(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins. You're probably already familiar with our guest today, Robyn Arzon. She's the head instructor and leads fitness programming at Peloton. She's also an ultra marathoner, two-time New York Times bestselling author, who's made it her life's mission to redefine and rethink possibility through movement.

Today, we're gonna talk about everything related to fitness, exercise, and training, but we're also gonna dive into motivation, mental strength, designing an ideal life, and so much more. I've taken hundreds of classes with Robyn, and I'm really excited for this episode. So let's jump in right after this. Yesterday was Giving Tuesday, and while I truly believe that any gift you give to charity is amazing, it's unfortunate that I see so many people giving cash instead of stock, which is just a lost opportunity to be more optimized.

For example, if you give a charity $1,000 cash, they get $1,000, and you get $1,000 deduction on your taxes. However, if you give $1,000 of a stock you bought for $100 years ago, well, that stock might only be worth $700 to you after you factor in the taxes you owe on capital gains.

But charities don't pay those capital gains, so they get the full $1,000, and you get to deduct the full $1,000 on your taxes. And when you factor in the tax savings and the deduction, it means that a $1,000 donation could only cost you a few hundred dollars, which I hope encourages you to be even more generous.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/daffy, D-A-F-F-Y, for a better way to give. (upbeat music) - Robin, thank you so much for being here. - Thanks for having me. - You went from a lawyer who didn't really run to 27 marathons, a career in fitness. What has been the biggest lesson you've learned during that transformation that might be helpful for someone who feels a bit more like your former self?

- Ooh, my former self. The first thing that came to mind is the fact that slowing down is actually a strength. I don't actually know if my former self needed that advice. It's more my current supercharged self. So maybe that will resonate to some aspects of your audience. I have a feeling it will.

But the reason I say that is because I think there's more nuance to my hustle now. And I realize that I can zoom out enough and have the confidence to pull back at points. And then that kind of supercharges me once I'm back into full throttle. One example being the postpartum period, I slowed down my workouts quite a bit.

And I was like, wow, slowing down is actually a strength. It actually takes a level of confidence. But my former self, as I was getting into it, when I was still a corporate litigator and getting into marathons and ultra marathons, was to trust the struggle. That discomfort that we feel, whether it's a physical workout or whether we're stretching ourselves mentally, emotionally, in business or otherwise, to protect ourselves, right?

That gut instinct of, oh wait, this is new, this is scary, this is uncomfortable, can paralyze us. And what ritualizing discomfort does, either in the form of a Peloton workout with me or whatever it is, however we ritualize discomfort, it actually primes our system to say like, oh, I've been here before.

Even if the stimuli changes, that is exciting to me. So I think I would tell my former self or anyone who feels like they're in a plateau, ritualize the discomfort. And I mean, literally, schedule it, keep showing up, keep getting uncomfortable every day. - I did an interview with someone who said she doesn't know that the medical science says anything about cold therapy, but she turns the shower on cold every single time and jumps in just 'cause she wants to feel uncomfortable every day to know that she can.

- Great example of an accessible way to achieve that. So I know fitness was a big part of that transformation and you've gone on to talk a lot about designing a life beyond just fitness. So I wanna start at the fitness area because as an optimizer, and I think a lot of people are, when I think about that, I've heard you talk about movement being so important.

I feel like I get so lost in this world of like everything I could do, wanting to make sure it's all perfect and that getting in the way of actually just going. And I'm sure your advice to me would be like, shut up, just go and get the thing done.

But maybe we could do like a quick 101, 201 on fitness to try to set aside some of that confusion so people can jump in stronger. - Yeah. - The biggest question that I feel almost ridiculous asking is there's these two modes. You're doing cardio, you're doing strength. Sometimes I personally get lost in this world of you've got two or three days, four days a week.

How do you even think about what to prioritize? - Oh gosh, the answer, like a lot of these hypotheticals, it depends. There are a lot of factors that would inform how somebody should be training, should be moving, where they're starting from, where they want to end up, what their goal is.

But I would say kind of a general effective dose is both. I personally prioritize as the ground floor strength training and I mean going heavy with deadlift, squat, bench press. So that's at least three strength workouts a week forever. Strength takes years to build. And the cool thing is that your body really remembers from a muscular perspective that training.

So your conditioning, you get back faster and you also lose faster. Really, really important, obviously, for cardiovascular health. And I love HIIT and Tabata and that kind of interval work. So unless I'm marathon training or have a distance race in the future, a typical week for me, and I recognize that I'm not necessarily the average person 'cause I'm literally paid to train myself, but I have at least four days a week of strength training and that includes Peloton classes also with dumbbells and more traditional accessory work.

That includes barbell work, heavy lifting work, as I mentioned. So that's at least four days a week. And then I have at least four sessions a week of interval training on the bike, hill climbing on the bike, so that I'm getting kind of power and speed there. And then for my own running training, I always have at least one or two speed sessions a week and usually one distance run.

