The Health Diaries

Why Robin Arzón, Peloton’s VP of Fitness, Thinks Balance Is Bullshit

‘Excellence is the most important habit you can curate in life because it requires doing things you don’t want to do and getting uncomfortable on a daily basis.’

There are many ways to live a healthy life. The Health Diaries is a weekly series about the habits that keep notable people living well.

Robin Arzón is one of the most famous faces of Peloton, a New York-based startup that sells stationary bikes and treadmills, and streams live workouts onto their screens to users around the world. Arzón’s not only one of the most popular instructors (she’s racked up over 237 thousand Instagram followers), but she’s now the company’s vice president of fitness programming.

Arzón — who used to be a full-time lawyer — teaches classes for Peloton, both digitally and on-site in New York, all while modeling for photoshoots, managing her own brand sponsorships, and helping to direct Peloton’s strategy. Oh, and she still manages to make time to train for and run ultramarathons.

This week, Arzón talks to Elemental about her 17-ingredient smoothie, her passion for excellence as a habit, and how she fits her marathon training miles between meetings during busy work days.

The Type A lawyer in me can’t go to bed without an alarm clock. But even though I set it, I usually don’t need it. I wake up anywhere between 6 to 7:30 a.m. most days. On the weekends, if I’m lucky, I’ll sleep until eight — but I’m usually “up and at ‘em” early.

The first thing I do in the morning is drink an H2O cocktail. It’s lemon, room temperature water, apple cider vinegar, and Himalayan sea salt. I actually drink that before I even brush my teeth, straight out of bed, because I find that it really refreshes and hydrates me. I don’t drink coffee, so I get my energy just by hydrating myself in the morning. Honestly, I think a lot of folks don’t even listen to their bodies in the morning; they go straight for the coffee instead of understanding that there might be non-caffeinated ways to get an energy boost.