What I Learned From Uploading My Peloton Data (and How to Find Yours)

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I stumbled upon something interesting while digging through my Peloton profile: the ability to “upload workouts.” It’s an innocuous little button that shows up on your profile if you’re viewing the desktop version of the site, but after clicking it out of curiosity, I realized it’s a pretty powerful feature. Here’s what I learned from it, and how you can do the same for yourself.

How to Download Peloton Workout Data

First, sign in to your Peloton account on the company’s website . It’s easy. Then go to Profile > Workouts .

Author: Lindsay Ellefson

In the top right corner, you’ll see a button that says “Download Workouts.” Click it, and the CSV file will immediately download to your computer. You can open it in Excel. I don’t have Microsoft Office, so I just opened it in Google Sheets. Same difference. Either way, you’ll get a spreadsheet with all the data for every workout you’ve done:

  • Workout timestamp

  • Was the class live or on demand?

  • Instructor’s name

  • Workout duration in minutes

  • What type of exercise was it (cycling, walking , running , etc.)

  • Type of workout (music, low impact, etc.)

  • Class name

  • Class release date

  • Your total production volume

  • Your average watts

  • Your average resistance (on a bike)

  • Your average cadence (bicycle)

  • Your average speed (bicycle)

  • Your distance

  • Number of calories burned

  • Your average heart rate

  • Your average incline (on a treadmill or machine)

  • Your average pace

How I used this data once I had it

First, I removed columns I didn’t need, like the one that told me when my classes first appeared. Then I calculated how many calories I’d burned since I got my Peloton Bike four years ago and how many minutes I’d worked out, just to see. Then I started looking for patterns. I usually like Cody Rigsby’s spin class and Aditi Shah’s meditation class , for example, but could the data prove that they were my favorite instructors? Yes, it could, but it also showed me who else I favored without realizing it. I simply picked a column, made a bar chart, and studied it.

Author: Lindsay Ellefson

Knowing which instructors I gravitate toward is generally helpful for motivation and finding classes, but what about the workouts that work best for me? I scrolled down to the columns for total score and calories burned. I sorted total score from highest to lowest, looked at the results, and then did the same for calories burned. Apparently, my highest score was a 30-minute ride with Lady Gaga. Good to know. (That was also one of my highest calorie burners.) I could aim to do more 30-minute classes, or, more realistically, more Gaga-themed classes. (When I’m on my own, I usually choose her songs as the soundtrack to my workouts, so having data to back up that it gets me to ride as often as I feel like it would be great.)

What do you think at the moment?

I sorted all my columns like this, noting where I was using the least energy, where I was training with the most resistance, and so on. Being able to do this was very helpful, especially after a few hundred workouts. It might not be as helpful if I was just starting out and only had a few workouts, but even then I think being able to clearly see my calorie expenditure and output and other metrics would be helpful.

I spend the rest of the day charting and looking for patterns. This (and a little experience with spreadsheets) allows me to create charts and look up information like whether I feel better or worse in the morning, or whether I walk more in the afternoon. When you’re trying to fit exercise into your day, it’s easy to just do what you feel like (or what you can), but you’re creating patterns (whether you realize it or not), and accessing that data can help you unlock the codes of your own best practices.

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Fitness

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