposed to do a series of distance-based intervals at different distances and different paces, and take two minutes of walking rest in between them. Tracking everything manually would have been a pain, but the app made it easy.
Runna would tell me at the start of each interval how fast I was supposed to go, and then if I wasn’t staying on pace it would tell me to speed up or slow down, and then give my current pace so I knew how far off I was. Once I adjusted, it would pipe up briefly to say “on pace” and then I could ignore it until the next change.
The app also gave me verbal split times at every completed mile, whether I was doing an interval run or a simple “easy run.”
I found the prompts for all the runs easy to follow, and I enjoyed the variety of workouts. My week had one set of intervals, one workout marked as tempo (alternating sections at slightly different paces, not traditionally what you’d call a tempo run, but close enough), one “long” run that started out slow and nudged you to pick up the pace a little bit as you went along, and two plain old easy runs.
Mobility and strength
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Runna
Most running apps don’t program mobility or strength work, or they treat it as an afterthought if they do. Runna’s mobility and strength work are optional, but once you turn them on in settings, they’ll appear in your weekly plan with yet another checkbox to check off.
The mobility workout I did was a 30-minute yoga video. I didn’t love it, but it was fine. It started with some seated breathing, stretches for the back, good old cat/cow, and worked toward a sequence of forward folds and downward dog that felt like an abbreviated sun salutation. There was a stretch for the soles of the feet that felt great, but I really would have liked more stretches for the quads, hamstrings, and hips. I added a few of my own while the instructor was doing corpse pose at the end.
I didn’t get a chance to do the strength workout, but it looked pretty reasonable. It was estimated to take 25 to 35 minutes, but I was disappointed to see I couldn’t preview the workout before I started it. After a warmup with pushups and tiptoe walking (among other moves), the main work included unweighted lunges, single arm dumbbell bench press, and a core move superset with dumbbell snatches. As a trainer I would rather see runners doing heavier work than this, and more of it—but for runners who don’t otherwise do much strength training, this is an excellent start.
Pilates workouts are also available, and they seem to be structured similarly to the yoga workout I tried: a 30-minute (for me) follow-along video with moves that you’ll recognize if you’ve done a Pilates class before.
Social features and privacy
Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Runna
The main social function of the Runna app is the Community feed. You can explore different feeds (“spaces”), but there aren’t many to choose from. There are spaces for a few popular marathons, which sounds like a cool idea, but most of the ones I tapped on had few or no posts. There also doesn’t seem to be a feature where you can follow your friends (unless I missed it?), and when people ask questions of the community, they seem to go unanswered.
There aren’t any fine-grained privacy controls, either: you can share your run or not. The data tile includes a map of your route, which often includes labeled street names. If you’d like to keep your location private, there’s no easy way to do so when sharing that data tile.
What you can do with and without a subscription
You need a subscription to access your programmed workouts from Week 2 and beyond. The one-week free trial unlocks everything from Week 1, and you can continue to do those workouts even after the trial expires, for example if you didn’t fit everything in during Week 1. You can also transfer the Week 1 workouts to your Garmin device, but once you’re a paying customer you’ll be able to sync two weeks of workouts at a time.
After the trial expires, you can see the runs and workouts you’ve already done, you can complete any runs or workouts that you unlocked but didn’t yet complete, and you can even add workouts to your plan—I added a Pilates workout after the trial expired, and the app dutifully added it to Friday of Week 1 and let me access it.
You can also browse the other available plans, and even have it program you a fresh Week 1, but you can’t move on to Week 2 without subscribing to Premium. (So I suppose if you are broke and bored, you could sample Week 1 of all the available plans.)
Of course, you can always record an unprogrammed run at any time. In fact, when I did a run with a Garmin watch, no app involved, it automatically synced to my Activities tab.
What this app does well
The structured, personalized plans are the flagship offering here, and Runna delivers on its promises. I found my plan to be a great fit for my fitness level and my schedule, and I enjoyed the variety of workout types.
The inclusion of strength and mobility workouts is a nice touch, too. There are also suggested warmup and cooldown exercises for each run, making Runna plans really well-rounded.
The app is also flexible on scheduling: I did the workouts out of order, and nothing broke. You can rearrange the days if you like, too.
Downsides and drawbacks
I don’t have any serious reservations about the app itself, so the question of whether it’s worth the cost will come down to your opinions on the running plans it delivers.
Some runners have noted on forums like r/Runna that they were hoping for more easy runs and fewer interval and tempo runs. Runna’s long runs are not necessarily long slow distance runs, but often include a progression where you get a bit faster as the run progresses. This can all add up to the program feeling hard or intimidating for beginners or for people who prefer a more chill training program.
Serious runners also have their quibbles with it. The scheduling function only lets you put one run on each day, so there’s no way to schedule two runs on the same day. Doubles are a pretty normal thing for high mileage runners—heck, even I will do a morning and evening run on the same day sometimes, and I’m nowhere near elite.
You also don’t have a choice of different plans at the same level. While there are different types of plans, once you choose one—say, a marathon training plan—the app will design you one single plan that they have calculated is the best one for you. You can tweak the personalization settings, but you don’t get the option of deciding between plans that are designed according to different training philosophies. For example, some marathon plans spread their mileage more evenly throughout the week than others. You just have to take what Runna gives you.
The bottom line
Ultimately, if you like the programs, the app will work well for you. And while Runna is one of the more well-rounded apps out there to plan your training, it’s by no means the only one that can schedule a plan for you. Ultimately, if you like it, $17.99/month is a reasonable price to pay for a program that holds your hand and keeps you on track.
To read the headlines, you would think the entire eastern seaboard is about to become the setting of a horror movie. “Giant” spiders “the size of a child’s hand” are “expected to colonize the entire East Coast.” They’ll use “tiny, terrifying parachutes” to “drop from the sky.” Oh, and they’re venomous.
Go ahead, scream. Vow to never go outside again. Come back when you’re ready, and we’ll talk about what these spiders—they’re called joro spiders, by the way—are actually like. Spoiler: They don't really fly, they aren't that big, they haven't colonized the East Coast despite years of dire warnings, and they're not going to kill you. Let's start with that first one.
Are joro spiders venomous?
Technically yes, but they can't really hurt you.
Here’s the thing: All spiders are venomous. What we call venom is their way of digesting food. Remember, spiders eat bugs and creatures smaller than themselves, and the venom is what they use to liquify and gulp down their prey’s insides. That’s pretty metal, but on a small scale. If you are larger than a housefly, you don’t have much to worry about.
Some spiders do produce enough venom to cause their bites to be painful (or, in rare cases, deadly) to humans. But the joro is not one of them. Its fangs aren’t usually even big enough to get through human skin. You’ll be fine. Or as the entomologists at the University of Georgia put it at JoroWatch: "From our experience collecting hundreds of these spiders, having them in our hair and wandering on our arms, and interacting with thousands of webs, they have not bit."
Are joro spiders actually as big as your hand?
Reports have compared the spider’s size to a child’s hand, or to an adult’s palm. Like, okay, but barely, and only if you measure their outstretched legs. These spiders are bigger than what you’re probably used to if you live in the northeast, but they’re not tarantula-sized or anything,
The female's body is about an inch long; the male's body is less than half an inch. Here’s a photo of a joro spider on a person’s hand (scroll down to the gray-haired lady in the red shirt who is holding it and smiling at it like it's an adorable baby). You have eaten jelly beans larger than this.
Are joro spiders going to rain from the sky?
This is another exaggeration. The truth is that these guys, like many other spiders, can travel by “ballooning.” This means they release a few strands of silk into the air and let the wind pick them up (this phenomenon was illustrated in the “adorable” ending of Charlotte’s Web). They can float for miles if they catch the right breeze, which led to speculation in 2022 that a few of them might be able to make it as far as D.C. that year.
We don’t actually know how far they’ll be able to travel, though, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be dropping from the sky all over the east coast. The 2022 fuss was sparked by a study from researchers at the University of Georgia, where they calculated that the joro spider should be able to withstand cold temperatures. A 2023 study calculated that much of the northeastern U.S. has habitats that the joro spider might like to live in, but there has been no mass migration.
Where do joro spiders live?
Joro spiders, originally from Japan, have been living in Georgia since 2013. It's now 2024, and despite the dire warnings of 2022, these spiders still live in a small area of the south, mainly in parts of Georgia and neighboring states.
