In NYC, a New Generation of Fitness Buffs Inspires Outdoor Workouts

In the haze of a fall sunset, dozens gathered at a jungle gym at Macombs Dam Park in the Bronx. The sun crept below the horizon, casting an amber hue over the more than 50 people there, some doing push-ups, others pull-ups, a handful running laps around a track in the shadow of Yankee Stadium.

It was Sept. 30, the 15th consecutive Motivational Monday held at the park. People had traveled from as far as Long Island and Yonkers to do one thing together: work out. With iPhones set up on tripods to capture the physical activity, a crowd began to form near the monkey bars and a count off began.

“One, two, three … come on! You can do better than that!” a young man yelled into a megaphone, urging on the person hanging from the pull-up bar. With his shouted encouragements, he was putting out a wider message to others in the park: We are here to push you.

A year ago, the man, Jonathan Perez, went to the park to start working out after a tough breakup.

“I started off running every day,” Mr. Perez, 19, said while sitting on a bench beside the track. “When I was running, all I could think about was how tired I was. My mind wasn’t anywhere else.”

As Mr. Perez ran lap after lap to get over his heartbreak, the jungle gym kept calling out to him.

“I’m looking at the bars every day,” he recalled. “One day I’m just like, ‘Let me do a pull-up or something,’ and it started from there.”

Outdoor workouts have long been popular in New York. In a stressful city, where a gym membership can cost thousands of dollars a year and apartments typically don’t have square footage to spare for weight machines, you could do worse than getting the blood pumping at one of the more than 1,000 public playgrounds. And with children back in school, freeing up the equipment, fall is the peak season for park workouts. The weather also helps.

“You don’t think about anything else when you are cold,” Mr. Perez said.

Mr. Perez began working out after his runs every day. In January, he started posting his workouts to his Instagram account, where he said his follower count had more than doubled, to 54,000, since he started Motivational Mondays. He caught the attention of his now best friend, Christopher Sanchez, who lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and said he was desperate for an escape from the gang violence that plagued his neighborhood. He came across Mr. Perez’s videos on Instagram and sent him a message.

“I didn’t even think he would text me back, but he did and we met up,” Mr. Sanchez said. “We clicked as soon as we met each other.”

From left, Benny Martinez at the bar; a Bronx student joins the men for a workout after school every Monday; Dauylyn Castro and Kayson, his son, bonding together during the group workouts.

That was June 24 — the first Motivational Monday. Soon Mr. Perez’s videos started to reach a wider audience, and more people started showing up to Macombs Dam Park hoping to work out.

Stephen Faiella, 30, a real estate agent, said he had changed his work schedule to make sure he could make it to Motivational Mondays.

“Me being a little bit older than everybody, I found my way a little late in life, so when I see these people doing what they are doing at their age, I have to come and support,” he said, shirtless and fresh off the pull-up bar.

“No matter where you’re from, you come here and everybody is the same,” said Mr. Faiella, who travels to the Bronx from Bethpage, on Long Island, for the positivity. “We get the workout and we teach each other life lessons. I have to miss work for something like that.”

Suddenly, the crowd began to shout and count together. A tall man was doing pull-ups with his wheelchair close behind him and several spotters at the ready. It was Jonathan Rodriguez, 41, who had not missed a Motivational Monday since he learned about them.

Mr. Rodriguez lost the use of his legs when he was shot in 2016, he said, but it didn’t stop him from doing 50 pull-ups every Monday.

“We treat each other like family — it’s basically the foundation of this,” he said. “We are not looking to who is doing better than the other. One is trying to push the other one to the limit. This is a perfect example of how when a community comes together, it overpowers everything they say.”

Overcoming your circumstances through the power of working out is something that Xavier Lewis, who also promotes Motivational Mondays on his Instagram page, knows something about.

In May 2021, Mr. Lewis was in an accident while on the job as a FedEx driver. He had a fractured rib cage, a dislocated elbow and two broken bones in his wrist, he said. He was hospitalized for two weeks and scheduled to have several surgeries that would have left him with rods and screws in his arm.

“I just didn’t want that in my body,” Mr. Lewis said, sitting on a park bench in Harlem, where he was doing a solo workout. After being told that he might never be able to fully straighten his arm, he declined the surgeries. “I feel like I was being mentally challenged. I knew it was a challenge, so I had to figure it out.”

He started out working out at home, doing one push-up a day. Six months later, one push-up had turned into 10, and he finally felt strong enough to go to the gym, and then, outside.

Epifanio Ortiz, center, modifies his push-ups by adding a son’s worth of weight.

He created a fitness Instagram account and began to encourage others to attend Motivational Mondays at Macombs Dam Park. He also started a group called the Sharks and Orcas that often works out at Chelsea Park in Lower Manhattan.

“It’s powerful energy because we all uplift each other and we all trying to be better,” Mr. Lewis said. Sometimes, he added, to get inspired, “you have got to get around like-minded people.”

The search for that inspiration from a crew is what led Isaiah Kadiri, 27, to Motivational Monday. In 2017, when Mr. Kadiri was 21, his father pushed him to join the Marines. After two months of boot camp, he was sent home. (“It wasn’t for me,” he said.)

In the short time he was there, he learned the power of discipline and the importance of being supported by a group.

“It was the perfect way to keep me out of trouble,” Mr. Kadiri, a Brooklyn native, said of his workouts in Macombs Dam Park, where he said he was pleased to meet up with people who share his interest in fitness who are “actually good people.”

“It’s nice to actually be around people who are motivated to do the same thing you’re doing; we help each other grow,” he added.

Working out at a city playground can be intimidating. Seeing a group of hulking guys expend a great deal of frequently aggressive energy might have deterred some young mothers from joining, but not Marisol Gonzalez, 28, who now brings her three children, ages 5, 10 and 12, with her to Motivational Monday.

At first Ms. Gonzalez would bring her children to the track to run, she said, but she was desperate to incorporate exercise into their daily routine. When she saw the men working out, she reached out to Mr. Perez on Instagram.

“My kids are the reason I came here,” she said as another pull-up count erupted from the crowd behind her. “I don’t think I would have been able to come by myself,” she added. “I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. My kids change my perspective. I only have one boy and I want him to see all the examples of what a man should be. And for my daughters to also see that a man is not just aggressive and unable to express their emotions.”

Sometimes the men pause their workouts to help her children with their homework while she works out, she said. The energy has been inviting for her whole family.

“Everybody is happy, goofy, playful, a motivator and encouraging,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “I think that’s the best thing that my kids could have.”

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