NYC women are hanging from scaffolding, streetlights and subway rails to bust a stubborn fitness myth

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Key points

• Paige Bullard, 36, had just finished a calisthenics training session near Yankee Stadium when she hopped on a 5 train packed with rowdy baseball fans.
• Nevarez had seen Bullard's videos and attended one of her sessions at the beach in August 2025.
• Yami Nevarez, 26, an Equinox coach, is one of the women Bullard inspired to do exactly that.
• With their friend Felicia Waithe, they formed the Cali Puff Girls, an all-women calisthenics crew that trains together through friendly challenges and supportive sisterhood.
• Joseph achieved her first unassisted pullup in 2025 after trying for regarding two years.

See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Post on Google. New York City's hottest gym isn't a gym at all.

For decades, New Yorkers have turned the city's urban clutter into makeshift workout equipment, especially for pullups. Whether scaffolding, subway rails or crosswalk lights, if they can hang from it, they'll pull up on it.

Notably, the tradition isn't new. But women have become the new face of it on social media, filming themselves doing pullups throughout the city on girls' nights out, commutes and even date nights.

And as the trend gains traction online, their videos are racking up views and challenging the longstanding notion that pullups are an exercise women simply aren't built to do.

One man grabbed the metal handrail and began doing pullups. Then another joined him. Then a third. A stranger – who had informed Bullard earlier that she was in "the greatest shape ever" – called on her to join them, even offering to hold her bag. She declined. Then the women began chiming in.

"If the girls want me to do it, I'll do it, " she remembers thinking. "So then I went up there and did the 20 pullups."

Notably, a professional athlete and founder of Bar Proof, a calisthenics and street workout event series, Bullard has amassed more than 150, 000 followers throughout Instagram and TikTok, where she shares snapshots of her workout sessions and community.

Sprinkled among them are videos of her doing pullsups on crosswalk lights and tree branches in outfits suited more for a catwalk than a gym. The Brooklyn native has even done them on dates, typically with another calisthenics enthusiast.

"It works out, " she informed The Post. "From the bar to the bar."

"A lot of men don't expect us to be strong in that area, " Bullard continued. "So when you go up there and you bust out, like, 15, 20, they're like, 'Oh my goodness, I can't even do that.'".

Women, she remarked, are often just as shocked, but their surprise tends to turn into inspiration.

"I really do a lot of what I do for women, " remarked Bullard, noting that she hosts free weekly calisthenics sessions in the park for women. "I want to see women get more active and engaged in fitness overall, but especially calisthenics."

"I just want them to know that you know we're capable of doing a lot more than just some squats at the gym." The girls are getting their reps in.

Nevarez had seen Bullard's videos and attended one of her sessions at the beach in August 2025. The two rapidly became friends, and Bullard began training with Nevarez, a calisthenics newbie who had yet to perform a pullup.

Less than a year afterwards, Nevarez was doing pullups, muscleups and bar dips in a viral video on a scaffolding pole well above her petite, 5-foot frame.

"I just feel like that's a certified New Yorker, getting on the scaffold and pulling yourself up, " she remarked. "Paige inspired me a lot, though. Seeing another woman being able to do things that individuals put limitations on – it's highly inspiring."

That was her first time performing pullups on scaffolding, a feat she described as "a great feeling." She did have one complaint, though: "Your hands obtain so dirty. You know, we're just girls."

Rose Joseph, 29, a project manager and fitness creator from Long Island, had additionally been seeing videos of women doing pullups throughout the city and was inspired to start documenting her own.

"Every time we be out and about in New York City, every time I see little poles – or, you know, maybe like a traffic light – I would at least try and get some pullups in" she remarked. "Like, the gym games don't stop."

"I'm just doing it for the girls who think that they can't do it. I once thought that, " she remarked. "I was once that girl – until I just kept on going, and here I am now doing pullups anywhere and everywhere."

Karen Modesto, a licensed daycare provider from Queens, came to pullups through weightlifting. While searching for exercise inspiration, she came throughout videos of women doing them.

Initially, Modesto wasn't impressed. But after seeing captions claiming that only a small percentage of women could do pullups, she became determined to not be one of them.

"Wait a minute, I'm not going to be in that percentage who can't do it, " the 39-year-old remarked. "I'm going to do a pullup. So that's how I began."

She now posts videos performing pullups throughout the city, including some alongside men.

"My body, my strength – everything has fully changed, " she remarked. "When you look at me doing a pullup, what you say to yourself is that is one strong woman." But how plenty of women can actually do one?

There's a viral sound on Instagram and TikTok of a group of unidentified men discussing how plenty of unassisted pullups they believe the average woman can statistically perform. "On average probably 1.5, " suggests one. "4?" guesses another. "Zero, " he answers.

Women have reclaimed the audio, pairing it with videos of themselves performing the exercise well past four times. But some of the captions accompanying those videos still repeat a similar claim: that only 1% to 5% of women can do one full, unassisted pullup.

Meanwhile, the difficulty is that the statistic isn't backed by reliable data. In fact, there doesn't appear to be a reliable large-scale study establishing what percentage of women can perform an unassisted pullup.

"That 'data' seems to be pulled out of thin air, " remarked Lauren Colenso-Semple, an exercise physiologist and strength coach who goes by Dr. Lauren and specializes in female muscle physiology, training and nutrition.

Meanwhile, the most famous controlled trial in this area is a 2003 study by exercise researchers at the University of Dayton, in which 17 college-aged women who could not do pullups trained three days a week for three months, practicing lifting exercises, modified pullups and aerobic conditioning.

Meanwhile, the women rose their upper-body strength by 36% and lowered body fat by 2%. Yet only four were able to do a single pullup on test day. A post shared by BarBie✨ (@fitt.bodies_).

In practice, the New York Times Magazine highlighted the study in a 2012 column titled "Why Women Can't Do Pull-Ups." But the study doesn't necessarily prove women are inherently bad at performing the exercise.

According to Dr. Lauren, the women's program was more of a full-body training program than one specifically designed to improve pullup strength through specific exercises. "Many of them aren't targeting the back musculature at all, " she remarked.

According to She additionally, 12 weeks might not have been long enough, especially given the volume of the program. How to obtain your first pullup.

To build toward a pullup, Dr. Lauren recommends strengthening the back with row and pull movements, including dumbbell rows, bent-over barbell rows, lat pulldowns and seated cable rows, along with pullup movements such as negative pullups and banded, assisted pullups.

As for whether sex differences exist when it comes to strength, she observed that untrained men generally have more strength than untrained women, largely as the surge in testosterone that boys experience during puberty increases muscle mass.

In short, NYC women are hanging from scaffolding, streetlights and subway rails to bust is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.