Hey Athletes! Planning to do MURPH for the first time? Maybe the 10th time? Make sure to catch this week’s Ask Me Anything to learn some new tips on how to tackle it!
Episode 68 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: MURPH Progression Tips For Newer Athletes
This week the fabulous duo are talking all about MURPH. It’s a workout we have done a lot around here so they guys give you the best tips on how to accomplish it for the first or maybe even 10th time! If you plan to complete the workout this Memorial Day weekend, make sure to try some of the handy tips and tricks the coaches give!
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- Part 1: MURPH 52 Times in a Year and the Power of Persistence
- How to Not Suck at Murph (actually, how to CRUSH Murph)
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add them to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Chairman here with Joe Courtney. What’s
Joe Courtney
up, Joe? Not too much, man. What’s going on with you?
Jerred Moon
Not a lot. Let’s get right into it though. Murph, we’re talking Murph today, really progressing in Murph. And I think just slight backstory, just if anyone is here, because you’re looking for some Murph tips, whether you’re part of the community or you just randomly found this. We are essentially the Murph community at garage gym athlete. We have dozens and dozens of athletes doing it. every single week for a year, some people have decided they’re gonna go for their second year. I did it for two years. Chris Morgan does two murders every single day. Well, he’s actually doing how many the 52 in the month of May of may 2021. And it’s just crazy. And aside from just me doing Murph, I have some pretty respectable times, and Murph, arguably, some of the fastest times in Murph depending on how you eating and how you think the Murph workout should be done. When it’s 510 15. I am very fast at the workout. So we are going to talk about Murph a little bit today and how you should progress from it because I had to progress. Like I didn’t, I didn’t start getting 20, you know, minute times, and all this other stuff. Like that’s not where I started, I started way far away from that. And I know a lot of people in the community are scared of the workout. And a lot of people watching this right, like, how do you? How do you progress? Like, how do you get better at this, you can’t just like go out there and do it and get better, right? And that’s part of it. But it’s not not the main thing. So, Joe, you’re already man, like, what do you think? How do you progress into this workout.
Joe Courtney
So first, it would be your plan of attack and how you’re going to go about it just from a mental standpoint. And if you’re, if you haven’t really done it before, or you are scared to do it, or have only done it once and didn’t go that well. You shouldn’t be trying to do on partition, because that’s not really an official way to do it. Anyway, that’s just like a spin or twist that they did at the games. And then it became popular to do that, because because it takes longer, it seems harder. But that’s that’s not it at all. So it’s going to be a lot easier to complete it especially in a decent amount of time that I’m going to take you an hour and a half if you partition it out. And it is also because one of our previous athletes actually reached out to his family and their his dad responded and said that he Michael Murphy actually broke it up himself. He partitioned it. So that’s, you know, as official as it gets for version. So break it up into whatever sets you want, whether it’s 510 15 that means five pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats. And I guess to you know, we didn’t really go over the workout. So Murph, that’s a good place to start.
Jerred Moon
Who is Murphy?
Joe Courtney
Yeah, so Murph workout is run one mile, then you come and do 100 total 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 squats and then run another mile. And when I was talking about partitioning the reps that as you’re partitioning, the calisthenics, reps in between miles aren’t partitioned, you have to run the one mile, then you do all your reps, and then you finish with a mile, it’s kind of a buy in and cash out. So break those up. 510 15 some people do 246 whatever it is, that’s a little bit too much of a breakup. I think there was a recent one, I think Chris Morgan was talking about this for zone two he did for 812 or something because the smaller sets help keep your heart rate down or something, I don’t know what it was, but there’s all different ways to break it up. So that’s number one is having a game plan of how you’re going to break it up. Number two would be planning your pace and like mile pace would probably be 85 to 90% of a run pace. So if you have a you know, 730 mile PR you shouldn’t be trying for a 737 45 mile it should be closer to eight 815 or so. So that you leave a little because you got to come back and do go right into their calisthenics and then pacing for each round. If you really want you can do it as like any mom so 510 15 every minute on the minute if that’s your your breakout because if you only takes you 40 seconds to do that 50 seconds, then you have 1020 seconds to rest and then it won’t be you’re not flying off the handle doing it 30 seconds each and then when you get to seven or eight rounds in you’re completely done and then you you’re taking two to two and a half minutes. So gameplan ahead of time to make it manageable because then you can paste that in almost think like okay, I’m estimating 45 minutes, cool. I have this, this and this and then you can always dial it up as you go because there’s a lot of volume a lot more than people are used to Especially in a small window of time, so it’s better to stay at a little bit lower of intensity and rest, before you get fatigued, because then once you’re fatigued, especially muscle endurance wise, it’s going to kind of plummet. What do you get?