You can keep tabs on their expanding (or not) empire by checking this page on iNaturalist, where people can report sightings. There are no joro spiders on the map in New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, or even Washington, D. C. There are a few sightings in Baltimore from September 2023. It's certainly possible the spiders live in areas where they haven't been reported yet, but there's no reason to expect them to parachute en masse into New York or other cities that are well outside their current range.
But joro spiders aren’t expected to cause any significant damage or disruption. They’re just spiders, and they just want to eat bugs. They might actually be beneficial, since they can eat mosquitoes, stinkbugs, and other insects that are themselves problematic. One of the authors of the 2022 study told the press that “people should try to learn to live with them,” and that there’s no need to kill a spider that’s just trying to live its little spider life. I, for one, welcome our new stinkbug-eating overlords.
Fasted cardio is having a moment. Wake up and get your exercise in before breakfast, so the theory goes, and your body will be forced to burn fat, because there will be no food in your stomach to use for fuel. But does fasting before a workout actually make a difference to your weight, or your health? Not the way you’d think. Let’s take a look at the science.
What is fasted cardio?
“Fasted” cardio doesn’t require some kind of extreme starvation protocol. It just means doing cardio when you haven’t eaten recently. The most common way to do fasted cardio is to work out first thing in the morning, before breakfast, since you’ve been fasting all night. (The word “breakfast” even comes from the fact that the first thing you eat is breaking your fast.)
In a limited, technical sense: maybe. In a real-world, big-picture sense: no.
Remember that we are all burning fat all the time, just by existing. How do you think your body stays alive all night while you are sleeping? It burns through a little bit of your fat stores, knowing that during the day you will eat more food and it will be able to replace that fat.
In other words, there is a difference between burning fat and losing fat. We burn fat and replace it continuously throughout the day; burning fat doesn’t mean losing fat. We only lose fat when we don’t eat enough to replace all the fat that we burned.
Ultimately, you don’t have to pay attention to what fuel your body is using at what time. If you really want to nerd out about the details, your body has carb stores as well (called glycogen), and you burn through those stored carbs when you do fasted cardio—so the energy you use isn’t all coming from fat anyway.
What the science says about fasted cardio
Scientists have tested the possibility that fasted cardio might lead to fat burning, which in turn might lead to fat loss. Unfortunately, the results are pretty clear that fasted cardio does not seem to help people lose weight.
In this 2014 study, 20 women were put on a calorie-restricted diet (which would help them lose weight), and did an hour of cardio three mornings each week. Half the women got a shake before their cardio session, and half got the shake after. Members of each group were eating the same number of calories each day in total.
The results? Both groups lost the same amount of weight. Fasted cardio provided no additional benefit.
It’s not even clear whether fasted cardio increases fat burning.A 2018 meta-analysis found that 38% of studies on fasted cardio found more free fatty acids in the bloodstream when compared to fed cardio; that means that fat was being burned. But one 2011 study found that fat burning was greater among people who ate before they did their cardio. Based on these results, I wouldn’t trust fasted cardio to burn more fat, much less lose it.
The downsides of fasted cardio
The biggest downside of fasted cardio is that you'll almost always perform better during a workout when you’re fed. You'll be able to push harder, work longer, and feel less tired doing it. If you find exercise to be exhausting, a pre-workout meal, snack, or even a sports drink may change that.
Longer sessions will especially benefit from eating beforehand. It's well-known among endurance athletes that marathons, all-day bike rides, and lengthy hikes benefit from a hefty supply of calories, mainly in the form of carbs. If you’re exercising for more than an hour at a time (some say more than 90 minutes) you should not only eat beforehand, but also bring fuel with you to eat on the go.
At the extreme end, going without food during exercise can leave you felling dizzy or lightheaded (especially if you are pregnant or have medical issues that can affect your blood sugar). It can also mean “hitting the wall” after a few hours—that point you reach where your body doesn’t have enough stored carbs to keep up the level of effort you’re aiming for. (This is more of an issue for marathoners than for casual joggers, so don’t let that scare you off if you’re just figuring out fueling for a short morning run.)
When fasted cardio can make sense
Even though I sing constantly the praises of pre-workout carbs, I do a lot of fasted cardio myself. I don’t do it for fat burning benefits; I do it because I jog in the morning and I don’t want to bother finding the time to eat beforehand.
It may make sense to do cardio on an empty stomach if:
You have a sensitive stomach, and might get nauseous if you eat right before you run.
You don’t have time to eat beforehand, and your workout will be a short or easy one anyway.
You have a limited calorie budget for the day, and want to save your carbs for later (before an evening weightlifting workout, perhaps).
In these cases, I would only skip the pre-workout meal if your cardio session will be a relatively short or easy one. Long sessions still require fueling. If stomach discomfort is the issue, fasting isn’t as good as eating a few hours beforehand—you could even have a big midnight snack if you need to do a long run first thing in the morning.
It’s also worth figuring out whether there might be small snacks, like a banana or a swig of sports drink, that can give you some fuel without triggering your stomach issues.
If you’re serious about lifting barbells, sooner or later you’re probably going to want a belt. Belts don’t prevent injury as people sometimes assume, but they do help you to lift more weight. This helps you to squat and deadlift heavier—thus get stronger—so they’re standard equipment for a lot of strong people.
We have a guide here to understanding what belts are for, how they work, and who needs them. But once you get the basic idea, you’ll probably still have questions. So let’s dig in.
When should you buy a weightlifting belt?
Every coach has their own opinion on when is the right time for a new trainee to buy a belt. Some might want to see you lift a certain weight first, or demonstrate a certain amount of skill at the big lifts. But the truth is, there’s no agreed-upon dividing line between people who need a belt and people who don’t. A belt is a tool that anybody can use, at any point in their lifting career. It doesn’t make up for not knowing how to brace, so it makes sense to learn how to brace first. But a belt can help you learn how to brace, since you can feel your belly pushing against the belt when you’re doing it right.
In my opinion, if you’re wondering whether you should get a belt, it’s probably time to get a belt. A lot of the good ones need to be ordered online, and some have a lead time of several weeks, so you might not actually get the belt until a month or two after you decide you’re ready—in other words, you may want to order your belt sooner rather than later.
Which kind of weightlifting belt should you get?
If you search for “weightlifting belt” online, you’ll get tons of results, many of them marketed to gym goers who want to look cool but who don’t really understand what a belt is for. Let me cut through the marketing to say: There are only a few kinds of belts that strength sport athletes commonly wear.
A velcro belt
First, there’s the 4-inch velcro belt. I’m starting here because it’s a good all-purpose belt, cheaper than the leather ones we’re about to talk about, and it’s arguably easier to adjust and wear, too. I have one from 2Pood, which is a popular brand among Olympic weightlifters and Crossfitters. These belts are 4 inches wide, they close with a velcro strap, and they have a locking mechanism around the strap so that it won’t pop open even if the velcro fails mid-lift. The velcro will wear out over time, although mine has put up with more than three years of frequent use and it’s still going strong.
Velcro belts will generally run you between $30 and $70, depending on the brand and any special features, like custom colors.
Next are leather belts that buckle like, well, a traditional belt. These look like a comically large version of a regular belt: either 3 or 4 inches wide, and made of a thick leather that is usually either 10 or 13 millimeters. The buckle is enormous to match. (When I got my first belt in the mail, I laughed. I couldn’t imagine wearing it out in public. But now I just see it as a normal piece of gym equipment.)
There are double-prong belts, which look cool, but they can be really annoying to operate. Remember, you’ll be taking it off and putting it on (or loosening and tightening it) between sets. The second prong doesn’t make the belt any more secure, but it does make it fussier to fasten.
In addition to my velcro belt, I have a single-prong leather belt as well, and mine is a Pioneer cut with offset holes. This way, instead of choosing between two holes that are an inch apart, I can adjust the belt in 1/2-inch increments.
Instead of a buckle, you may prefer a lever belt. Instead of placing a buckle prong through the hole of your choice when you put it on, you use a screwdriver to install the lever into the appropriate hole in the belt. Then you simply close the lever to lock it closed, and pop it open when you’re ready to take the belt off. The “pop” can be satisfying after a big lift—see this clip of Jessica Buettner for an example. (I do not have a lever belt. I am slightly jealous of people who do.)
These belts are available in the same common sizes as the good single-prong belts: 3 or 4 inches wide, 10 mm or 13 mm thick. Pioneer, the same company that makes my adjustable prong belt, also sells an adjustable lever that gives you a little bit of room to fasten the belt tighter or looser without having to take the lever off with a screwdriver. (Pioneer isn’t paying me to shill for them, I just happen to like their adjustable designs.) For an example of a non-adjustable, Inzer’s Forever lever is a popular and durable design.