And distance for me will be anything from 60 minutes to two hours when I'm not marathon training. And then obviously marathon training, it's three hours plus. And the volume of running takes over a little bit of the bike when I'm not teaching. But that's at least eight sessions. And of course, some days I'm doing two days and I try to carve out at least one day for recovery.

Recovery for me is active. I'm still getting 10 to 12,000 steps a day, but I know my body well enough to know what's gonna fatigue it and what is gonna keep it at that baseline. Because the more you can push your limit but still recover within 24 to 36 hours, the more training you're gonna be able to get in a seven day micro cycle.

The very short answer to your question is I would say minimum three days a week of strength and two to three, ideally, sessions of cardio. But the strength can be a little bit more in terms of numbers per week than the cycling or the running, especially if you're doing it in a 20 minute HIIT session, 20 minute Tabata.

Like that is really gonna build your cardiovascular abilities. And then there's that zone two cardio that is also really important for heart health. But I think in terms of like training technique, the more technical approaches to training, it's strength and HIIT Tabata at least twice a week. - It's funny 'cause I had these roommates in college and they would always go to the gym nonstop.

And they're like, we wanna be huge, we wanna be ripped. And I think in my mind, ever since then, I've been like, well, I don't care about looking like these dudes look like. And it's been like, strength doesn't matter 'cause I don't wanna be like them. And I feel like I've ignored it to a level that's probably not healthy.

- Strength does matter. In the infinite movement game, I think strength, this is assuming you are already walking, you already do that basic element of you know how to get your heart rate up. You know, like I think your audience already gets it. If they know what Peloton is, like you probably have some minimum dose of a movement practice.

What I find is that people often go too hard on easy days and too easy on hard days. So that's another variable that we need to consider that first of all, yes, strength does matter. And it's one of the most effective ways to armor ourselves for the infinite game.

You know, it's like range of motion, being able to get up off the floor. Like there are really basic tests that we can do. And Kelly Starrett in his latest book has great examples of that and really practical ways. It's literally like, can you take off your shoe and pick it up off the floor?

Like single leg work, you'll find, you know, in the blue zones, like one of the ways that, you know, we can take from those learnings is literally just spending more time on the floor. Like I spend time on the floor with my kid. Like I don't bring her up on the couch.

I get down to her level for a lot of reasons. I'm a huge proponent of strength and going heavy enough in the strength work once you get the form down, unless you're in a rehabilitation setting or you're doing a very specific movement that requires lightweight. I'm a huge proponent of going to living in that 70 to 85% of your working max for most sets.

- If someone doesn't have a good sense of what they should be doing for strength, they're like, okay, you've convinced me. Is it home, gym? Can you do it? Class, no class? Do you need an instructor to get the form down? What's the best way for someone to just get started with strength training?

- We have beginner programs at Peloton that are prescriptive and progressively overload from week to week. Indie Spear has a great program. Olivia Amato and Maddie Nijakama created a beginner program specifically. I do think a trainer having somebody to model the movement is important as you're learning the basic squat, chest press, deadlift.

But generally speaking, when you're getting into, for example, let's say you're working for 30 seconds or you're doing 10 reps of something. By the last 10 or 20% of whatever it is you're doing, either for time or for reps, should feel tough. Not so tough that you unravel and you can barely pick up the weight.

I mean, there are places for that in lifting, but not for most general population folks needing to go there, especially not in the beginning, but it should feel tough. If you've been throwing around the same 10 pound weight for six months, put the volume up a little louder. It's not it, you're not doing it.

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That's allthehacks.com/M-I-N-T-Mobile. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at allthehacks.com/mintmobile. Okay, so we can dial things up to keep pushing ourselves. How important is variety? Like if I come up with a strength plan or maybe I even find a Peloton strength class I like, can I just do that three days a week or is it really important to be doing different things, obviously hitting all muscle groups, but can I just do the same one or two routines each week and not worry about having to change it up more than that?

- The body loves repetition, and what you're changing in very small variables are the number of reps, the amount of weight, right? So there are a lot of ways to create that progressive overload effect. So the answer is yes, you can absolutely repeat workouts. I actually think that is the best way, and that's why the programs that we've built incorporate that principle.

You can take any strength class with Peloton and it's gonna be a solid class, full body, upper body, lower body, but the key is if you find a class that you really like, take that same class once or twice a week, depending on whatever the class is, for four weeks, for six weeks, and then change it up.

I think most folks respond pretty well to a four to six week cycle. You refresh and you adapt something, some element, whether it's the amount of reps you're doing in a given period, whether it's the amount of weight, you certainly could change the movements, but your body takes a few weeks and a consistent repetition for it to start to respond and grow and strengthen.

- And on the cardio side, you mentioned HIIT and Tabata. How do you think about the I'm gonna go on a run for 30 minutes at a pace I can handle versus layering in some of those kind of accelerations, whether it's on a bike or running, I guess? - That is a really important place to start of 30 minutes of sustained effort using a conversational pace, right?

