The camera that can help you get stronger: Peloton Guide Review

What is the Peloton Guide?

The Peloton Guide is a device that plugs into your TV and transforms any room into an interactive training area. This device helps you with strength training by tracking your movements during workouts. It allows you to see yourself on your TV as you exercise. The idea is, if you can see yourself, you can adjust your form to improve the quality of your workouts.

Peloton has offered strength classes for years on their app, but this is the first time they’ve released hardware dedicated to strength workouts. 

Strength training can be a little intimidating. Peloton Guide makes strength training a little easier for beginners in a few different ways. If you want to know what you’re in for before you start a class, you can view the “Class Plan” which breaks down all the moves you’ll do. You can see what happens in the warmup and the workout and how long each exercise lasts. Plus there’s a 360 degree video demonstration of EACH move so you can try them out before the workout. This can be helpful if you spot a movement or exercise in the Class Plan that you’re not familiar with.

How does the Peloton Guide work?

The Peloton Guide sits underneath or above your TV and attaches to a magnetic stand. It comes with a power adapter and HDMI cable. Once it is plugged into your TV, it will walk you through a short setup tutorial, showing you where to place your mat, and how to angle your camera for the best results.

Once you launch the software, the interface looks very similar to what you would see on the Peloton app. There’s a list of available classes of all kinds. But you can also find classes that specifically work with Peloton Guide. 

You control the Guide with a remote control to choose your classes, change views, pause, or skip forward and back. The remote has a comfortable rubberized grip and is very durable. So if you accidentally step on it during your workout, it should be okay.

When you launch the guide, you find familiar instructors and summaries of all the classes. You’ll also see features about each class that can help you decide if that class is right for your training plan on any given day.

Choosing Your Peloton Guide Workouts

Before you start a workout, it’s nice to know what’s coming up so you can get mentally prepared. With the Peloton Guide you can view the “Class Plan” which breaks down all the moves you’ll be doing. You can see what happens in the warmup and the workout and for how long each exercise lasts. There is also a 360-degree video demonstration of each move so you can try them out before the workout. This can be helpful if you spot a movement or exercise in the Class Plan that you’re not familiar with.

Customize Your View

There are lots of options for customizing what shows up on your TV screen. You can choose to have a large video of the trainer, with only a small window of yourself working out. Or if you want to work on your form, you can increase the size of your window. Extra data like who else is taking the class, your heart rate information, the music playlist, and more can be hidden based on your tastes. And at any time you can choose to hide your workout window or even close the camera privacy slider entirely.

Working Out With The Peloton Guide

There are some advantages to being able to see yourself on screen while you’re working out. First, it’s an easy way to monitor and improve your form. Just like having a giant mirror in an exercise room, seeing your body on screen can help you make minor adjustments to match the form of the instructors so you can improve your technique.

A surprisingly influential aspect of Peloton Guide is their Movement Tracker. That’s the little animation that appears in the corner of your screen and slowly fills up as you do your workout. At the beginning of a workout, it’s no problem to “fill” the Movement Tracker for the 12-15 reps necessary. But by the end, you have a streak going. And even though your muscles may be tired, you’ve made it SO far into the workout without failing to fill the Movement Tracker, there’s extra motivation to push through those final reps even if you’re tired.

More metrics for your workout

Using the Peloton Guide with the Heart Rate Band adds further metrics to your workout session, allowing you to see your heart rate zone throughout the workout so you know whether to increase or decrease intensity to stay within your target range. It’s similar to the data you would get when wearing an Apple Watch during a workout, so if you already have the watch, you don’t need the band. 

After your workouts, you can review which muscle groups were used, which can help you decide what type of class to take the following day. Peloton Guide will also make recommendations for which classes to take next based on your previous workout. On screen this is represented by the Body Activity graphic, which shows muscles glowing in intensity from dark blue to white based on the intensity you’ve worked out particular muscle groups over the course of the past seven days.

Is the Peloton Guide worth it?

Strength workouts can be intimidating. Coming up with a plan of what to do during your exercise time, how to target certain muscles, and how to move through exercises without injury can all be barriers to strength training. The Peloton guide helps to remove some of these barriers.

Like any fitness gadget, app, or exercise plan, the Peloton Guide only works, if you stick with it. With thoughtful choices like breaking down workouts into individual moves and durations for each part of the workout (Class Plans), providing motivation and credit throughout your workout as you complete various stages (filling the Movement Tracker), and providing insight not just into individual workouts with things like heart rate zone tracking, but your overall workout week, can be really helpful for you to get into a good strength training routine by passing off the planning to the Peloton Guide.

In Canada, the Peloton Guide retails for $395, plus you will need a monthly subscription to access workouts (though if you already have a Peloton Bike or Tread you don’t need a separate membership). Everyone’s exercise budgets are different. And there are other apps that allow you to use your phone as a camera that screens your TV. But in terms of convenience and value, the Peloton Guide is very simple and satisfying to use, even in very small spaces. 

Overall, the Peloton Guide is extremely helpful in delivering strength training classes to both beginners and experienced fitness enthusiasts and removes several hang-ups that may prevent you from enjoying a strength workout.