Good quality leather belts, both prong and lever, cost more than velcro. $100 to $150 would be a typical price range, with the thicker belts usually being more expensive. (Again, custom colors and designs will run you a bit more.)
Your waist measurement will tell you the length of belt you should order; refer to the sizing chart on the belt company’s website to find the right size. If you’re between sizes, consider whether you’re likely to get bigger or smaller over time. For example, if you know you’ll be losing weight, you may want a belt that will still fit if you get a bit slimmer. On the other hand, it’s normal to gain muscle mass as you get stronger, and you may want to have the room to get bigger without having to buy a whole new belt.
When it comes to the width, 4 inches is standard. (The maximum width allowable in competition is usually 4 inches for powerlifting and 12 centimeters, or 4.7 inches, in weightlifting.) The advice I got when I was a beginner is that almost everybody likes a 4-inch belt for squatting, but that some people prefer a 3-inch belt for deadlifts. I ended up getting mine in a 3-inch size, and it fits well for both lifts. Some people prefer a 4-inch belt for both lifts, but wear it higher on their waist for deadlifts. If you’re not sure, see if you can borrow a belt to try on.
The next thing to decide, if you’re buying a leather belt, is whether to get your belt in a thickness of 10 millimeters or 13 millimeters. If in doubt, get the 10 mm. Thirteen is very thick, and many people find it makes the belt uncomfortably stiff, especially at the edges. If you are an enormous person and already very strong, you might need the 13 mm. But in that case, you will probably come to that conclusion through experience over time. If you’re reading this, that’s probably not you, and you want the 10 millimeter.
So are there belts you shouldn’t buy? Arguably, yes:
Double prong belts are fussier to open and close, and they aren't any stronger than single prong. If you want a buckle, most people will be happier with the single prong kind.
Velcro belts without a lock can pop open mid-lift. Look for one that has a locking mechanism that holds the strap in place, like those from 2Pood or Gymreapers.
Tapered belts, with a wide back and a narrow front, used to be popular among Olympic weightlifters. They aren’t used as much anymore, though; velcro belts have largely replaced them. Most tapered belts you’ll see online are lower quality ones aimed at people just trying to look cool in the gym. Fine as a fashion choice, but they wouldn’t be my first pick. That said, if you already have one, might as well use it. It will be fine.
Really cheap weightlifting belts (like the $20 ones you might find on Amazon) won’t last as long and might not perform as well, but they honestly aren’t terrible. If you aren’t sure whether you need a belt at all, I wouldn’t blame you for buying the cheap thing first and upgrading later.
With that information, you should be well equipped to buy a belt that meets your needs. A locking velcro belt or a 10 millimeter straight leather belt, depending on your preference, will be best for most people. Now, whether you want a plain black belt or a custom colored sequin design, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
There’s an art and a science to picking a good starting word when you play Wordle. One computer analysis suggested that CRANE is the best starter; another landed on SALET. Recently the New York Times did its own analysis of the words people actually choose as their starters, and the situation is dire: ADIEU is the most popular starter, yet (allegedly) the least efficient.
That's not to say it's the worst word you could play first, but it is the worst out of the 30 most popular starters—ADIEU, STARE, SLATE, AUDIO, and RAISE. But if you rank the top 30 starters based on how effective they are at revealing letters in any given puzzle, the top five are SLATE, CRANE, LEAST, STARE, and RAISE, with ADIEU landing at number 30. (My personal favorite, ARISE, ranks seventh.)
Should a Wordle starter have a lot of vowels?
I’m going to teach the controversy here. The argument in favor of ADIEU is that it contains four vowels, and you know the solution will have to contain at least one vowels. Thus, knocking out four of them in your first guess is pretty smart. (O and sometimes-vowel Y are the only ones not included.)
But there’s an argument to be made that vowels don’t give you much information, in the data-science sense of narrowing down possibilities. Most words in English remain perfectly legible with all the vowels eliminated, and because every word contains them, you'll still have a lot of options on the table. Here's what I mean: If you play ADIEU and A lights up in yellow, yes, you know that there's an A in the solution somewhere. But that tells you very little about what the solution actually is!
Another strategy is to go with a consonant-heavy word at first, and worry about the vowels later. According to one local Wordle expert('s wife), “there are only five [vowels], and it’s almost never going to be a U.”
Your starter should mesh with your solving style
Scientific analysis aside, I don't think there's much point to picking the theoretically best starter word; you need to find your best starter word. The human brain does not narrow down the problem space in the same way as a computer. I like when I find vowels early, because having the vowels helps me sound out the words in my head. If I know there are vowels in the second and fourth places (say, _A_E_) I know it is probably a two-syllable word. I run through the available letters, trying them out in each position in my head. For me, a vowel-heavy starter is helpful. For you, it might not be.
When choosing a starter, consider the way you think through the possibilities when you're halfway through the puzzle. What starters will set you up for success with your preferred solving style? If your brain works best when you know the initial letters of the word, maybe choose a starter like TRASH, which gets a lot of common beginning consonants into the mix right away.
My own approach splits the difference: I think about my starters as a pair. With ARISE and TOUCH, I get intel on all five vowels and five of the most common consonants. If you play ADIEU, I think you need to be prepared to follow it up with THORN.
Don’t forget about Y, the sometimes vowel
Should you include Y in your starter? Most of us don't, but there's a good argument to be made for getting it in the mix fairly early in the game.
Y flies under the radar since it’s an end-of-the-alphabet letter. The tendency is to think it must be as rare as X and Z. But Y is fairly common (worth 4 points in Scrabble to X's 8 and Z's 10), showing up in words like FUNNY and JAZZY (JAZZY being the hardest word that appeared as a Wordle answer this year). Words that end in Y also often have a double letter—like the N and Z in those examples—so make sure to consider that as you’re narrowing down the possibilities.
You may recall from grade school that the vowels are “A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.” (You may even have learned “...and sometimes Y and W.”) That’s because Y really can stand on its own as a vowel. The ending Y in FUNNY is an example: U is the vowel for the first syllable, and Y is the vowel for the second. There are also words that contain a Y as their only vowel, like GLYPH, NYMPH, and TRYST.
So if you’re working through a Wordle and you don’t seem to have enough vowels to make a word, stick a Y in a guess somewhere—preferably at the end. LANKY or HORNY might be good picks for when you’re stumped.
When you’re new to running, or getting back into it, the last thing you need is one more barrier. Shoes, appropriate clothes, sweat-resistant sunscreen: These things are hard to do without. But those running watches that it seems like everyone has? You don’t need one on your first day. You don’t even need your phone.
It's kind of strange that fitness has become almost synonymous with tracking fitness: How many steps are you taking? How many calories are you burning? How many minutes per mile was your pace when you went jogging this morning? What was your heart rate?
But you don’t need to know any of this. You can just go for a run, and the results are recorded in the very fibers of your muscles. Your heart and lungs know how hard they worked, and they are in the process of adapting so that they’ll be able to serve you better next time. This process does not require you, at any point, to look at numbers on a screen. So do you need a Garmin, a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, or any of their kin? Absolutely not.
What a running watch provides, and how to do without
I’ve run with a variety of devices and apps over the years, and right now I’m gearing up to review a series of running apps—you can look for those articles in the weeks to come. But my little secret is that I actually prefer to do most of my running without a watch or even a phone app.
Ever since I dusted off my running shoes earlier this spring—about six weeks ago—I’ve been running multiple times each week without a watch. I have a vague idea of time and mileage, but no precise numbers. My brain is empty of thoughts except for “don’t go too fast” and “turn around when I get to the main road.” So here is the data that I’m not getting from a running watch, and how to do without it:
Distance
The watch tells you: how far you’ve gone. Want to run 3 miles? Turn around when your watch says 1.5. You can also add up your miles at the end of the week.
How to do without: Measure a route beforehand. You can use Google Maps (right-click and select “measure distance,” or just plan a walking route through the normal interface). For a nicer interface, use an app like Footpath. The free version lets you measure routes but not save them; honestly, creating a route and then taking a screenshot is good enough for our purposes here. If you’re going to pay for an app with route planning, you might as well get Strava—but more on that later.
You can plan the route before you go, and then when you’ve finished the route, you know you’ve done your mileage. It can be handy to have a few routes on hand for common distances you like to run. There’s a 5-mile loop at my local park, for example, and I know exactly where to jog in my neighborhood if I want a 2-miler.