So I do love the higher intensity efforts, but most folks aren't gonna start there and they shouldn't. When I started running, it was actually a walk-run method and I would literally jog two blocks, walk a block, and it was like, okay, I'm just gonna go to the next light.

And I didn't know I was doing intervals at the time, but it was, there were a form of intervals, but I wasn't trying to demolish myself in the jog. It was literally just slightly faster than a block. That's a great place to start. 30 minutes three times a week is a really, really good goal.

That sustained effort approach is important. That's more of the zone two cardio that we do all need for heart health, but you don't wanna live there indefinitely. And one way to start to amp it up in a run, for example, is to do striders. It's 15, 20 seconds of an eight out of 10 effort.

You're definitely pushing it, but you could give more if you had to. And you tack that on to the end of the run. So let's say in your last five minutes of a 30-minute run where for the most of the workout, you could talk, you could sing along to Beyonce or whoever it is you're listening to in your ears.

For me, it's Beyonce or Taylor or M.O.P. if you're a '90s hip hop man. But then at the end, in those last five minutes, you set a watch or for the chorus, you're cooking and then you get back to that jog. And those striders remind your body and they activate different types of muscle fibers to remind your body, this is what it feels like to run fast.

And you will be uncomfortable and you have to get acquainted with that discomfort. And then there's a period of time usually for folks where you're like, oh, wow, I like that. And then they go maybe a little bit too far into that realm where every run becomes crushing intervals and you don't want the pendulum to swing that far either.

So I would say at least once a week, you wanna choose a run or a ride where you're like, I'm going hard in the paint today. I'm working eight out of 10 when it's work time, when it's effort time. That is really important because we want that tempo pace, we want that uncomfortable pace.

It doesn't have to be all out, but there are huge, huge benefits to that. - One of the most motivating things for me when it comes to biking or running is like competing with my own records or friends or things like that, which is why Peloton's been great for me on the bike.

I'm curious, like, am I crazy to every time be like out there saying, can I beat the distance I ran in 30 minutes last time? Is it good to infuse some days where it's like, don't focus on that? - Yes, you should. If you think about the best athletes in the world, they're actually very rarely competing.

They're very rarely going to that level. When you're starting out, the PRs happen more readily 'cause when you're consistently working out, you've never consistently worked out before, your body's making those adaptations. Once you've been training for a while, and you start to hit that upper echelon of your quote unquote perceived ceiling or actual physical ceiling, it doesn't really exist, but we can always nudge it up.

But that nudging that ceiling up starts to become a little tougher. And the PRs are hard won, but not every single workout should be that. Use the leaderboard, whatever motivates you. If that's what's getting you on the bike, and you're like, I'm hard charging for so-and-so today, I mean, do it, but I would rather somebody choose consistency and layer on intensity rather than go for intensity and burnout.

So for me, I can throttle at 85% for a long, long time, but I know my body, but I still choose workouts where I'm like, this is it. If I'm laid out on the floor, I'm okay with that. But most of my workouts aren't like that. Most of my workouts, I'm hovering at that eight, maybe nine out of 10.

It's very rarely I'm going to a true max. - And you talked about rest and recovery. How do you think about what to do to make sure your body recovers other than just kind of take a day off? - This is where you have to be in tune with how your body is feeling.

What does your body respond to? What foods are you eating? Fueling intentionally, getting sleep, and drinking water are the basics. Is it dope if somebody has a hyperbaric chamber? I mean, go you, that's awesome. You are oxygenated as hell, but just go to sleep. Get off your freaking phone and go to bed.

You know, it's not fancy. It's just what you do consistently. - You said fuel. How important is nutrition and what you're eating to all of this? - Hugely. Fueling intentionally, noticing how your body reacts to certain foods is massive. It is not normal at 3 p.m. every day to feel like you just can't get through the next hour without a Herculean dose of caffeine.

Those adaptations are, I think in some cases, tougher because food is so deeply personal. I mean, the act of eating, it's an intimate thing to do. So I get it. Those changes can be really tough, but that is what we call a keystone habit. How you fuel, how you move, impacts almost every other area of your life.

- And what do you think some of the most common ways people are not doing that well when it comes to food and what they're fueling their body with? - I'll speak from my own perspective 'cause there's obviously nutritionists, dieticians, all that could inform from a more medical perspective, but the key for me is eating most of the time whole and unprocessed foods.

And like most of what we have access to is processed. Like if it comes in a box, it's been processed in some way, shape, or form. I'm not saying, I mean, I get stuff from Whole Foods and I pull it off the shelf. I open boxes to eat my food, right?

Not everything is like a sprig of parsley and broccoli, but most of my foods I do try to prepare and cook in the kitchen. And I find that getting into a habit of preparing foods, even bulk preparing a handful of things and then supplementing with what you have to ease throughout your day goes a long way.

