NYC NOW - A Calisthenics Lesson From New York's Playground Fitness Scene

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

New York City's parks have long doubled as free, open air gyms, and the tradition stretches back to groups like The Bartendaz, who started training on playground bars in the Bronx and Brooklyn in the early 2000s. WNYC producer James Ramsey headed to Chelsea Park to get a lesson in that scene from Brooklyn-born trainer Danny Kavadlo, and shared what he learned with us. Photo: Walter Wuthmann Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] Bronx Legionnaires’ outbreak death toll rises to 2NYPD expects daily UN General Assembly protests as NYC street closures beginNYC deploys robotoilets. The public bathrooms have a strict 10-minute time limit. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm NYC Now producer, Eru Ekpinobe, in for Jene Pierre. I asked him, how long have you been doing this, thinking that he's been years into this routine, and that's why he's the strongest man alive. And he said, about five weeks. The culture around public playground workouts in New York City is real. And on today's show, we went to one

to see how New Yorkers are getting serious workouts in the city for free. But first, here are a few have. guidelines were following. City Health Commissioner Alistair Martin says a second person has died in the Legionnaires disease outbreak in the South Bronx. This outbreak is affecting parts of Melrose and Morissania. And you might remember that earlier this year, 10 cooling towers initially tested positive for Legionella bacteria, including ones at Yankee Stadium and Lincoln Hospital.

Martin says those towers have since been disinfected. A separate Legionnaires outbreak on the Upper East Side killed 11 people this summer. summer. Big disruptions are coming to the city as world leaders arrive for the UN General Assembly. Officials are reminding New Yorkers to take the subway if you can. The heaviest gridlock kicks off Sunday, with street closures and hundreds of motorcades expected around Manhattan. Near the UN, 1st Avenue will be closed from 41st to 48th streets, and parts of 42nd through 47th streets will be closed between 1st and 2nd avenues. Expect some close. on the FDR too, plus disruptions to some ferry and bus service.

The city says subway service is your best bet, especially if you're heading around Midtown. A new pilot program by the Mamdani administration is rolling out 17 modular public restrooms in all five boroughs. Locations include Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, Malcolm X Plaza and Delancey Street in Manhattan, Astoria Boulevard in Queens, Avenue C Plaza in Brooklyn, and the North Shore Esplanade on Staten Island. on Staten Island. You can get in with a phone or a tap card, and to keep people from lingering or camping out inside, the toilets are programmed with a strict 10-minute limit.

Attention, your use time has expired. The door is opening now. After that, the door will open automatically, whether you're ready or not. Officials say that staff gets alerted if someone stays inside after the system tries to kick them out. You can read more about these stories on our news site, gotamist.com. Up next, Janay speaks with WNYC producer James Ramsey

about how to get a good free workout in on a New York City playground. New York City is one of the most walkable cities in the country, but that doesn't mean you don't need to work out, now, does it? And like everything else in this city, that can get pretty expensive, depending on how boogey you want to get about it. But also like everything else in this city, there's a deal, if you know where to look. And there's a certain style of working out that's been pious.

popularized by fitness geeks across the city. Back in the early 2000s, groups like the bartenders started training on playground bars in places like the Bronx and Brooklyn, turning body weight routines into something communal in public. Parks like Tompkins Square, Lincoln Terrace and St. Mary's are still considered legendary spots for street workouts. WMYC's James Ramsey went looking for someone who could trade him in that style of working out, and he found him at a playground in Chelsea. Hey, James, welcome to the show. What's up, Jeney? Well, I know you said that you were going through like a midlife crisis. I did say that. I think that was an incendiary thing to say I'm not

going through a midlife crisis. I'm about to turn 37. But it is true that, and I've been told, you know, by my physician, by my parents, by my wife, over the years that as you get older, you need to start getting serious about strength training. Absolutely. And I'm, I think, disposed to being a scrawny guy to begin with. And so it doesn't bode well for me if I don't get serious about pushups and squats now. And so part of the inspiration was, oh, boy, I really need to get serious about putting on some strength so that decades down the line, hopefully I have a little more bulk on me and a little more, you know, strength to keep me going. But you're saying, like, get serious about it. Have you ever started, like, the whole bodybuilding