To keep track of distance from day to day, you can keep a note in your phone, or add it to your training journal.
Time
The watch tells you: how long you’ve been running.
How to do without: In the olden days, you’d use a dumbwatch to track time, or even just look at the clock before you leave home and then again when you come back. Where a watch-user knows that their run was 32 minutes and five seconds, you are free from worrying about such minutia and can be happy to know that you were running for about half an hour.
You can also use a stopwatch on your phone to track the time, if you really want to know. You can also just estimate from your mileage: That three-mile route will take about 30 minutes if you run at a 10:00 pace.
The watch tells you: how many minutes it’s taken you to run each mile; also, what pace you are going right now.
How to do without: Go by feel. If you’re a beginner, the exact pace doesn’t matter; do easy runs at a speed that feels easy. Do faster intervals at a pace that feels challenging but doesn’t leave you gassed. The exact numbers aren’t important.
If you’re an experienced runner, use that experience! How do you feel when you’re running 10-minute miles? 8-minute miles? Run at an effort level that feels right for the programmed run, and every now and then you can run a race or time yourself on a track to recalibrate.
Heart rate
The watch tells you: your current heart rate, and maybe the “zone” you’re in.
How to do without: Honestly, if you’re a beginner, don’t use heart rate at all. Heart rate can be a useful number once you have a pretty good handle on what your personal heart rate is at different effort levels. But the way most watches and apps calculate heart rate is with an error-prone formula that often sets the zones too high or too low.
As a beginner, the only thing that really matters is that you do your easy runs at an easy pace, not a gut-busting breakneck speed that ends up being unsustainable. So, go with perceived effort here too. Do you feel like you could keep this up almost forever? Like you could talk on the phone with only a little bit of heavy breathing? That’s the famous “zone 2.” See, you didn’t need a heart rate monitor after all.
If you're an experienced runner, you probably get more use out of pace data than heart rate data, anyway—but you can always use a chest strap connected to your phone if you'd like the numbers.
Not all watches have this feature, and even among people who have running watches, not everyone uses the coaching. But yes, some watches and some apps provide a running plan, telling you how many miles, at what pace, to run each day. They may also give you guided runs, with a coach in your ear telling you when to speed up and slow down.
Without a watch, you’re on your own for this stuff. But you can also find a plan online that’s not tied to any particular app. Hal Higdon says I’m running 3 miles on Tuesday? Well then, I’ll go out on Tuesday and run (roughly, approximately) 3 miles.
How I train without a running watch
Putting all of this together, here’s what it looks like for me. First of all, I started my running habit this year by getting consistent with my morning walk (30 minutes, so about 1.5 miles.) Over the course of a week, I started adding some bits of running to my walk, slowing down when I got winded or uncontrollably itchy, and after about two weeks, I was running pretty much the whole 1.5 miles in relative comfort. The following week, I started adding a little mileage—doing 2 miles most morning instead of 1.5.
This worked beautifully as a gentle re-introduction to running, and honestly? I don’t think I would have done it this way if I were wearing a watch. It would have been demoralizing to see that my “running” pace was so much slower than what I was logging last year. But once I was in the habit, it was easy to add mileage.
These days, I have a few neighborhood routes in mind. I put on my sun visor and headphones when I go out with the kids to wait for the bus, and as soon as they leave I turn and head off on one of my 3-mile (usually) routes.
I keep track of my mileage in a notebook. Three miles, five times a week, is 15 miles. If I miss a morning or if I want to add more time on my feet, I’ll add another run in the evening or on a weekend day. I’ll usually head to a nearby park where I know the mileage of my favorite trails and roads. If I’d like to try a new route, I’ll pick an album that is about as long as I’d like my run to be (many are around 45 minutes, which is perfect) and take note of which song occurs at the halfway point. When I hear that song, I turn around. That’s a 45-minute run in the books—in the ballpark of four miles or so.
You sure can! If you’re looking at that list above and thinking “aww, I wish I had that data,” wish no more! There are tons of running apps that can track distance, duration, and pace in real time, even speaking up through your headphones to let you know your split times each mile.
Pros of phone based running apps:
No need to buy special equipment like a watch.
Numbers are available anytime you want to pull your phone out and look at them.
You’re probably bringing your phone anyway to listen to music.
You’ll get a map of your run after the fact (thanks to your phone’s GPS).
The app will keep track of your mileage over time.
Cons of phone based running apps:
You may not want to see all those numbers, especially if the thought of logging a “bad” average pace makes you rush warmups or skip walking breaks.
GPS tracking on phones is not as accurate as the tracking on watches.
GPS tracking tends to run a phone’s battery down faster than if you weren’t using the GPS.
I enjoy the guidance I get from running apps if I’m doing a specific workout—like one I tried recently that involved segments of 0.6, 0.5, and 0.35 miles. No way was I going to track that manually, but the pleasant voice in my ear told me exactly when to start and stop each interval, and cued me to speed up or slow down if I was getting off pace.
If you do decide to get a running watch later on, they’ll have the same features as the phone apps, but with better battery life and an easier way to view the numbers.
What are the best running apps to use if you don’t have a phone?
The classic is Strava. In fact, if the community aspect of a running app or watch is what’s most important to you, you’ll definitely want to get on Strava. People who log their runs on a Garmin or another device will often upload to Strava so they can have everything in one place. But you can also “record” a run from the Strava app directly, no extra device needed. Just beware that the social features can end up revealing your location, so dip into the privacy settings to make sure you aren’t sharing more than you intend.
How do you track mileage when running without a watch?
Measure or estimate the length of each run, ideally by measuring on a tool like Google Maps or Footpath. (In the olden days, we would sometimes drive a route and use the odometer.)
Add up your mileage over time by keeping notes on a calendar (paper or digital), a notebook (paper or digital), or any other way you’d keep track of a running tally.
How do you pace yourself when running without a watch?
By paying attention to your body. For an easy or “zone 2” pace, you’ll want to feel like you’re breathing easy and like you can keep going forever. Faster paces might feel harder, but they’ll still be sustainable enough that you can make it the entire distance you intend, without collapsing into a heap by the end. You’ll learn over time what each appropriate pace feels like.
On guided runs, offered by many running apps, the coach or narrator will help you figure out the right effort level. They might ask you to aim for a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, or they might describe in words how your body should feel when you’re at a given pace.
Do I need a watch to run a marathon?
You don’t make it to the start line of a marathon without having a decent amount of running experience under your belt. And these days, when you’ve been running regularly for the amount of time it takes to build a base and then train for a marathon…you’ll probably have already given in to the temptation to buy a running watch.
But it’s not necessary in any way. You can do your training by mapping out routes ahead of time, gauging your pace based on how you feel, and writing down your weekly mileage in a notebook. This is how almost everybody trained until running watches became more accessible about 10 or 15 years ago. The race organizers are keeping track of your time (there’s a chip in your bib, usually), and they’ll post mile markers along the course so you know where you are.
On race day, you probably won’t want to use your running app; it drains battery, and you’ll be out there a long time. Instead, you can pace yourself by wearing a basic stopwatch and comparing your time at each mile marker with pre-calculated split times. Sound complicated? It’s not—just grab one of these temporary tattoos that has them all calculated for you.
I’m a cheap traveler, which means I’m often packing light. When I took a five-day trip to Paris a few years ago, on a budget airline that charges a fee to bring a carry-on, everything had to fit in a small bag under the seat in front of me. Friends, I did it. You can, too.
I first wrote about this trip right when I returned, in 2017, but I can say now that I still use these techniques (except packing dress shoes for a casual trip—what was I thinking??). We’ll get to the specifics of what I packed and how, but this is a feat that’s more about the planning than the execution. Here’s what I mean.
Measure your bag
The space under the seat in front of you is pretty roomy: It’s big enough for an average-sized backpack, or an overstuffed messenger bag. But don’t eyeball it! If you misjudge, and you can’t quite wedge your bag into that space, the crew will ask you to put it somewhere else. That could mean another fee, or depending on how crowded the plane is, you might even need to hand it over to be gate-checked.
Avoid this minor nightmare by actually checking the airline’s bag measurements. On my trip, the carrier (the now-defunct(?) Wow airlines) allowed 17 by 13 by 10 inches for personal items, including handles and wheels, and with a weight limit of 22 pounds. Check your airline’s website, and then whip out a tape measure and verify. (If your bag is soft-sided, make sure to measure it when it’s fully packed.)