For me, I'm a plant-based athlete. I don't consume any meat or dairy and making sure that I'm getting protein is important. So plants have protein. A lot of folks are surprised to hear that, but it's making sure that I'm getting plant-based protein. For me, it's at least one gram per pound of body weight and if not more, and I'm able to do that with smoothies, with plants, legumes, nuts, beans, and then I'll make my own seitan.

I batch prepare that, so I always have it in the fridge. Tempeh, soy, my family is not gluten sensitive, so that's how we rock. - And the only other thing we didn't talk about was timing. How do you think about when to fit all these workouts in? Is it personal or is it do it first thing in the morning?

- You schedule it when you can, but you schedule it like an appointment. And I mean, you schedule it like an appointment, like your boss would fire you, like your business partner would be out, like your partner is shutting it down. I schedule my workouts, and I mean my own personal workouts, not when I'm literally paid to be there, like it's the most important meeting I have.

And you have to be nimble, life happens, kids happen, stuff happens, but then you shift it and you have to be adaptable. Maybe that 45 minute workout turns into 20 minutes. I've had, literally before Zoom calls, been like, oh my gosh, the window that I had, I've done burpees and then got onto a podcast like this and just been like, okay, I did it.

I did four minutes of burpees, here we are. And there are always little games that we can kind of play with ourselves to keep ourselves in it. Important will always be put to the side versus urgent. Urgent will gobble important. Your movement practice is important, but there are probably urgent things that are gonna come up if you don't plan accordingly.

So that framework that you're putting in the most important things of your life, it better be clear on your calendar 'cause you can talk all the talk, you can listen to this podcast a million times in a row. If you're not doing it, you're not doing it. - I imagine that there are a lot of people listening who are like, yeah, I can put it on my calendar, but it's like, I need that commitment to myself.

Any advice for people who are like, I really wanna do this, but it just doesn't seem to pick up traction or they go in spurts of, gosh, I was so active in September and then things came along and now all of a sudden, I'm maybe lucky if I run once a week.

- We have to analyze the roadblocks, right? Is it you've never woken up before 7 a.m. and now you're scheduling 5 a.m. workouts? Like, that's probably gonna be a lot of work. You wanna make it tougher to make the bad choice. You also wanna surround yourself with folks whose default behavior is your desired outcome.

You wanna run more, hang out with runners. You're listening to the running podcast. You're reading the running book. You're taking the running class with me at Peloton. You're following those folks on social media. Your ecosystem, your entertainment media diet also is gonna inform how you are feeling like you can act because community is such a linchpin in all of this.

So is it literally finding your buddy down the road and saying, hey, we're gonna get up in the morning and do this, great. Is it finding somebody virtually? I see folks in the Peloton community all the time. There are 4 a.m. workout tags. There are 5 a.m. workout tags.

There's the 10 p.m. workout tags. There are night shift workers that have found each other. I mean, there are ways. When you start believing your own BS, be wary. When you start telling yourself the story, I don't have time, replace that with it doesn't matter. And we have to release ourselves sometimes.

We have to give ourselves some freedom to release ourselves from the expectation. Especially most recently, postpartum, I had this idea, oh my gosh, I wanna do this 60-minute workout, and I had my schedule, and then my toddler and my infant were like, LOL, what are you talking about? And then I would be like, okay, I've got a pocket.

I've got 10 minutes. I don't know how long he's gonna sleep, but I'm just gonna do something. 90% of my workouts were completely interrupted, but consistently showing up to that, it moved the needle until I could get back into my routine. - It sounds like being flexible is the most important thing.

I'm thinking vacations are coming up, people are traveling for the holidays. If you have set in your mind that your workout is a very specific thing, and if you can't do that specific thing, it's off. If you're not staying at one of the hotels that has a Peloton, and you can't work out, it sounds like the biggest theme is you've gotta throw that out of the window, and say, your goal is to move.

And like, that's it. - Yes. - And if it can't be the perfect movement, it can't be the perfect exercise, who cares? Do something and just check it off the list. - 100%, that is. It's being nimble. You're showing up consistently, but you're nimble in the form or the execution.

That all or nothing approach, that super binary approach, and ambitious folks have trouble doing this, right? It's like, but I put it on my calendar, and this is the training plan, and this says I must do this today, right? It's a little bit like of a departure from what we were just talking about.

They're just shades of gray, right? So it's a departure only in the sense that it's for a temporary period of time. Think about the goal, the objective. It's your mental health, it's your physical health. Maybe for that week or two that you're traveling and you're out of your routine, it's not, you know, I'm trying to PR, I'm so focused on my Boston Marathon training or whatever the case is, right?

Like, you gotta give yourself a little bit of freedom and zooming out, but there is something that happens, particularly over the holidays, that I call the avalanche. And it's, you miss one workout, you start eating things you maybe wouldn't eat. Listen, I'm all in favor of celebration, but then you create links in the chain where it's like two days becomes five days, becomes two weeks, and you're like, oh, whatever, who cares?

