Peloton Rides: Hiding, Managing, and Data Integrity

How do I delete a Peloton ride? A Comprehensive Guide

Peloton does not offer a direct "delete" function for individual completed rides. Instead, you can effectively remove a ride from your visible history by marking it as "hidden" through your Peloton touchscreen or the mobile app.

Understanding Peloton's Ride History Management

Many fitness platforms, including Peloton, prioritize the integrity and completeness of user workout data. This approach often means that once a workout is logged and completed, it becomes a permanent part of your activity history. While this is beneficial for tracking progress, earning badges, and maintaining streaks, it can be frustrating if you wish to remove a specific ride, perhaps due to an accidental start, an incomplete session you don't want to count, or simply a desire to curate your personal feed.

Peloton's system does not include a "delete" button in the traditional sense for completed workouts. However, it provides a "hide" function, which serves as the primary method for managing rides you no longer wish to see in your personal history or feed. This distinction is crucial: hiding a ride removes it from your view, but it does not permanently erase it from Peloton's backend data.

Step-by-Step Guide: Hiding a Peloton Ride

The process for hiding a ride is straightforward and can be performed from both your Peloton touchscreen and the Peloton mobile application.

On Your Peloton Touchscreen

1. Navigate to Your Profile: From the home screen, tap on your username in the bottom left corner to access your profile.
2. Access Your Ride History: Select the "History" tab. This will display a chronological list of all your completed workouts.
3. Locate the Ride to Hide: Scroll through your history to find the specific ride you wish to hide.
4. Select the Ride: Tap on the ride's entry to open its detailed summary page.
5. Find the "Hide" Option: On the ride summary page, look for the "..." (three dots) icon, often located near the top right or bottom of the ride details. Tap this icon.
6. Confirm Hiding: A menu will appear with options. Select "Hide Ride." You may be prompted to confirm your decision.

Using the Peloton App (iOS/Android)

1. Open the Peloton App: Launch the application on your smartphone or tablet.
2. Go to Your Profile: Tap on your profile icon, typically located in the bottom right corner of the screen.
3. Access Your Workouts: From your profile page, select "Workouts" to view your complete ride history.
4. Select the Desired Ride: Scroll through your workout list and tap on the ride you want to hide.
5. Tap the "..." Menu: On the ride's detailed summary screen, look for the "..." (three dots) icon, usually in the top right corner. Tap it.
6. Choose "Hide Ride": From the pop-up menu, select "Hide Ride." Confirm when prompted.

What Happens When You Hide a Ride?

When you hide a Peloton ride, several things occur:

• Removal from Your Feed: The hidden ride will no longer appear in your personal activity feed on your touchscreen, the mobile app, or the Peloton website. This helps declutter your history.
• Exclusion from Personal Stats: For some summary metrics on your profile (e.g., total output for a specific period), hidden rides may be excluded from the visible calculations, depending on how Peloton's interface presents the data. However, the ride's underlying data generally remains.
• No Impact on Badges or Streaks: If the ride contributed to a badge or a workout streak before it was hidden, that achievement typically remains intact. Hiding a ride usually does not retroactively remove earned accomplishments.
• Potential for Unhiding: Hidden rides are not permanently gone. You can typically view and "unhide" them by accessing your profile settings or a specific "Hidden Rides" section (if available) within the app or website, allowing them to reappear in your history.

Considerations Before Hiding a Ride

Before you hide a ride, consider the following:

• Data Integrity: Are you comfortable with the ride data still existing on Peloton's servers, even if it's not visible to you?
• Accidental Starts: If you started a ride by accident, hiding it is the best solution to remove it from your visible history without impacting other data.
• Incomplete Workouts: For workouts you didn't finish, hiding them can prevent them from skewing your perceived consistency or average metrics.
• Future Reference: Will you ever need to reference this specific ride again for personal tracking or comparison? Hidden rides are harder to find.

Why Peloton Doesn't Offer a Direct "Delete" Function

The absence of a direct "delete" function is a deliberate design choice by Peloton, common across many fitness tracking platforms, primarily for these reasons:

• Data Integrity and Analytics: Maintaining a complete record of all user activities allows Peloton to provide accurate long-term statistics, power features like "Just Work Out" history, and conduct robust data analysis to improve their platform and content.
• Accidental Deletion Prevention: A "delete" button carries the risk of users accidentally erasing valuable workout data, which could lead to frustration and support requests. The "hide" function offers a reversible solution.
• Social Accountability: For platforms with social features, completely deleting a ride could disrupt the activity feeds of followers or impact challenges where that ride was logged.

Alternative Strategies for Managing Your Ride Data

If the "hide" function doesn't fully meet your needs, consider these alternative strategies:

• Tagging and Notes: Use the built-in tagging and notes features to categorize rides (e.g., "warm-up," "bad day," "test ride"). This helps you quickly filter or understand the context of specific workouts without hiding them.
• Filtering: Utilize the filtering options in your workout history to focus on specific types of rides, instructors, or durations, effectively pushing unwanted rides out of immediate view.
• Focus on Aggregate Data: Instead of obsessing over individual rides, shift your focus to weekly, monthly, or yearly summaries. Minor anomalies from unwanted rides will have a negligible impact on long-term trends.
• Strava Integration: If you use Strava, you have more granular control over individual activities, including the ability to delete them from your Strava feed. You can choose to automatically upload your Peloton rides to Strava and manage them there, while simply hiding them on Peloton.

Conclusion

While Peloton does not provide a true "delete" option for completed rides, the "hide" function offers an effective and reversible way to remove unwanted workouts from your personal activity feed. Understanding this distinction and utilizing the available tools allows you to maintain a clean and relevant workout history that aligns with your fitness goals and personal preferences.