thing? No. I mean, and as you said, part of it is gyms are expensive, gyms are intimidating, and if you've ever done a presidential fitness test, it hurts the next day. So it's a hurdle in my head of, you know, every once in a while I'll feel motivated to get on the living room floor and do some pushups. And then the next day, I'm like, am I going to keep that routine going? Nope. But a few things, as I said, I'm getting older. In addition, our colleague Walter Woodman, did a story a couple months ago about a battle over the Tompkins Square Park pull-up bars. Yeah, I saw that. They need to be relocated to renovate the nearby kitty pool. And I'm reading this. And honestly, I'm agnostic on the issue.

I don't need to share my opinion on that. But while I was reading that, I did think to myself, pull-up bars. I should try that. And incidentally, they just renovated the park right by my house in Bay Ridge. And they added a fancy new, you know, free outdoor calisthenics setup for adults. And so I said, you know what? I could try and get out there a couple days a week. I don't know where to start.

So I went back to Walter's story, and right there on, you know, the front picture is a picture of this trainer guy. Yeah, tell me about this trainer. Who is he? How's it going? It's going great. Hey, James. I called him up. I can tell by that shake, you know what you're doing.

His name is Danny Cavadlow. He is a Brooklyn native and a lifelong calisthenics enthusiast and a professional trainer. And he, sure enough, believes and told me that strength training is, extremely important as we age. In order to live the way we need to live and feel the way we need to feel, you got to do your squats. You got to do your pull-ups. He told me, you know, not only was he not going to a gym as a kid, he didn't even necessarily have like a calisthenics playground like this. He was just on the floor of his house doing push-up contest with his brothers. We didn't have equipment or anything then, so we used our bodies to get strong. He's really

passionate about this stuff, so I felt very comfortable with him out there as my expert. Yeah. And you guys met up at Chelsea Park. What did you all do? Well, the first thing that Danny told me, which I found extremely reassuring, was he goes, you know, James, we're going to focus on three exercises, the push up, the squat and the pull up, which I was very grateful for considering that one impediment was in my head was like, oh, my gosh, if this is going to be an eight-step routine that I'm never going to be able to remember or do properly. So just being able to focus on three things, three things that are and can be extremely difficult, but just three things. Let's start with push-ups. So the first he had me do was a push-up. All right, let's start off on the ground with both your hands flat. Good. Keep your elbow straight and your feet together.

I would say this was the one that was easiest for me. I can do 10, not to brag. Oh, he's got it. Yeah, presidential fitness test. He's got it. He also showed me, you know, one of the concerns with calisthenics is like if you start getting really buff and good at it, but you're not going to move on to heavy weightlifting. Well, how do you keep getting stronger or better?

And the answer to that question is you stick your feet up on like this bench platform to make all the weight rush to your head. And then it's a lot harder to do push-ups. So maybe one day I'll graduate to that. The second was the squat, which sort of similarly, depending on how low you want to go or how many reps you do, you can switch up the difficulty of it. This one I also really appreciated because, you know, I said to him, when I think of calisthenics, I think of, buff chest, jacked arms, and I'm not so sure what happens to the lower body. And he said, he was like, listen, you know, we get a bad rap. They say us Calisana's guys got no legs.

You can train your legs without any external resistance. I'm going to start with the king of all lower body exercises, and that is the squat. And I did 20 of them, and yes, it really hurt in a good way. It burned, I should say. Finally, the pull-up. And this is definitely the hardest. And he said to me, you know, step one is just to get up on the bar and to hang for just 30 seconds. Once we're able to do this hang for 30 seconds, I would say anyone is pretty good doing a pull-up.

He said, make sure you have no shoulder injuries going into this. And I was hanging, legs straight, core engaged. And I did too. So that's not bad. Thank you so much. I felt really good about myself. Good work, James. That was tough.

