About the ParkFit Project

About the ParkFit Project

About two summers ago, as I became interested in body-weight/calisthenic fitness I found that New York City lacks an accurate list of its park-based fitness inventory. Performing cursory web searches in the hope of finding a new pull up bar or set of parallel bars may bring you an article here or there about a particular spot, but as of the present moment there is no place to find a comprehensive source compilation of locations.

Through my readings, wanderings and conversations I have begun to find a number of these sites throughout the city and will be documenting them through this blog. My goal is to primarily document park-based workout spots and fitness equipment. All locations will be added as pins to the Google Map contained on the site. I will also add my knowledge of running tracks and other outdoor workout spots that I deem relevant. Information garnered from assorted websites may be used to further provide information to my readers.

While I hope that at some point this site will host a comprehensive review of all outdoor fitness equipment in the city, at the present time the information contained herein will be limited to my personal knowledge which admittedly contains a strict geographic bias to Manhattan. I most certainly welcome all emails and will happily post new verifiable information as it is provided to me.

To health, fitness and pushing limits,

- The Skyhopper








Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Marcus Garvey Park (Mt. Morris Park)

Marcus Garvey Park, sometimes known by its former name, Mount Morris Park is nestled between Madison Avenue to the east and Mount Morris Park West to the west, and between 120th Street and 124th Street to the north and south. The park is essentially a square surrounded by quaint brownstones and older apartment buildings which provide a warm and local feeling. Most of the facilities including the pool, baseball fields, amphitheater, basketball courts, playground and workout area ring the lower portion of the park which is dominated by a hill and a former fire-watch tower which still stands on top.

The hill itself contains stairs which are excellent for those who wish to add hill sprinting to their workout.



The fitness area can be found on the Madison Avenue side of the park near the basketball courts roughly parallel to 121st Street. I found it to be a relatively standard NYC workout area consisting of two pullup bars, a set of parallel bars, a monkey bar, two low bars (waist high), a diagonal bar, a vertical ladder, a metal bench, pushup bars, and a three pedestal setup surrounding a pole.

The pullup bars were of slightly offsetting heights, with the taller of the two being just high enough for me to do hanging leg raises without touching the floor with my feet. The monkey bars were slightly on the lower side which meant that most adults would have to bend their knees while swinging from them. 



I found the parallel bars to be slightly on the short side of the height spectrum and would've preferred them to be a tad taller. The paint was wearing off the edges of this equipment as well (which you cannot see in this picture).

I am still in the process of discerning the utility of certain pieces of equipment such as the diagonal bar (seen on the left side of the first picture). From what I can tell it is meant for either testing ones vertical leap, or allowing for one to travel up and down the bar while hanging by only their hands.  This particular bar had numbers tagged on which may have originally stood for the height of the bar at that point. I must confess that these labels did not appear accurate to me.

I also noticed a three pedestal setup surrounding a pole towards the back of the fitness area. While I do not know what the designated purpose of this equipment is, I suspect that it was designed for stepping up. This would also explain the varying heights of the pedestals. If anyone can explain the purpose I'd love to hear from you.




Overall most of the equipment appeared sturdy enough, the area was fairly clean, and safely covered by rubber mats.

The park has a lovely neighborhood feeling to it, and certainly has a lot to offer in the realm of body weight fitness. However the equipment has a particularly bland feeling to it and I would not recommend traveling half-way across the city for a workout ..... unless you were going to see or participate in a Street Workout competition.

6 comments:

  1. Fantastic post - Great explainations and thinking.I'm looking forward to what you have for us next..!
    Dealnity

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  2. really nice article. thanks for sharing. Complete guideline for finding the best Pull-Up Bars gymsure.com

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  3. Hello, We have noticed you do Calisthenics and post some traing places!!! We are doing a project called Kubebarz, which is mainly to show people where there are calisthenics parks so they can train and we give info on what types of bars they will see at that place. This way everyone can know where to go and do street workout in every city they go. We are from Chile and we are asking everyone who does SW to help us with this project ... we want to ask you for your permission to use your photos and address info of the parks so we can add it to the page, we can of couse give you credit for it .... Check out the website www.kubebarz.com so you can see what we are doing. We believe it will be really usefull to everyone who does SW. Thanks for your time reading :) , We hope you write us back.

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  4. Nice post and you have shared a wonderful information
    Thanks for sharing
    Training Class in NYC

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