Get the reins back. Talk to yourself like you would a friend. That apathy is what becomes our rabbit hole. Care enough to break the chain. For me, it's no more than two days of stuff that is totally out of my normal wheelhouse. And then I'm getting back to something that makes me feel like myself, and that's always intentional movement, even if that movement looks very, very different than my normal training schedule.

- You've posted about this challenge in December to get everyone moving. I think it's run three miles or move for 30 minutes. - Yes, every day from December 1st to December 31st, three for 31 challenge. - It's great 'cause I think so many people think, I'll do it in January, I'll do it in January, and you're like, no, no, no, let's back it up.

Do it during the hardest time, and then you can easily do it in January. - Yes, if you can commit to yourself for 31 days for what most folks is the busiest time of year, you can always do it. And the whole point of the challenge, yes, it's getting some folks moving for the first time, but most of the folks who are participating have some kind of movement practice, are kind of aware of their routines and habit building.

They've probably read "Atomic Habits." These aren't new concepts to most of the folks who are participating. It is the idea that for 31 days, when the world is asking a lot of you, you choose yourself and you show up consistently. So that is the beauty of it. It's been 11 years now that we've been doing this challenge.

Tens of thousands of folks have participated at this point, and I've seen lives change because of it. - It's funny 'cause as I thought about it, I took the commitment to the exercise as one order, and I thought about how to motivate myself. And I wanna talk a little bit about like mental toughness, but saying I wanna work out every day is actually maybe for me personally, not as motivating as saying, I'm gonna say I'm gonna work out every day, and I wanna be the person that does what I said.

So it's like, it's actually the reason I'm gonna do it might not be that I need to work out for 31 days straight. It's that if I'm gonna commit to this, I just wanna be the kind of person that's gonna do the thing I commit to. I have two kids.

I want them to know that if I say I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it. And I found that reframing things like a exercise routine as making the commitment and holding yourself accountable to the kind of person that follows through on their commitments is like a mental trick that works better than doing the thing just to do the thing.

- Oh my gosh, I love that so much. That's the next level, right? So our values are creating our habits. Our habits are creating our identities. You need to consistently engage in a habit for long enough for it to inform your identity. - I am now just someone who shows up and slays my workout.

Even on the days where I'm feeling like 5%, I'm giving 100% of the 5% that I have. And that becomes that identity. The promises that we keep to ourselves, the conversation that we're having with ourselves is the most important conversation we are gonna have. That's such an amazing thing to share because I do believe that that is the goal, is personalizing it enough.

You make it matter, you make it happen. - Some people would say I can't make exercise a part of my identity until it's a habit. And I would argue, maybe you can just say, nope, as of tomorrow, I am the kind of person who works out four days a week.

Post about it, tell your friends. You can make something your identity before you do it. And once it's there, then it's like, well, now I'm disrespecting my identity by not doing it. So I'm just trying to set myself up for a little bit more success. So I'll say it here, that in December, I am the kind of person who's going to move every day for 31 days.

So now I can't not do it. - Yep, Chris, we heard it here first. And this really, this is a perfect example of the principles that we just talked about of being adaptable, of analyzing the roadblocks. If you know that you're traveling two days before a holiday, if you know you're gonna be on a long flight, in the car all day, what's your plan?

I've done 3 for 31 for 11 years in a row. I've done miles on staircases and hotel rooms before 5 a.m. flights. I have ran up and down airport terminals looking like a wild woman and gotten my steps in. I have been the person walking up and down a flight.

What's your plan? And can you make it bite-size, right? So let's say you're doing the 30 minutes of movement approach. You can carve out a few five-minute, 10-minute chunks in a day. Don't tell me you can't. How many times were you on Instagram? You know what I mean? Give me a break.

So it's analyzing the roadblocks and it's figuring out who we are at the end of it and who we wanna be. We get to meet that version of ourselves. And for some folks that might feel like that's very esoteric, that's heady, that supercharges me. 'Cause I want Robin on 12/31 to be like, "Oh yeah, January 1st, we've been doing this.

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And when you do, please support the show and get yourself priority access to the platform by going to allthehacks.com/masterworks. That's allthehacks.com/masterworks for special access. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. All investing involves risk. See important reg A disclosures and aggregate advisory performance at masterworks.com/cd. When it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/G-E-L-T. I just wanna thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. - You mentioned a couple of flights, travel.

We both have kids. I think I'm a year ahead of you with a one-year-old and a three-year-old, which brings all kinds of variables and change schedules and demands to you. How have you adapted this movement, exercise, fitness, life to a world with two children? - Oh my gosh. Well, the jogging stroller helps.