So you were in the park for, what, about four? 40 minutes doing these exercises with an expert, glutes, everything's burning. You're feeling good? You know what you're doing out there? Do you think you're an expert at this point? No, although I will say I was extremely fortunate to have an expert walking me through all of this. One thing that I said to him was that I had been nervous about form and the idea that if I'm not doing one of these workouts exactly right, that I'm either not going to see the results or that potentially I'm going to hurt my. back or something.

I like to stay away from right and wrong. There's different ways of doing things that we could get a different yield from doing them. Those push-ups were awesome. And, you know, he was really reassuring about having perfect form was not something to freak out about. All right. So James actually got through his first playground workout successfully, but he wasn't the only one out there that day. Like I said, up top, this is a New York City activity. When we come back, find out who else James was doing pull-ups with?

in Chelsea Park. Stick around. Welcome back to NYC now. So before the break, WNYC's James Ramsey told us about facing aging head-on by using New York City's free outdoor playground gyms instead of a regular gym. So James, you weren't the only one out there that day working out in Chelsea Park. Who else did you meet? It was a great scene. I mean, it was everybody.

There were a couple seniors doing exercises where they're like leaning against one of the parallel bars. there was a yuppie couple who rolled through for like 90 seconds and appeared to do some push-ups and get out of there. A 13-year-old I was hanging out with, he was doing some squats and told me he was preparing to try out for baseball season. And then I went up and I talked to, you know, one guy who really seemed to know what he was doing,

who was a delivery truck driver who was there on his work break. His name was Gregory Cowan, and he told me his story. I am 35 now, be 36 in a few weeks. I do got four children, three boys. So, and they're in sports. My oldest is 14, and he's just about as tall as me now. So when I, when I see that, it just reminds me like, listen, there's still more. There's still more to go, you know?

And he told me himself that he's not really a gym person and that he had sort of found going to a gym to be either tedious or intimidating. And the one other very cool thing that he said when I asked him, you know, how long have you been doing this, thinking that, you know, he's been years into this routine and that's why he's the strongest man alive. And he said, about five weeks. Oh, wow. Did you go to the gym before?

My personal lifestyle is, I'm not a gym rat, no. Got it. Does it feel like, are you surprised by how quickly? Because I'm watching you, and I was like, this guy knows what he's doing. You're right behind him. So I'm right behind. I could do this too. Yeah.

And one of the things about it was sort of, you know, as I mentioned you earlier, Jene, it's like day one of push-ups the next day. You might be sore and you might be discouraged. But if surprisingly quickly, if you kind of push through that and do try and build, like I said, two to three days a week, you push through that initial barrier. And now it's just a part of your life. And so, you know, I was watching them and I was like, man, I'm five weeks away from being you. Yeah, you are. Did Gregory share any advice? Yes.

Do what you can. Okay. He said, you know, he had been watching me. And he was like, if you can do two pull-ups, do two pull-ups. If it's three push-ups, do three until you get to four. Strict, do them the right way. Don't cheat them. Legs straight, like the gentleman was here telling you, keep your legs straight.

But don't focus on the people who's doing 50 pushups one time. Go at your pace and, you know, trust your limits. And you will quicker than you expect maybe start to get in really good condition. I can guarantee you that that would not happen at a gym. They would throw banana peels at me. It's like, get out of here, you plead. You don't know what you're doing. So, James, how are you feeling about that midlife crisis you were talking about?

Oh, I'm feeling great. You know, I feel like I'm shaving years off, you know, every time I get out there and squat. No, I've been, you know, a few days now to the park by my house. I basically own the place. So, you know, if anyone wants to come through, Altshead Park in Bay Ridge, shout out, I'm not a trainer, but I'll be your buddy. All right, that's WMYC's James Ramsey. Ready to be your buddy out there, starting his own calisthenics crew. Something like that.

Thank you, Jenae. And thank you for listening to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. See you next time.