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

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.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.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.One man grabbed the metal handrail and started doing pullups.Then another joined him.

Then a third.A stranger — who had told Bullard earlier that she was in “the greatest shape ever” — urged her to join them, even offering to hold her bag.

She declined.Then the women started 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.”A professional athlete and founder of Bar Proof, a calisthenics and street workout event series, Bullard has amassed more than 150,000 followers across 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 told The Post.“From the bar to the bar.”“A lot of men don’t expect us to be strong in that area,” Bullard added.

“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 said, are often just a...