I originally wrote this way back in 2020. It wasn’t the first time I undertook the Murph challenge, but this was a particularly important workout for me.
My daughter was in the Air Force and just beginning her training in a Combat Search and Rescue unit.
Not only that, but I feel like the post sums up pretty well WHY people put themselves through this workout.
Hope you enjoy.
If you’re on Facebook or any other social media, you’ve probably seen a post about the CrossFit workout Murph at least once, probably more than once. But I thought I would share my experiences doing Murph and maybe explain why it’s so important to so many people who do it on Memorial Day Weekend.
The workout is dedicated to Lt. Micheal Murphy, who died in Afghanistan in 2005. He sacrificed himself to save his few remaining men. Watch the movie Lone Survivor. It’s about him. That alone should change your perspective. This was his favorite workout. He called it Body Armor.
He’ll never do it again.
The workout is brutal: a mile run, then 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another mile run.
All while wearing a 20lb vest.
The workout is not only a test of your physical strength and endurance but also of your mental fortitude. It’s about how hard you can push yourself before you give in, before you throw in the towel.
Before the workout begins, the athletes gather. A flag is raised. Sometimes, an audio recording of a man who witnessed Murph’s sacrifice on that mountain will be played. Taps will follow. For Murph. For all the other Fallen. Then, the National Anthem.
Then, the timer counts down. Ten. Nine. Eight. You tell yourself to take it easy on that first mile. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Because there is so much more afterward. Three. Two. One. But you don’t. There is still a tear from the story and the bugle in your eye. Your blood and adrenaline glows in your veins like that rocket glare.
You realize you went too hard when you return and see the pull-up bar. Generally, people will break the huge numbers of 100, 200, 300 in 20 sets of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats. Sometimes the number 20 though, seems even more daunting. You’ll do kipping or butterfly pull-ups. Some people claim they aren’t real pull-ups. They call on a lot of core and shoulder. Still, do a 100 of them. Let me know what you think.
The pull-ups are where the skin on your hands will start to flay, and the calluses will rip off. If they are going to tear, they will tear early, like around rounds 7 or 8, even if you are wearing $50 grips. You’ll have to get back up on that bar regardless. You have to keep going.
Thankfully, my hands didn’t tear this year. The first time I did Murph, though, because of limited space, we did all 100 pull-ups first, then alternated the push-ups and squats. The skin ripped so badly from the palm of my right hand that I couldn’t make a fist for two weeks. When it happened, I still had 20 pull-ups to finish. I still had to do 200 push-ups in the dirt.
The push-ups will be the worst. Initially, doing sets of 10 doesn’t sound that bad. You start to re-think that at this point. Your shoulders are on fire; your arms are shaking. It feels like your triceps are going to burst through your skin. But you push on because the person next to you is pushing on, too.
About round 15, the end seems no closer than when you started. Your lungs are burning as badly as the entire musculature of your upper body. The adrenaline is gone, and the only thing saving you is the break your shoulders receive doing the squats. But then the squats ultimately lead to that final one-mile run.
That transition into the run is almost insurmountable. With the struggle of the upper-body moves, perhaps you didn’t realize how taxed your ass, your hips, and your glutes are. You’ll feel in those first couple of steps. This is where you want to quit because the mile seems so unbearably fucking long. This is again where you want to quit, the point where you want to throw in the towel because it hurts, it sucks, and you tell yourself you want to finish, but you just can’t. Your body is exhausted, your muscles spent, your hands bleeding, and it’s so goddamn hard.
It’s so hard.
But you’ll push on because Murph pushed on at the top of that mountain. You’ll think about the people who will never do their favorite workouts again. About those people who can’t, because of physical or mental trauma, do the workouts again. You’ll remember all the sacrifices the men and women in uniform have endured so that we can sit on Facebook and bitch about how hard and how unfair everything is.
For me this year, in all the moments I wanted to give up, I thought about Murph. I thought about my daughter. Thankfully, she hasn’t seen combat, but that doesn’t make her sacrifice any less. She’s still far from home, far from her family, far from her friends. She’s not here to do Murph with me or cook out afterward. I think about all the other students I’ve known who have been in the military. All that they’ve missed out on.
What those soldiers have done and what they do is hard. A mile run after a few push-ups and pull-ups is nothing compared to that. Not shit. That’s a gift.
And that’s the beauty of Murph. You are not just honoring heroes. You are also showing how far you can push past your mental and physical thresholds. It shows you how far you can go when you are doing it for others and not just for yourself.
Paranormal Pressings 
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