Being able to have them just physically along for the ride is helpful. That's one. So that's more when I have my toddler. My infant isn't able to go on the jogging stroller yet. And then it's tag-teaming. Thankfully, my husband and I are really, really aligned on our goals. His movement practice is important.

My movement practice is important. And we will just figure it out. It's like I have the kids, and then he runs and does a workout. And then again, it's being adaptable. I would love to go for a 60-minute leisurely run followed by a core work, and then breath work, and then the cold plunge.

And it's like, no, I'm not doing that. Maybe it's a 20-minute hit run. Maybe it's 15 minutes. And then using the work-back approach. This is the time that I have. How can I fill it most intentionally to maximize those minutes? And then planning my week, right? So if I know, let's say, the workout that I'm gonna get on the family road trip or in the hotel is gonna look very, very different, then before I leave, I'll try to get in my barbell lifting sessions, or my long run, or whatever it is I'm trying to get in.

That way, on the weekend, if it's only body weight work, or if it's a very quick something on the Peloton hardware or the app, you know, I'm kind of planning for that. Some days, it just goes out the window. I remember last holiday, I was pregnant, and my toddler, I think, was in a crib in the bathroom, or it was an absurd hotel setup.

We had stuff over the windows. It looked very disturbing, I'm sure, to somebody who would just walk in. But time went away from us. We had to leave. I had 20 minutes to shower, get dressed, have her ready, and I literally just set a timer, and I did a three-minute AMRAP of burpees, and I've never done burpees faster, and that is still kind of my record for three minutes of burpees because I was like, I just need to do this for my own mental health.

And that is just an example of, like, if you only have a few minutes, take the few minutes. The paralysis that you're giving yourself through the analysis, just go and do it, even if it looks different than what you wished. And it's telling the folks in your lives how important your movement practice is for you.

You know, if you can rely on a community member a neighbor, an in-law, a partner, yes, that's a privilege, but they're not gonna know how to help you unless you ask for it. - Community seems really important. It seems like all of this comes back to mental strength, whether it's the strength to go or the strength to keep going.

Can you share some tactics you use to help build that mental toughness that I know you're well-known for? - (laughs) I journal about this a lot. One of the reasons I wrote "Welcome, Hustler," it's an empowerment journal filled with my mantras and prompts and questions, but my own journaling practice really informed "Welcome, Hustler." And I celebrate tiny victories.

It's a visualization practice that I developed when I was running a lot of marathons and ultramarathons. It's creating your own mental movie. It's like you are the star of the highlight reel. And it's, what, three, four moments that fill you with pride and confidence. And you can run through it as if you were watching a preview at a movie theater.

And that visualization practice, I really started more for race day, but I think it can take almost any context. It can take a business context, a relationship context, as long as you're priming yourself with a positive visual and mental and emotional trigger. So that mental movie reel, I think, is really important.

And then from a journaling perspective, it's celebrating the small victories. It's remembering, especially for ambitious folks, we're often onto the next thing before we've even had an opportunity to appreciate what got us there. A gratitude reflection prompt that helps me is what is something that you have right now that you used to wish for, like you used to dream about?

And oftentimes, I am humbled by what I wrote to write down 'cause I'm like, oh my gosh, that thing that I'm writing down is something that annoyed me just this morning. We just lose perspective really, really easily. But the mental toughness piece, a lot of it, for me, comes through my movement practice as well.

When I'm lifting weights, when I'm running distances, when I'm doing that stuff, you can't tell me anything. When I think about my personal moments of pride in lifting weights and in running, that's something that nobody can take away from you, and that informs confidence. And it's that discomfort, it's that stickiness that I'm like, ooh, I've been here before.

Like, emotionally and mentally, I've been here before. I have a toolkit that I know that I can keep going to, especially as a parent, especially to the parents out there. I have the breathwork. I'm gonna make the next best choice as it relates to my food because I wanna be fueled for greatness.

It's the movement practice, even if it looks different than it did pre-kids, pre-baby. Those are the things that I often rely on, and they give me mental acuity and bravery. - What would you tell someone if you were in their ears right now, and they're trying to pick up time?

So now I'm gonna try to go for a little further, go a little faster. You could just stop. No one's holding a gun to your head while you're going on a run saying, keep going. What's going on? Are you playing that trailer back in your head, or what are you doing to push yourself to keep going when things are hard?

Or even to get started, to go out the door. - I mean, to go out the door, it's just start. It's meet yourself where you are, especially for folks who have stopped and are restarting. I think that's sometimes the toughest 'cause then you're comparing yourself to your former self, and that's tough.

The beauty of it is you know you can get back to some element of that, even if it's not your quote-unquote glory days. But I call it like dreamscaping. I do this often in a journal. It's like, who do I wanna be? What experiences do I wanna have? How do I wanna feel when I get there?

And I try to detail that as specifically as possible, naming it and claiming it. But then, from that dream that can be as ethereal as you want, what are the actions? Literally write down the action words and make a plan. A dream without a deadline is a fairy tale, and I'm not rocking with Cinderella.

