2021’s Best Cities for Street Workouts

With street workouts, all you need is a playground, park bench, street lamp, or even a tree — the exercises rely on your own body weight for resistance.

Some cities are in better shape for this type of fitness training, though.

Lucky for you, Lawn Love already did the heavy lifting of finding the Best Cities for Street Workouts. We compared over 130 of the biggest U.S. cities based on access to playgrounds, ratings of street-workout parks, variety of available equipment, and eight other metrics.

Check out the 10 best (and 10 worst) cities for toning up your pandemic body below, followed by some surprising findings from our report.

Surprising findings:

• Pumped-Up Providence: Your brain isn’t the only muscle you can strengthen in Providence, Rhode Island. This major college town topped our ranking of the Best Cities for Street Workouts.

  What pulled Providence up to the top? The city finished sixth in Access (to street workout parks and playgrounds and equipment variety).

  More impressive is the quality of these facilities: Providence ranked No. 2 overall in this category, with one of the highest walk scores (No. 6) and calisthenics fanatics who rated the city’s street workout parks an average of 3.6 out of 4 stars (the fourth highest among the cities in our ranking).

• Big Cities = Big Muscles: The U.S. street workout movement first took hold in New York City (No. 5 overall) over a decade ago, but it quickly spread to other big cities that cultivated a rep as popular hubs for the sport. Unsurprisingly, these cities all made the top 15, namely Chicago (No. 9), Miami (No. 11), and Washington, D.C. (No. 14).

  Other large metros that could grow into the next street workout capitals: Las Vegas (No. 2), San Francisco (No. 3), Honolulu (No. 8), and Seattle (No. 18).

  There’s no discernible pattern among these cities, though — each has its own strengths. Sin City, for instance, claimed the No. 1 spot for Access but ranked No. 49 for Quality and No. 77 for Climate. The Big Pineapple, on the other hand, ranked 30th for Access, 12th for Quality, and first for Climate. Then there are cities like San Francisco that performed well across the board: 15-4-5, respectively.

  Regardless of how they ranked in each category, big cities — especially the street workout pioneers — clearly have a leg up on the competition.

• A Low Bar in California and Arizona: California cities Bakersfield (No. 134) and Santa Clarita (No. 133) occupy the last two spots in our ranking, while Fontana ranked sixth worst overall. These results seem ironic when you consider the fact that these cities all surround Los Angeles (No. 40), one of the trailblazing U.S. cities in the modern street workout movement.

  But these LA suburbs aren’t the only strong contenders for the “Worst Cities for Street Workouts” title. Some of Arizona’s biggest cities are down there, too. In fact, four of the seven Grand Canyon State cities in our ranking all landed in the bottom 10, including Chandler at No. 127, Scottsdale at No. 128, Glendale at No. 131, followed by Phoenix in 132nd place.

  If you find yourself in one of these weak links, you’re better off parkouring your way to the nearest best city for street workouts — or getting a gym membership.

Our full ranking and analysis can be found here: https://lawnlove.com/blog/best-cities-calisthenics-street-workouts/

In the meantime, start warming up for your street workout — soon you’ll be doing human flagpoles just like calisthenics fanatic Zac Efron.