To really be prepared, though, you also need a Plan B. Maybe you’ll buy a few too many souvenirs, and need to check your bag. Or sometimes on domestic flights, you’ll end up in a tiny airplane that doesn’t have any space under the seat, and you’ll have to gate-check your stuff. Here’s your insurance policy: Pack your in-flight essentials in a small purse or packing cube that you can tuck in the seat back pocket. This way, if you have to give up your bag, you’ll have the important things with you.
I don’t have a magical spell to fit a suit or a formal dress or a sleeping bag into a carry-on. The one-bag approach only really works for people with simple needs who are going on simple trips. I didn’t bring a laptop or any workout gear. I did bring a few changes of clothes, essential toiletries, a sketchbook, and a phone charger.
I didn’t bother with soap or shampoo, since I knew I could buy those at my destination. (Showering with French soap made my stay in France feel just a little more authentic.) My husband bought a six-pack of electrical outlet adapters, and I caught him shoving the whole thing in his bag. “Wait, how many plug-in things are we bringing?” I asked. Just two: his phone charger, and mine. So we left four of the adapters at home.
I packed fresh socks, shirts, and underwear for each day, and planned to wear a dress once and my shorts and pants twice each. (If I were more hardcore, I would have packed just two outfits and washed one in the hotel sink each night.) I resisted the urge to pack a skirt “just in case.”
To winnow the “just in case” pile, ask yourself, what would I do if I needed this but didn’t have it? Without the skirt, I would just wear my dress or shorts instead. That’s fine; the skirt stays home. But if I got sore feet and didn’t have my packet of blister bandages, I’d have to walk the streets of Paris looking for a place to buy some. The bandages came with me.
Dump out your bag, so you’re not bringing any detritus from a previous trip, and then begin to pack it wisely. A few tips:
Choose the smallest item that will do the job. Bring the travel-size toothpaste, even if the full size is technically small enough to get through security. Compare your jackets and sweaters, and bring the thinnest one that’s still warm enough—or perhaps you’d prefer a lightweight scarf that you can wear as a shawl?
Roll your clothes. Rolling is the most compact way to pack. Put socks and t-shirts on the inside of the roll, and carefully smooth your wrinkleable items on the outside. Know how you will remove any surprise wrinkles: Does your room come with an iron? Will you steam the clothes while you’re in the shower?
Use packing cubes. It wasn’t until after the Paris trip that I discovered just how much time and trouble packing cubes can save. They don’t save space, but they make a tightly packed bag so much easier to pack and unpack.
Wear the biggest items. You’ll have more room in your bag if you wear your jeans and pack your shorts than vice-versa. You can also wear your travel pillow on the flight, and strap it to your bag while you’re trekking through the airport.
Make sure everything is accessible. You’ll be miserable if the interior of your bag is a random jumble. This is where the packing cubes come in, or you can at least arrange your rolls of clothes to divide up the space as needed. Make good use of pockets, too: flat things in the laptop compartment, for example, and your passport and phone charger in whatever pocket is easiest to reach.
You do, eventually, have to bring everything back. If you brought travel-size toiletries, maybe you can finish them off and throw them out before you come home. You also don’t have to worry as much about keeping your clothes unwrinkled. These tweaks can gain you a few cubic inches.
If you’re serious about bringing home souvenirs, consider bringing a collapsible duffel from home, or buying a cheap bag on the road. Then you’re only paying the bag check fee in one direction, not both. Also compare the bag check fee with the cost (and time delay) of mailing things home.
But if you won’t have much room for souvenirs, keep an eye out during your trip for things that pack light. I picked up a French-language cooking magazine for my mom, and translated the tastiest recipes on the flight home. Foreign snacks also make great gifts, and are easy enough to tuck into small spaces. Photos, videos, and good old-fashioned memories make great souvenirs, and they don’t take up any physical space at all. (You could even get a photo book printed when you return, or write down your thoughts in a journal, to make them more tangible without encroaching on your underwear.)
What I actually packed
A top-down view of my bag. In the back pocket (top of photo): book and sketchbook, flattened purse, printouts of documents. Middle pocket: Clothing rolls, sitting on top of carefully packed/stuffed shoes. Front pocket: toiletries, art supplies, wallet, battery pack. In pockets not shown: charging cable, passport, ziploc bag of liquid toiletries.Credit: Beth Skwarecki
OK, time to prove that this is for real. Here’s what I did.
The bag: I used an Eddie Bauer hybrid messenger bag/backpack that I bought many years ago; it’s now discontinued. We have gone on many one-bag trips, this bag and I. My husband, who packed equally light, used a Swiss Gear backpack similar to this one.
Large and unwieldy Items: My one extravagance was a pair of heeled t-strap leather shoes. I stuffed my socks and underwear inside of them, so they held their shape, and then wrapped them loosely in a plastic bag so they wouldn’t get the rest of my items dirty. I also had a travel pillow, strapped to the handle of my bag.
Clothes: For a four-night trip, I brought four shirts, one dress, one pair of shorts, and five sets of socks and underwear. I wore sneakers, a jacket, and a shirt-and-pants outfit.
Toiletries: I had a small zippered pouch with the likes of lipstick and deodorant, and a Ziploc with just a few liquid-phase personal items like moisturizer and toothpaste.
Electronics: All I need for a non-work trip is my phone, a charging cable, and a battery pack. (My husband prefers an electric toothbrush and razor at home, but made do with analog versions for this trip.) We also brought a headphone splitter and a pair of earbuds for each of us.
Fun stuff: A book for the plane; a sketchbook and a small pack of art supplies; Clif bars; wallet, passport, etc.
In hindsight, I only made a few mistakes. I should have left the fancy shoes behind, and either gone without or brought a pair of plain flats instead. I didn’t need the jacket that I wore in the airport, although I’m glad I brought it. And that’s about it; this is one of the most perfectly calibrated trips I’ve taken.
I’ve had a rough time in the past, though. I can think of two trips where I ended up freezing because I didn’t want the bulk of packing warm clothes. In one of those cases, my mistake was that I only had skirts to wear; a pair of fleece-lined tights would have only taken up a tiny amount of space in my bag, and would have been a lifesaver. On a few trips, I forgot to pack a purse, because somehow in my mind the messenger bag was my purse. It is much better to have a real purse (or tote bag, or laptop bag) for your daily excursions instead of having to dump out all your clothes on the hotel bed to make do with your carry-on.
Now, I visualize each day’s activities when I write my packing list, and this helps me remember things like purses. And I apply the “just in case” test to all of those “just in case” items. And now I’m the person who hops off a plane with just a small backpack, breezes past the baggage claim, and takes the Métro to her Airbnb. It’s a great way to vacation.
Traveling with medications is easy enough: Whether pills or liquids, keep them in their original pharmacy containers, or pop over-the-counter meds into a pill organizer. But what about supplements? How do you carry those mini scoops of creatine or several shakes’ worth of protein powder without looking like you’re trying to smuggle something illegal?
You have the TSA’s blessing
We’ll get to specific tips in a minute, but first, some peace of mind: Airport security is 100% fine with you bringing your protein powder along with you. There are no special requirements for how it must be labeled or packaged, either. That said, there are things to keep in mind if you want to avoid delays at the scanners.
The things to know about carrying protein powder, creatine, or other “protein and energy powders,” as the agency groups, them are as follows:
If you have more than 12 ounces of the stuff in your carry-on (like an entire tub of protein powder), place it in a separate bin when you go through security.
They may not care at all; anecdotally, I and many people I know have traveled with protein powders without a TSA agent testing them, or even questioning them at all.
But if they notice your supplements and get curious, they may need to open the container and test what’s inside. (The Instagram post shows an agent doing this.) The testing is quick and you’ll be on your way.
If you don’t want to deal with those possibilities, it’s entirely reasonable to simply leave the stuff at home. On a short trip, you’ll be fine without your creatine or protein for a few days. But if you’ll be at your destination for a few weeks, you might as well buy a fresh supply while you’re there.
Determined to bring your whey or collagen with you? Here are some handy ways to do that.
Snack-sized baggies are great for single servings of whey or collagen powder. I write “protein powder” on the outside, and stuff the baggies inside my shaker cup. I like these 3"x6.5" bags, which have the seal on the short side. They’re a lot easier than standard sandwich baggies to pour into a cup without spilling.
