Fitness instructor Chuck Taylor kicks off his cardio circuit class at Kenilworth Recreation Center at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Switching between squats and push-ups on the TRX machine, the group, consisting of seven middle-aged adults and seniors, bounces to the beat of Taylor’s go-go-infused playlist.

These devoted exercisers may seem unremarkable. Many parts of the District are teeming with gyms and boutique fitness studios—places that charge hundreds of dollars for monthly membership or upwards of $30 for a single group class. But the group at Kenilworth is taking advantage of the public option in the city’s largest fitness desert.

For years, Washington, D.C. was ranked as the fittest (or second fittest) city in the country—at least according to the annual American Fitness Index from the American College of Sports Medicine. 

Then in 2018, the American College of Sports Medicine changed the way it evaluated cities. Previously, it used metropolitan statistical areas, so D.C. was lumped in with the entire region, including Alexandria and Montgomery and Arlington counties. After the American College of Sports Medicine began evaluating cities individually, the District fell to sixth place. Arlington, Virginia took the top spot.

The District’s reign as the fittest city in the U.S., in other words, had been buoyed by its surrounding, affluent suburbs.

When looking more closely at the District’s geography of fitness offerings, it becomes clear that it is mirrored by many of the city’s other inequities. There is only one commercial gym, a Planet Fitness at the Penn Branch Shopping Center, operating east of the Anacostia River, where nearly 165,000 District residents live.

The divide between the District’s most active and least active neighborhoods is stark, as illustrated by data from the 500 Cities Project and analyzed by the D.C. Policy Center in 2017. The neighborhood cluster around Dupont Circle is home to the city’s most physically active adults—more than 90 percent of residents engage in “leisure-time physical activity.” That compares to just 62 percent of residents in the neighborhoods of Buena Vista, Garfield Heights, and Woodland, a mere twenty minute drive from Dupont. Meanwhile, wards 7 and 8 have the highest rates of chronic illnesses in the District.

“I started laughing when I saw that D.C. was the number one fittest city,” recalls Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, a health and wellness community advocate working in Southeast D.C. “Politicians started citing this statistic when they should have been ashamed given the health disparities in the city.”

The District’s Department of Parks and Recreation has committed to filling the gap in neighborhoods underserved by the private fitness market. When it comes to providing recreational opportunities for the thousands of Washingtonians who live east of the river, DPR’s “number one priority is open access and reliable access to top-notch equipment and classes in our facilities east of the river,” according to Jason Millison, the DPR’s director of communications.

And early in her first term, Mayor Bowser launched FitDC, an initiative to encourage more residents to engage in physical activity.

As part of this program, DPR waived its fitness center membership fees so residents could access standard gym equipment for free across the department’s 25 facilities. Previously, they cost $125 for an annual membership, or $5 for a day pass.

That change led to an uptick in their usage, according to Bobby Jones, the program manager for DPR’s sports, health, and fitness division. DPR says it does not collect data on the number of visits individuals make to its fitness centers. However, data received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request shows that in 2017 — just one year after DPR waived its fitness center fees — 1,083 District residents obtained a monthly or annual fitness center membership. This year, 4,395 District residents have obtained a DPR fitness center membership, a 75 percent increase since 2017.

In addition to offering free access to exercise equipment, DPR organizes a range of free group fitness classes, including Zumba, water aerobics, and yoga. Regulars say they can be less intimidating than the lycra-clad masses at Soulcycle or the trim crowd at a pricey barre class.

“Everybody is very welcoming and encouraging,” according to Marcia Lee, a regular at Kenilworth’s circuit training class who says she has lost 60 pounds since she began taking DPR classes.

After retiring, Janice Marton signed up for the cardio circuit class at Kenilworth Recreation Center. She lives in Capitol Hill where “they have all kinds of gyms and boutique this and boutique that,” she says. “You go to those places and everyone there is already fit, so it’s intimidating.”

But while DPR offers a number of group fitness classes, they often fill up quickly at the beginning of each season’s enrollment period. Across DPR’s facilities in Wards 7 and 8, there are currently only two adult fitness classes that are not already full or have a waitlist. And many of DPR’s facilities east of the Anacostia River do not offer adult group fitness classes at all.

“We love that our classes fill up and they’re in high demand and people speak highly of them but that also creates an issue,” says Millison. “To be good stewards of government resources, if we have increasing demand, we should increase the supply.” He notes that there is an agency-wide effort underway to assess which DPR programs should be expanded.

In the meantime, some bemoan the physical condition of the recreation and community center spaces themselves and the state of the fitness centers’ equipment.