That is not my homegirl. And so, it's important for me to just take some semblance of action. I think action is actually a huge, huge antidote to anxiety, and focus can take the charge out of fear. And it doesn't need to be in grand, sweeping strokes. It can be super small.

Most of the inflection points that we have in our lives are totally boring. They're subtle, little inflection points, and we are those thousands of small decisions. - And are you tracking those decisions to feel like you're making progress when most people might just completely brush over them? - I mean, to a certain extent.

I'm not super mired in every tech watch and every data point. What gets measured does get managed, right? So, I do think that numbers matter, but I think that there's a tipping point where you're so in that and so in the metrics that it can actually do more harm than good.

So, you have to decide your own relationship with that and see, is it helping or not? - Are you setting big, ambitious goals for yourself in life? Is that part of this practice? - Yes. I always have goals down the pipeline. Sure, I sure do. I'm a very goal-oriented person.

- How are you tracking them? How many are you having? I'm curious because I know you've written a lot about kind of designing an ideal life. And it's like, how ambitious are you in that design? I've heard some people talk about, you should be designing this 10X version and forget about everything in between.

And some people design where they wanna be next month first. - I think it's both. And I do a kind of a big, I would say around four times a year, I do vision boards and very much like business planning. I had a strategy sync with my team recently.

What can we do right now? What can we accomplish within the year? What's the 10-year goal? So, I think you dream big and as far out as feels appropriate, but you better start with today 'cause that's what matters. And then do it again and then move the needle and get uncomfortable and do it again.

And we're literally doing that forever. I am playing the infinite game, but having finished lines of my own making are very motivating to me. - How do you make sure that you're enjoying the journey? Because sometimes these goals are really far out. - Ooh, I'm not a patient person, but I've been doing this long enough to know that progress is often invisible.

So, I just made the choice to fall in love with who I was becoming along the way and have little points of enchantment. You know, play little games with myself. (laughs) My husband laughs at me, but I'll be walking down the street and I'm like, all right, I know how long it takes to get to Sixth Avenue.

I'm gonna see if I can do it like two seconds faster today. And I just play these games with myself and it matters to no one. Literally nobody in the world is gonna know it but me. That's just the kind of stuff that keeps me enchanted with the game.

And having run 27 marathons, the finish line doesn't matter. I wanna meet the finish line. I respect the finish line, but the training has always been so much more important. - And I think about the way you talk about what you do now and it feels very authentic to who you are.

Like I can see it in our conversation. And I'm guessing if you reflect on decades past that wasn't you, what do you think was helpful for you to find that version of yourself now that might've been, I don't even know if it was imaginable back then. (laughs) - Well, I have to say, yeah, when I was wearing like ill-fitting Ann Taylor suits at my law firm in the 2000s.

(laughs) Oh, honey, I don't know where the swagger was, but she had to work hard to find it. I started to befriend myself on the runs, frankly. I was working 80 hours a week as a corporate litigator. I would steal little pockets of time to run and start to lift weights and started to cycle and things like that.

And I really liked who I was when I was doing those things, even when I was uncomfortable. And I started to become very acutely aware of the conversation in between my ears when I started ultra training, especially. You're really aware of those thoughts get loud. And instead of trying to push the thoughts away, I got curious.

We all have the little whispers of a goal, of something that we wanna pursue, maybe something that we shouldn't be doing. We know deeply, but there's a lot of noise. And for me, the ultra training helped tune out some of that noise. And I started to turn the whispers into roars by consistently training, putting myself in uncomfortable situations, starting to trust myself more.

And I think it was born from that. - And do you think the same could be true for someone while they're painting or some other kind of hobby or interest that could one day be their career? - I think one of the most important pursuits as adults that children do innately are pay attention to moments of flow.

You know, there's a lot of research in books about flow state and all that. And the flow state for me, how I can best describe it, is losing track of time when you really feel in alignment with your skillset. And it's not the doom scrolling loose track of time.

And it doesn't have to be a creative pursuit, right? Like you could break code, you could be in spreadsheets and you're just like, this is my jam. And it's not necessarily gonna feel great. I think we misunderstand that passion often feels like frustration. There are many points in my day that I am completely frustrated 'cause things aren't moving fast enough or I'm not working hard enough.

It's still an alignment with my skillset and my values and the rocket ship that I'm trying to build. - I mean, it's probably 'cause you care so much. - And it is because I care so much. And I wanna live a life engulfed in those flames. And the important thing for me is, especially when I left law, I made a commitment that I loved being in flow state so much, that would be my goal.

I remember one, I had a two-year goal of like, what projects, commitments, experiences, partnerships are gonna maximize flow. And I got home from a long day at the office. It's like 11 p.m. I opened up the notes app on my phone and I wrote down the exact. And when I say the exact, the exact job I have now at Peloton.