Some supplements come in doses too small for the baggies to be convenient. For example, I have a powdered supplement that requires about a teaspoonful per serving. For those, these screw-top tins are perfect. I put one serving in each tin, and pack the tins with my toiletries.
For anything that comes in gummy or pill form, like vitamins, I like to use mint tins. Altoids tins (or a similarly sized plain tin, like these) are perfect. Just wrap a rubber band around them so that they can’t pop open en route. My favorite tins for this purpose are actually the ones from Trader Joe’s green tea mints, because the tins are small and have a little window so you can see what’s inside.
When my cheap Amazon spin bike broke, I wanted to upgrade to something better. But even though I was already following along with Peloton videos on the company's app, I thought getting an actual Peloton was out of reach. Yet as I shopped, I began to change my mind: Even a good off-brand spin bike will start in the high triple digits, and it turns out Pelotons can be rented, or even purchased used. Thus began my quest for a cheaper Peloton, and in the end, I bought a used model I’m very happy with.
Mine cost $950 through a Facebook Marketplace sale in 2022. If I had taken the time to shop around and negotiate more, I likely could have found one for less. (Used Pelotons are also a lot cheaper now than they were then.) But before I could find a Bike to buy, there were a lot of questions that needed answering. Let me take you on a tour through my shopping process.
The difference between the Peloton Bike and the Bike+
Before you start shopping, you’ll need to know if you want a Peloton Bike, or a Peloton Bike+. The Bike is what you probably think of as a normal Peloton; the Bike+ has some additional features and costs about $1,000 more (new). I knew at the start that I wanted a regular Bike, so that narrowed down my shopping.
The Bike+ has its touchscreen on a swivel, so you can do strength or yoga classes next to the bike, instead of having to stand behind it and crane your neck to see over the seat. That said, an All-Access Peloton membership also allows you to watch strength and yoga classes from your phone or another device, so this is a nice-to-have, but not a necessity.
The Bike+ can automatically adjust the resistance as you follow along with a class. With a regular Bike, you have to listen to the instructor tell you what resistance to use, and turn the knob yourself.
The Bike+ has a slightly larger touchscreen (24" versus 22") and a nicer sound system. It also has nicer components throughout, including a faster processor and more RAM.
Do you have to pay a subscription fee to use a Peloton?
Peloton’s Bikes are intended to be used with an All-Access subscription. It costs $44 per month and gives you access to spin classes of all types, scenic rides, and Lanebreak rides (Lanebreak is essentially a video game you play by riding the bike). As noted, the All-Access subscription also comes with the ability to take classes from the Peloton app using your phone or other devices.
If you don’t have a subscription, you can still use the Bike in “Just Ride” mode, which shows you a plain black screen and some basic metrics: your cadence, resistance, output, and time. So if you just want to get a workout in, but you don’t care about consuming Peloton-branded content, you can still do that without paying a monthly fee.
How much you'll pay for a used, new, or refurbished Peloton, or just renting
All of the prices I discuss in this section are current as of May 2024, and are subject to change.
Used Peloton Bikes vary wildly in price and quality. Some are gently used and come with accessories; others may be cheaper but have significant wear and tear. I’m currently seeing asking prices from $500 to $750 for the standard model Bike, and $1,000 to $1,600 for the Bike+ (subscription not included, of course).
New Peloton Bikes run $1,445 for just the Bike, or $1,650 for a “Starter” package that comes with shoes, hand weights, a water bottle, and a mat. (The Bike+ is $2,495, or $2,700 with the Starter package.) Both options include delivery and setup, and a 12-month warranty. They do not include the $44/month All-Access subscription that you’ll need to take the platform’s famous video classes.
Peloton Bike rentals run $89/month ($119/month for the Bike+), plus a one-time $150 delivery and setup fee. The rental includes a pair of cycling shoes and the subscription fee for video content. There is also a warranty for the life of the subscription period.
Peloton certified refurbished bikes are currently going for $995 for the Bike, and $1,595 for the Bike+. Both are a significant savings compared to brand-new. Otherwise, the terms are the same as new bikes: The warranty and delivery fee are included; your All-Access subscription is not.
As you’d expect, used Bikes are cheaper than refurbished, and refurbished is cheaper than new. Where do rentals fall? We need to crunch some more numbers to see.
Is renting Peloton a better deal than buying new or used?
I considered a rental before I started shopping for used Bikes. If you don’t know whether you want a Peloton at all, or if you’re planning on a move soon, the rental might be worth it. Peloton will send someone to come pick up the Bike, for free, if you decide you don’t want it anymore. Rentals may be new or refurbished—Peloton sends you whatever they have, although they promise it’ll be in good condition, even if it has a few dings or scratches. There are options to rent both the Bike and Bike+. Below, I’ll discuss pricing for the regular Bike.
What you need to know about renting a Peloton
You have the option to buy your rental at any time, and the price varies based on how long you’ve been renting. If you decide to buy the Bike the moment it arrives, it will cost you $1,295. At that point you’ll have already paid the $150 delivery fee and probably your first month’s $89 rental fee, meaning the Bike will effectively cost $1,534—similar to the full price of a brand-new Bike. (Remember that your rental Bike might be a new Bike, but it might also be a refurbished model, which sells for less.)
As time goes on, the deal stays about the same: After a year, the buyout price is just $895, but you’ll have already paid $1,218 in rental fees (including the delivery fee). That’s $2,113, but you’ve saved $44/month on the All-Access subscription all along. When you take that into account, you’ve paid the same amount, in total, as if the Bike had cost $1,585 in the first place.
That means buying a brand-new Bike at full price will run you just slightly more than renting and later buying out your rental. The calculus shifts in favor of buying new if you’re able to catch a sale on the Bike, or if you overpay for your rental because you didn’t pay attention to the buyout calendar—the buyout price is $895 anytime between 12 and 24 months into the rental, so it’s a much better deal to buy at 12 months than at 23.
If you aren’t sure whether you’ll want the Bike long term: Rent, and take advantage of the free pickup when you’re done with it. If you like it, you might as well buy it out at one of the price drops, which occur at three, six, 12, and 24 months.
If you know you’ll keep the Bike for years: Go with new, refurbished, or used, depending on your preferences.
Are used Peloton Bikes a good deal?
I ended up buying mine used, so I would say the definitely are. But it depends on a few factors.
The first thing to consider is resale price. When I was shopping for mine, $950 was an excellent deal compared to the new, rental, and refurbished prices. Since then, prices have dropped on the used market and Peloton is offering their refurbished models more cheaply than before. Sales have also been occurring more often.
For the moment, at least, prices on used Pelotons are still high enough that you'll be able to get a significant amount of your money back if you were to decide to sell your Bike or Bike+. That was a big part of my calculus: A used Peloton doesn’t depreciate instantly like a new car. That said, prices have been slowly falling. If I wanted to sell my $950 Bike now, I'd likely get $600 back at best.
Besides the price, though, you might want to consider two other factors that will affect how good a deal you’re getting if you buy used.
Used Bikes don’t come with a warranty
New and refurbished Pelotons come with a 12-month warranty that covers the touchscreen, parts (including pedals), and the labor to replace them. If something breaks, you just contact customer support and they’ll send somebody out to fix your Bike.
The warranty does not transfer to new owners. So even if the original owner has had the Bike for less than a year, you don’t get the benefits of the remaining time on the warranty. However, if the original owner purchased an extended protection plan—which can last up to four years in total—those are transferable. Only the original owner can buy this plan, and only within the first year they own the Bike; you can’t buy one yourself if you’re buying a used Bike. If you’re buying used and the owner is transferring a protection plan, make sure to get their order confirmation number, and don’t be surprised if the asking price is a bit higher than other used Bikes to account for the owner’s extra expense.
Without a warranty or protection plan, you’re on the hook for any repair costs, including labor. I had to replace the bearings on my Bike shortly after I got it, and I believe I paid Peloton around $45 to send me the part I needed. Fortunately, it was easy to install. On the other extreme, if something went wrong with the touchscreen, it would cost $375 to replace, labor not included.
Used Bikes may have wear and tear
A bike is a collection of moving parts, and if you love your Peloton, you’ll put a lot of miles on it. That means a lot of wear.
Peloton Bikes tend to be pretty sturdy, and indoor bikes don’t accumulate as much damage as something you’d ride outside. But it’s still worth considering when you might have to replace parts. If you’re buying a used bike, you’ll want to check these parts for wear:
The pedals should be replaced every year, at least according to Peloton, though most Peloton owners don’t seem to bother. (They certainly seem to last a lot longer than that, but the company is probably keeping in mind its 2020 recall in response to pedals that broke, injuring some riders.)
