You Should “scale Up” Your Peloton Classes
I’m a big fan of Peloton’s various at-home workout offerings, especially the classic Bike and its incredibly versatile mobile app . Both offer me a gigantic archive of on-demand classes, as well as access to live classes, all of which come in varying lengths, intensity levels, and structures.
As an iPad baby in an adult’s body, I get bored pretty easily when I do one thing for too long, so I rely on 10- and 15-minute classes to mix things up and keep me engaged. On days when I have plenty of time, I like to do them back-to-back—especially since Peloton offers 10-minute warm-up and cool-down rides—but it always throws me off my rhythm when I stop one class, waste time finding another, and then start another. This week, I discovered a feature I’d somehow overlooked that easily solves this problem: stacked classes.
What are stacked classes?
Think of Peloton’s stacked classes as a playlist. Just as you can plan out your perfect music playlist before heading to the gym, you can create a playlist of classes using the Peloton app, which is accessible on your phone or the touchpad on your Bike, Bike+, or Tread. (Unfortunately, you can’t stack classes on streaming devices like Roku or Peloton Row.)
The goal here is to create a full workout ahead of time to avoid the decision paralysis that comes with having to choose each class right before it starts. When you’ve just finished a 15-minute ride and are looking for one of Peloton’s “extra 10” rides or post-race stretches, it can be overwhelming to sift through the hundreds of available options. However, if you add them to your stack, they’ll be lined up and ready to go. They’ll just play out one after the other.
Here are a few things to keep in mind before creating your first stack:
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You can combine any combination of cycling, running, strength training, yoga, meditation and stretching, as well as Lanebreak game levels and scenic rides or runs. This means you can stretch, warm up, run, cool down and finish with yoga if you want.
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You can organize a series of strength training sessions for a full body workout day.
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Online lessons cannot be hoarded, but once they are archived and made available on demand, this becomes possible.
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You can’t put the same class on your stack twice, and you can only have one active stack at a time, but it’s easy to customize and change. Which brings me to…
How to Create and Edit Your Peloton Class Stack
Creating a stack is very simple. Under the Start button for any class, you’ll see an icon with two stacked rectangles and a plus sign, which pretty clearly represents a Stack . Click on it to add the class to your stack. Once you’ve added all the classes you want, look for the Stack icon on the main screen. You’ll start the first class as normal, and when it’s finished, you’ll see a pop-up asking you to enter the second one you’ve built.
In the mobile app, it works pretty much the same way. Once you’ve created a stack, go to the home page and you’ll see the stack icon, but instead of a plus sign in the middle, it’ll have a right-facing arrow that says “play.”
Once you click on this icon, you can click the big orange play button to start the queue from the beginning, or click the Edit button, which will allow you to change the order of the stack or remove a class you added by accident, for example. Once a class is finished, it is automatically removed from the stack, so keep that in mind. If you want to take it again, you will have to go back and add it again.
Why I like this feature
I like this feature because, as I said, it allows you to focus on the game. When working on a stack, I don’t have to pause between workouts. Instead, my heart rate stays high, I stay focused, and I don’t have to think about what I want to do next. After each session in your stack ends, you’re given the option to continue, so you can stop or make changes if you want, but you don’t have to do anything other than press play if you want to continue.
I also appreciated that it worked so smoothly. You can easily transition from riding to stretching, which is pretty important for your safety and recovery, but most Peloton cycling classes only include a quick stretch at the end, expecting you to load up on a more challenging stretching class after that. I also appreciated that each class still counted individually toward the number of workouts I’d completed; I was worried that if I did classes back-to-back in a stack, they’d show up as one mega-workout in my Peloton account history or in my Apple Health data . I’m super particular about keeping my health data detailed and accurate (and I’m trying to complete 28 cycling classes this month because that’s the “May challenge” my Apple Health app set for me), so this was important to me.
Finally, it motivates you to do a more comprehensive workout. It’s easy to hop on the bike, sort by duration, and call it a day after a 10-minute ride. I won’t lie: I do that sometimes! But even on the days when I only want to do 10 minutes, I know I should do more. The stacking feature makes this super easy and gives you fewer opportunities to quit just because your session is over.