If Mark Langowski warns you on the sidewalk, that’s a good thing.
The 44-year-old stops particularly healthy-looking New Yorkers and asks them what they do to stay in shape.
Doing so will give you great social media material. He has 1.5 million followers on Instagram and hundreds of thousands more on TikTok and YouTube. And you’ll get some surprising answers.
“I was fed up with how social media had turned into a crucible of narcissistic garbage, especially in the fitness industry,” Langowski said of his motivation for starting Street Interviews. emmy park
“One guy said he did 10,000 push-ups a day,” Langowski told the Post. “He was incredibly beat up, but when you’re doing 10,000 push-ups, you can’t do anything else that day.”
Langowski, a personal trainer and gym manager, started making videos just over a year ago after becoming frustrated with the workout content he saw online.
“I’m tired of the narcissists who have turned social media into a melting pot, especially in the fitness industry, where people are always saying, ‘Look at me, look at me doing push-ups, look at my abs.’ “That’s all I was told,” he said. . “And I’ve always been interested in what other people are doing to stay healthy.”
Langowski does not appear on camera in his short videos and strives to feature healthy everyday people rather than those who work in the fitness industry.
“I try to find a mother of three with three kids at home. I try to find a Wall Street dad. I try to find a garbage man or a police officer,” he said. spoke. “I really try different things.”
His first post that went viral was a chat he had with a UPS representative who was “swindled” in September 2023.
A UPS representative told Langowski that she avoids lifting heavy weights for gymnastics. Mark’s body TikTok
“I don’t do weight training, I just do calisthenics, pull-ups, dips, and push-ups. And keep going,” the man in the brown uniform said smugly.
When Langofsky asked how many pull-ups he could do, a common question that sometimes involves people testing their skills on scaffolding or traffic lights, the man replied, “Real man, those don’t count.” answered.
Langowski finds most of his subjects downtown, usually in SoHo or the West Village. It’s not that people uptown aren’t fit, he said, but they don’t tend to wear clothes that show it.
New Yorkers’ fitness strategies vary widely.
Cannabis dealers claimed that the twisting motion of a skateboard was a great sit-up workout. Body By Mark/Instagram
The 56-year-old cannabis dealer, who has an amazing upper body contour, credits skateboarding for his toned abs.
A young woman running through Central Park said she ate pizza and donuts and “liked wine.”
The ‘jacked’ 40-year-old man admitted to consuming 25 drinks a week and supplementing them with black seed oil, sea moss, ashwagandha and chlorophyll.
The 23-year-old financial worker outside the Trump Building claims to be eating “as much protein as I can,” which he says is a staggering 280 grams per day.
One young runner told Langofsky that his eating habits had never been healthy. Body By Mark/Instagram
But there are some answers that come up again and again.
“No matter what they’re doing, they’re consistent,” Langofsky said of his subjects’ daily routines.
It is also common to prioritize strength training.
“They’re lifting weights three days a week (or more),” he said. “They’re not killing themselves with aerobic exercise,” he said.
A friend in finance told me that he eats a ridiculous amount of protein every day. Body By Mark/Instagram
And despite a few outliers, most subjects had healthy (but not perfect) diets and tended to limit their alcohol intake.
“The average person I interview has three to five drinks a week,” said Langoski, who lives in Midtown East.
He conducts most of his interviews in New York City, but occasionally travels to the Hamptons, Miami, and Los Angeles. He found himself following clichés about where his subjects lived.
Mr. Langowski’s interviews sometimes end with a conversation about how many pull-ups he can do using urban scaffolding. Langowski (pictured) enjoys doing platform pull-ups himself. emmy park
“People in LA have wanted to talk to me forever. My interviews in LA averaged 10 minutes,” he said. “People had a little bit more of a New Age thing, like, ‘I believe in grounding,’ where you have to walk where your feet touch the pavement for at least three hours a day.” ” Or, “I don’t believe in sunscreen.” So I walk around and soak up the sun for six hours a day. ”
By contrast, his Big Apple interviews are short and sweet, usually about a minute and a half, two minutes at most.
“We New Yorkers are not rude,” he said. “But we have somewhere to go.”