And this is before I had never met anyone related to the company. So getting specific, becoming more self-aware, telling anyone who will listen what that dream is and getting better at what you're already good at are all important things. - It's funny, as you were talking about that flow state, it made me think, for people trying to figure out what that thing could be for them, it's like, what's a thing that gets in the way of you doing something you want to do?

And I say this because there are times where my wife and I are like, oh, I'm gonna cook dinner tonight. And then I show up like 20 minutes late. And I'm like, I genuinely planned on cooking dinner. It wasn't that I didn't think dinner was important. It's that I just got into this state where I more or less just lost track of time, but not because I didn't care about the commitment.

Obviously, there are times where we don't do things 'cause we just don't care. It's like, what's that thing that can get you to do something, to break your own commitment to yourself? And I would say spend time on that. Time thinking about it, journaling, writing, just try to figure out what it is and then just relieve yourself from the expectation that it will be your full-time job tomorrow.

- Yes, exactly. Just start doing it. - And is journaling a big part of all of this for you? - Yeah, my journaling practice has changed over the years. Since having kids, it used to be part of my morning routine. Now it's kind of getting back to my morning routine.

Not that my son sleeps through the night, but I released myself from this. I defined what consistency meant to me as it related to journaling. And I think that's another important point. We don't all have to have a scribe and it's Ben Franklin's morning pages, you know, for hours by candlelight.

You decide. And so journaling in the past year has been two to three minutes. I'll often use one of the prompts from my own journal and that it's just planting seeds, planting seeds, planting seeds, see what comes up. It might not be fruitful for a long time. Your season of harvest might not be coming yet.

You might be right now just planting the seeds, planting the seeds, but just keep planting. - And what kind of big goals do you have coming forward? - Well, definitely as it relates to the food space, to cooking, to lifestyle products and projects and publications. I'm excited to get that out into the world.

I love fashion. So that's something that I wanna continue exploring, you know, licensing deals with partners that I'm really proud to work with. And of course, continuing at Peloton and all the great work we do there. - That's a lot of things to be excited about, to be working on.

How do you balance all of that excitement and passion and flow states with your other passion of your family? How do you think about that as an ambitious person? - I mean, I'm still figuring it out, right? For me, it is crucial to only say yes to things that feel like a hell yes.

If I even get that smidge of like, I'm not sure I wanna do this. It's a no, it is an immediate no. And I don't mean like, go to the dentist. I don't mean like the stuff, like, you know, pay taxes. Like not the stuff you have to do.

I mean, a lot of it comes in the form of the social commitments, the agreeing to bring the thing. No, no, thank you. I'm not available, period. - And is that the guiding principle of the way you structure your days? - I say no to most things, yes. I own my no to protect my yes.

I communicate very clearly what it is that I want and need. I have now a great team, right? So it's not just me. It's not just me on the home front. It's not just me on the business front. I'm not trying to do everything. I shouldn't do everything. And I don't pretend like I do.

I know what I'm good at. I'm willing to say I don't know. I'm willing to change my mind. I think that takes an immense confidence. I think the most confident leaders are those who are willing to say, I don't know. And listen, those are, you know, aspects of my day-to-day life that make everything possible.

And I'm sure I'm gonna make missteps. I probably already have recently. And I'll just keep learning. - When it comes to learning, how important are mentorship, reading, other forms of learning for you? Where do you spend your time growing? - Oh, well, you know, I think it's so cool that we can really be mentored by folks who we've never met now, right?

So in creating my masterclass on mental toughness, that was a way to create that educational hub and allow folks to spend time with me, you know, in a way that scales. And similarly, I'm spending time with some of the greatest minds in the world, whether it's through their podcasts, like this one or Rich Roll or Human Lab or whoever, you know, these folks who I'm just like, wow, I get to learn from you.

And for me, listening to information is a great way for me personally to take in information. And I probably, on my walks, I'm almost always listening to something, to enrich growth mindset, entrepreneurship, parenting, like stuff that I want to move the needle a little bit and learn from those greatest minds.

- Where can people that want to stay in touch with you and see all this stuff find you? - I am Raven Arzon. My website is ravenarzon.com. Check out three for 31, the number three, four, 31. And that is the December challenge that we do this year and every year.

And of course you can see me at Peloton. - Awesome. I'll link all that in the show notes. I will be there for the challenge this year. I hope everyone listening joins as well. - Amazing. Thank you. - Thanks for being here. Wow, that was a fantastic conversation. I feel extra motivated to get out right now, which is probably good because I am serious about that three for 31 challenge.

I welcome you all to join me and try to get yourself moving every single day of December. Also, if you celebrated Thanksgiving last week, I hope you had a wonderful time. It gave me a moment to be so thankful for everything in life right now. I really appreciate all of you and helping make this my dream job.

I'm so often in that flow state Robin talked about when I'm working on all the hacks. So I am so incredibly fortunate. That's it for this week. I will see you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) you