Speaking of recalls, the seat post on all Peloton bikes was recalled this year because it could break. If you’re buying used, make sure the owner has installed the new post.
The bearings in the center of the flywheel won’t last forever. You can expect them to endure roughly a year of regular use, although this will vary greatly. If a used Bike is a few years old and hasn’t had them replaced, that’s a repair that is probably due. When the bearings start to go, the Bike will still be functional, but it will make a rattling noise as you ride.
Cosmetic damage may also be an issue. There could be dents or scratches on a used bike, worn areas on the handlebars, and so on. Refurbished Bikes may have minor cosmetic issues; all bets are off when it comes to a used Bike.
How old a Bike is too old?
Peloton only has two models of bikes, which makes shopping easy. Both the original Bike and the Bike+ have a large touchscreen that plays videos of the workouts and shows you statistics about your ride.
The models haven’t changed much over the years, with one exception. The Generation 1 Bikes are no longer supported; the software in their touchscreens will no longer be updated. These Bikes have an orange power button at the top of the touchscreen, and were manufactured before September 2016. If you own a Bike with this touchscreen and are a paying Peloton member (even if you weren’t the original owner), Peloton will give you a $350 credit toward a new, modern touchscreen.
As long as the used Bike doesn’t have that older touchscreen, any model you buy used is going to be basically equivalent to what’s for sale now. Note that some of the Bikes in used listings may say "gen 1", but as long as their touchscreen has the gray button on the back instead of the orange button on top, they're fine.
Where to find used Peloton Bikes
There are plenty for sale on places like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, and there are also Peloton-related Facebook groups that allow members to post Bikes for sale. Check anywhere you would look for used items, like OfferUp and the local search options on Ebay.
As with any sale on these platforms, watch out for scams. When I was browsing listings to update this post, I found plenty of Bikes listed with a price of $129 and a description that glowingly praised the site where the seller had originally bought it. Yeah, that was just an ad for that site—which turned out not to sell Pelotons at all, but haha! Made you look! In any case, make sure you're dealing with a real person, and don’t pay anything until you’ve seen the Bike in person and are sure you want to buy it.
What to ask the seller of a used Bike
When you’re looking at a specific used Bike, Peloton's history tool (still in beta) may be able to tell you about the history of a Bike or Bike+ if you know the serial number. You'll have to ask the seller for the number, and then cross your fingers and hope that it's one of the Bikes included in the beta program. Besides that, here are some things to ask to make sure you’re getting a good deal.
Are you the original owner?
There’s nothing wrong with buying a Bike that has been through multiple owners, except that it’s harder to document where it actually came from. Peloton recommends you ask the owner to show you proof of the original purchase. They warn that rental Bikes aren’t supposed to be sold, and if you buy one, you won’t be able to activate a subscription on it.
This question can also kick off a conversation about why they are selling the bike, and how well it has worked for them over the years. Which brings us to...
How many rides has this Bike had?
There’s going to be a difference in wear-and-tear between a Bike that was ridden a few times, versus a Bike that gets hours of use every day. You don’t need to know the exact number, but it can be good to get a sense of how much use the bike has seen.
The bike doesn’t come with an odometer, but you can ask when it was purchased and how many rides the owner has done on it. (Their Peloton profile will tell them how many rides they’ve done, but remember that they may also have family members who ride as well.) Once Peloton's history tool is out of beta, it should be able to give you this information as well.
Have any recalled parts been replaced?
Peloton Bikes’ seat posts (but not the Bike+) were recalled in 2023. Although the rollout was slow, most people should have gotten their new ones by now. You can check whether the seat post is the newest type by looking at the bottom-most measuring line on the post.
While you’re at it, check whether the pedals have an orange Peloton logo. If so, they were part of the 2020 pedal recall and should have been replaced.
This is also a good time to ask about repairs, in general. Has anything broken, and if so, was it fixed and when? Does the Bike have any ongoing problems?
Can I ride it?
Hop on the bike (don’t worry about the shoes for now) and turn the pedals. Do they move smoothly, without clanking noises that might indicate bad bearings? Does the big red knob turn smoothly? Does the screen have any chips or cracks?
Peloton also recommends checking that the adjustment levers and screws move smoothly, and that there aren’t any signs of overtightening like cracks. Check that the power cable is in good shape, and that the bike is clean and appears well-cared for.
How to move a Peloton
If you decide to take the Bike home with you, proceed carefully. These suckers are heavy, weighing about 140 pounds. Most of that weight is in the flywheel at the front, so be aware of that when carrying it with a partner.
Peloton has a guide to moving Bikes here. Importantly, you’ll want to remove the touchscreen first. I wrapped mine in towels and put it in the front seat of my car; the rest of the Bike went in the back. They also recommend taking off the water bottle holders and the cage on the back that holds the dumbbells. Lower the handlebars and seat to their lowest position, and tighten all the adjustment levers so nothing moves in transit. I didn’t remove the pedals, but they say you should.
How to transfer a Peloton to a new owner
Peloton recommends doing a factory reset on a Bike before it changes hands. Go to Settings > System > Factory Reset. When you set your Bike up at home, follow the prompts on the screen to register the Bike and set up your new subscription.
If you already have a subscription to the Peloton app, make sure to cancel it; that doesn’t always happen automatically.
What else you'll need to buy to enjoy your Peloton
You’ll want cycling shoes. They don’t have to be Peloton brand (the standard Peloton shoes kind of suck, if we’re being honest), but they do need Delta LOOK cleats to fit the pedals. That said, you can replace the pedals with another type if you prefer. If you plan to ride a lot, padded cycling shorts are also a good idea.
Peloton’s cycling classes sometimes involve small handheld dumbbells; these should come with your bike. If you want to do the strength classes, though, you’ll want bigger dumbbells. Peloton makes its own branded dumbbells with square ends, but the workouts work just as well with any dumbbells you care to buy from the store.
You may want a mat to put under your Bike to protect your floor from dripping sweat. You’ll likely also want a towel, a water bottle, and maybe a heart rate chest strap to sync with the Bike (even my cheapo strap syncs just fine).
Ready to put together an arms-and-shoulders workout? I’ve already given you the lowdown on the best bicep exercises, best tricep exercises, and best shoulder exercises. Today I’ll give you a formula to combine them, and it’s customizable so you can swap in your favorites if you don’t love mine.
We’re going to start with a heavy(ish) compound exercise that works your arms and shoulders together. Then we’ll move on to moderately heavy exercises, starting with the ones that didn’t get hit very hard on the compound. We’ll superset exercises where we can, to save time. It will look something like this:
Shoulder press of your choice - 5 sets, heavy, anywhere between 3-8 reps, with 2 minutes of rest between sets.
(optional) Rear delt work - 3 sets of 8-12 reps
Bicep/tricep superset - 3 sets of 8-12 reps each
Shoulder superset - 3 sets of 10+ reps each
(optional) Light bicep/tricep superset - 3 sets of 12-15 reps each
For a 30 minute workout, skip the optional sections and just do a shoulder press, bicep/tricep superset, and a shoulder superset. The first 15 minutes will be spent on the shoulder press and the rests between sets; the other components you can speed through with basically no rest.
To get more work in, take some extra time and do the optional sections. If you try that and find you’re recovering well, it’s fine to add more bi/tri supersets or double up on any of the components of the workout that you’d like to spend more time on.
How this fits into your week: Once a week is okay, but this workout should ideally be done twice per week. It’s also fine to do this workout once, and a different upper-body workout another time.
Note that this workout does not target your chest and back, so it’s not a full upper body workout. You could do this in a rotation that goes:
Arms and shoulders
Legs
Chest and back
(rest or repeat)
How to turn this into a full upper-body workout: replace one or both of the bicep/tricep supersets with a push/pull superset that uses chest and back muscles. We’ll discuss this when we get to that section.
Read on for more detail on each component of the workout, and the choices that you have for each section.
Part 1: the press
You can do any kind of shoulder press or overhead press here, with any appropriate equipment. Here are some good choices for the press:
Standing barbell strict press
Seated dumbbell shoulder press (upright, not incline)
Standing single or double kettlebell press
Z-press (seated on the floor with legs spread for stability)
Landmine press (my top pick for anyone with shoulder pain when their arms are directly overhead)
If you have another favorite press, feel free to swap it in. I don’t recommend push presses here; keep your knees straight on any of those standing presses. Push presses are great, but not right now.