Three quarters of D.C. residents rate their neighborhood park and recreation facilities as “excellent” or “good,” according to a recent poll conducted by The Washington Post. But there are divides along race and geography: Only 16 percent of white Washingtonians rated their neighborhood parks and recreation facilities as “not-so-good” or “poor,” compared to 29 percent of black Washingtonians. While only 17 percent of Ward 1 and 4 residents reported their parks and recreation facilities are “not-so-good” or “poor,” about 24 percent of residents in Wards 7 and 8 said they were lacking.

ANC 7E Commission Chair Delia Houseal, who lives near DPR’s Benning Park Community Center, says the center “is in such disrepair that the facility is unusable.”

Benning Park has been slated for renovation for years, and while it has remained open, it currently offers no exercise programs for youth, adults, or seniors. “If I was an individual trying to exercise, that would be my last choice,” Houseal says.

Olivia Henderson, who serves as the ANC 8D Commission Chair, lives near Bald Eagle Recreation Center, which she says “doesn’t help fill the gap in the market” and does not currently offer any adult group fitness classes. While the recreation center was recently gifted dozens of stationary bikes, there is no staff to come in and teach spin classes, according to ANC 8D Commissioner Monique Diop.

Meanwhile, DPR is not the only entity trying to bridge the District’s health and fitness divides.

The Community Wellness Collective, which is devoted to creating more opportunities for residents east of the Anacostia River to exercise, launched in 2014 and operated out of the Anacostia Arts Center. Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, a founding member, said that over 300 people showed up on opening day.

Aisha Moore, who lives in Southeast D.C. says she wasn’t engaging in much physical activity before the collective opened. Once it did, though, she began taking yoga classes run by the collective twice a week at a cost of just $5 a class. Moore says the collective is “super important, especially for people who don’t work downtown where there’s accessible classes.”

But after two years in operation, the collective went on hiatus in 2016. “I paid for everything myself until it became unsustainable,” Fitzpatrick told DCist.

She is currently applying to various grants, but the process has proven challenging. Most grantors only want to support organizations that already have an operating budget. “How do new organizations get started?” she asks. While she welcomes smaller grant opportunities, she hopes to pay the salary of at least one full-time staff member who can run the organization.

The collective has continued to maintain a presence in the community, and recently hosted classes at Martha’s Table. Fitzpatrick hopes that they will eventually be able to relaunch with a more decentralized model, bringing classes closer to where people live.

And the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus, home to The Washington School of Ballet’s Southeast campus, has hosted community classes for adults since it was founded in 2005. Today, ward 7 and 8 residents can take beginner ballet, barre, and Zumba for $7 per class (for residents of other wards, it costs $14 per class).

“We really love that we have rates that really meet our ability to provide that service to the community,” says Monica Stephenson, head of school for the Southeast campus.

The Washington School of Ballet, which offers ballet training for young dancers, prides itself on these community programs. “It’s so important that we don’t leave out the adults,” says Stephenson, noting that a number of parents whose children are enrolled in the ballet school participate in the adult offerings.

After D.C. first lost its top spot—bested by Minneapolis in 2017 (a year before the change in methodology plunged the District even lower on the list)—DPR launched a “Take Back #1” campaign, sponsoring free workouts, walks and runs, and nutrition seminars.  The homepage for Mayor Bowser’s FitDC initiative still reads: “It’s time for D.C. to reclaim the title as the #1 fittest city in America.”  

But engaging wards 7 and 8 should be critical in any efforts to secure that top spot, Houseal says. “Any attempts are going to increase the gaps unless there’s an intentional effort made to include those residents that are already disproportionately impacted by the current allocation of resources to help promote healthy living.”

Advocates argue that efforts to promote the physical well-being of District residents who live east of the river should include creating safe public spaces that support healthier lifestyles in addition to more formal opportunities to exercise. While working as a physician at United Medical Center, Fitzpatrick found that concerns about public safety prevented many individuals from staying active. “My patients were telling me they didn’t have a place to exercise. They either couldn’t afford it or they didn’t feel safe exercising outside,” she reflects.

Unwalkable streets also keep people indoors. “It’s so important for our roads to be safe and walkable,” Houseal says, applauding recent efforts to upgrade sidewalks in Marshall Heights.

But when it comes to addressing public safety as a barrier to exercise, Houseal believes opening up other spaces to public use, like newly renovated school fields that are closed before and after school hours, can encourage physical activity. “People would feel safer walking about the school track than in the neighborhood.” Unlike other parts of the city, “we don’t have the luxury of using our public spaces,” she laments.

She says that some worry that keeping the fields open to the general public will wind up making them a magnet for crime. But Houseal says “let’s not automatically assume that’s going to happen. We need to give our people a chance.”