Rest time: 2 minutes or more. This press at the beginning of the workout is meant to be a heavy exercise for strength building (we’ll do some pump work later) so make sure you’re taking adequate rest between sets.
Reps per set: about 5. Keep the reps in the single digits. You could go as low as 3 reps per set, but I wouldn’t go much higher than 8. If you want to think of this as a “5x5” routine, that may help you remember.
Weight to use: Anything that lets you get the desired number of reps. It’s okay to use a different weight for each set if you like, but try to make your last set the heaviest.
How to progress: Choose your own adventure. Look at last week’s workout, and add weight or reps to at least one set. For example:
Last week you did 50 pounds for 8 reps on all five sets. This week, go with 55 pounds for your last two sets and see how many reps you can get.
Last week you did five reps each at 20, 25, 30, 30, 30 pounds. This week, do five reps each at 25, 30, 30, 30, 35.
Sure, you could do a straightforward double progression, but I like to give myself the option to change things up based on how things are feeling. Variety is fun and can be good for us.
Your deltoids are the muscles that sit on top of your shoulder like a big 1980s shoulder pad, and they’re each made of three parts: front, side, and rear. The front and side delts get a pretty good workout from overhead pressing, so at this point in our workout the rear delts can use some extra love. Here are some good options:
Bent-over dumbbell reverse fly
Reverse fly, supported on an incline bench (lay face-down)
Band pullaparts
Face pulls on a cable machine
Reverse fly on a machine such as a pec deck
Rest time: 90 seconds or less. If you think you’ll get bored waiting, grab a pair of dumbbells and so some curls in between sets.
Reps and weight: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. Weight can be anything that gets you the appropriate number of reps per set.
How to progress: Add weight or reps each time. If you’re using a resistance band, you’ll have to go by feel, but work toward using a stronger band or a narrower grip over time.
Part 3: bicep/tricep superset
Here’s where we get to the fun stuff! You can pick anything for these. Some classic isolation exercises for biceps:
Barbell curls (or ez-bar curls)
Bayesian curls, described here (it’s a cable curl from a stretched position)
Dumbbell curls
Hammer curls
Zottman curls
Cable curls
And for triceps:
Skullcrushers
Overhead dumbbell tricep extensions
French press
Tricep kickbacks
Cable pushdowns
If your goal today is to work only arms and shoulders, stick to those lists. But if you’re trying to turn this into a general upper-body workout that includes chest and back, go with a pull exercise instead of bicep isolation, such as:
Chinups
Pullups
Seated cable rows
Barbell bent-over rows or Pendlay rows
Kroc rows
And go with a push exercise instead of a tricep isolation:
Close grip bench press
Dips
Pushups
Incline or overhead press (choose a different variation from what you did at the beginning of the workout)
We’ll do another bis/tris superset at the end of the workout, so you can always go with a push/pull here and save the isolations for the other superset.
Rest time: As needed. Try resting 30 seconds after doing both exercises, but no rest in between.
Reps and weight: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, with a weight that lets you complete the desired number of reps. You can go with a wider range (5 to 15?) if you prefer.
How to progress: Add reps each time, and when you can do three strong sets at the top of your rep range, add weight or change the difficulty (for example, try diamond pushups).
For this, we’re going to steal one of the two shoulder supersets from my best shoulder workouts post. The one most people will choose is the classic three-head deltoid isolation:
Dumbbell front raise
Dumbbell lateral raise
Bent-over dumbbell reverse fly
Do these in a circuit, moving immediately from one exercise to the next without putting the dumbbells down. I like to choose a different starting point for each round: maybe front/lateral/rear the first time, lateral/rear/front the second time, and so on. Don’t worry if the number of reps varies from set to set; fatiguing your shoulders is more important than counting reps.
Rest time: As needed between circuits, about 30 seconds.
Reps and weight: Aim for 10-15 reps of the first exercise, and then keep going with that weight even if it means your reps drop off (maybe 15, 12, 10 during the first round, 12, 10, 8 the second round…it’s all good).
How to progress: When you’re easily getting more than 15 reps on multiple sets, add weight.
Part 5 (optional): light bicep/tricep superset
For this finisher, we’re doing another bicep/tricep superset, but this time with lighter weight. Refer to the list of options above, but choose different exercises than the ones you did earlier in the workout. Maybe you did pushups and pullups before, so you’ll do Zottman curls and skullcrushers this time.
I’m going to give you two options for how to set this up:
Rest, reps, and weight, option 1: 3 sets of 12 or more reps. Rest at least 30 seconds between supersets. Add weight when you can do 15+ reps for all three sets.
Rest, reps, and weight, option 2: Choose a weight that you think you can handle for at least one set of 15. Set a timer for 5 minutes and do as many sets as possible, with as little rest as possible, until time is up. Expect your reps to drop sharply—maybe you do 15 at the beginning, but can only manage 3 at the end. The point is to keep moving as much as you can within the 5 minutes.
So there you have it: a full arms-and-shoulders workout, modifiable to a full upper-body workout, that you can do in as little as 30 minutes or enhance with extra sets to fill out an hour or more at the gym. Keep track of your progress in a notebook or on an app (or even a note in your phone) and enjoy seeing your arms and shoulders get stronger over time.
The iconic location for a fitness tracker is on your wrist, but not everybody enjoys wearing a watch, or is allowed to at work. (Cooks and surgeons, I see you.) Or maybe you like watches so much you’d rather wear a real watch on your wrist, and have your fitness tracker live somewhere else. Fortunately, you have tons of options.
Some are devices that are never worn on the wrist, like the ring trackers that have become popular lately. Others were designed for the wrist, but can be worn elsewhere with aftermarket bands or clips. Let’s review your options for rings, clips, bicep bands, ankle straps, and even clothing.
Use an ankle strap
If you already have a gadget you love, maybe all you need is a new strap. When I started doing a lot of kettlebell work, I managed to wrestle my Apple Watch wristband onto my ankle—something that will definitely not work for all body types. Fortunately, you can buy an extended band for your Apple Watch, or for a variety of fitness trackers. Here’s one for a Fitbit Charge 5, for example.
Besides using it on your ankle, the same band can be used on your arm. (It’s the same idea as what Whoop calls a “bicep band,” but to be anatomically correct I must note that you wear it above, not on your bicep.)
Pros: Tracks steps and can usually pick up heart rate (depending on exactly how it sits against your skin—you may need to experiment with positioning)
Cons: inconvenient to look at the watch or use any interactive features. You may need to sit down to pause your workout. Also, some models of wearables may not have an aftermarket band available.
Try a fitness ring
I’m a longtime fan of the Oura ring (it’s a tough love, but love nonetheless) so this is the route I’ve taken. Wearing a watch 24/7 drives me nuts, but I can completely ignore a ring. If Oura isn’t your style, Ultrahuman and others provide high-end alternatives. There are also a ton of budget rings on the market now, like this from Zopsc.
Pros: Easy to put on and take off. Feels like it’s not there (if you are used to wearing rings).
Cons: Can’t wear it while lifting weights. The nicer rings carry a high price point.
Clip it to your belt
Fitbit used to sell models that counted your steps from a clip on your belt or bra. (I remember loving the bra clip on a now-defunct brand, Misfit.) You can still get an aftermarket clip for some Fitbit and Garmin models, like the Inspire. Just pop it out of its wristband, and into a clip like this one.
Pros: Counts steps well, no matter what your hands are doing.
Cons: No access to heart rate data, or anything that requires the skin sensor. Might end up in the laundry if you forget to take it off your waistband.
Wear it in your clothes
Whoop’s tracker is normally worn on the wrist or bicep, but the company also has a “Body” line of clothes with little pockets you can slip the device into. The company sent me one of their bras back when the collection launched, and I was able to slip my Whoop device (minus its strap) into a little pocket in the band, under the left armpit. It was comfortable, stayed in place, and the data collection was good.
Their other offerings include shorts and underwear with a device pocket in the waistband, and even a swimsuit with the device pocket in approximately the same place as the bra. If you’re handy with a needle and thread, you could easily make your own versions of these items.
Pros: No extra straps to keep track of. You can definitely forget you’re wearing it.
Cons: The buttons and display aren’t accessible (which is why this works so well with Whoop, since Whoop has no buttons or display). You’ll need to plan ahead to have your Whoop-compatible undies on, and you’ll want to have duplicates to deal with the laundry cycle.
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