Jerred Moon
You know, a lot of the same stuff set in different ways. Now, so I do think so when I started the workout, you know, when I very first did it, I do think it took me like in the high 50s. And that just kept coming down with more, more practice. And it also took my body when I was doing every single week, 16 weeks before, I just felt normal, and the workout wasn’t gonna say hard, but I wasn’t like ridiculously sore and everything. So it takes a very long time for your body to get accustomed this amount of volume. And so if you don’t, most people aren’t doing that is my point, like, you’re not going to be doing that. So you there is going to be a suck factor to this workout if you’re not doing it every single week or practicing it quite often. So what I would recommend is something that we’ve put in our merch burner track and everything else is trying to throw in as many calisthenics as you can throughout the day. Because if you can get an extra 100 push ups in a day, every single day for a week now, this isn’t what you’re supposed to do, like leading up like three days before Murph, this is like weeks in advance just getting used to that level of volume in the calisthenics. And so if you can throw those in, that would be really good. I think sustainability and repeatability is something that we preach in our programming. And I also want to keep that the same in this workout. So as Joe said, partition it, partition it at your weakest level of calisthenics. And so what I mean by that is, like the pull ups for me, never a problem, I can always do five or 10 pull ups, especially if they’re keeping maybe more in like for very long time, you know, and so that’s not my weak point, my weak point are the push ups. And so I get to the push ups, I can get fatigue there, if my body’s not accustomed to that level of volume, which always happens when I start doing Murph again, I’m like, the push ups. And so you need to find out where that is. Some people the opposite, it’s the pull ups that are get them are the squats. And so what wherever you can be unbroken. Joe mentioned these, like, we typically do 510 15 and that’s what I recommend. Some people go even smaller than that, like Joe said, but you need to you need to match where you can go unbroken. So if it’s, I can do two pull ups unbroken every single time then then break that down at two and then double and double to and then do as many rounds as you need to finish the the amount of calisthenics. So that’s what I would say for the calisthenics. Go to your weakest point. And then sustainability impeded repeatability in those calisthenics. So if it takes you a minute to do 510 15, try to keep that at 60 seconds every single time for the entire 20 rounds if you’re doing 510 15 on the calisthenics. So try that. And then same with Well, I’m not gonna say the miles keep the same. But Joe said, paste that first mile 100% agree. I don’t agree with pacing the last mile, the because it’s going to be paced for you, you’re just going to be so fatigued that you can only do what you can do at that point. So yeah, just go all out on that last mile and see where you end up. Because a big part of this workout guys. It’s in memory of Michael Murphy. You know, who’s a fallen Navy SEAL? I don’t think that this workout should ever be easy. I don’t think that’s the point of these workouts to be like, yeah, I’m just gonna cruise, you know. And I get that a lot of people are doing that in the the people are doing Murph every single week for a year. But that’s a different story. Because that’s more like, you’re putting a lot of volume on your body and everything. So sometimes you need to go easy. But when you’re leading up to Memorial Day, or you’re testing this workout, I’m not an advocate for this being an easy, let’s just cruise like it should be hard. And if it’s not hard for you until that last mile, that’s fine. Make it hard there, though, make it hard somewhere. So you get that feeling in your body to where you’re like, this is ridiculous. And then just for a moment, think of Michael Murphy. And maybe that’ll give you a little bit more motivation to try just a little bit harder in the workout. So let’s not lose sight of what these workouts are for and what they’re about with all these steps. But I think that’s about it. As far as progressing. Don’t be scared of ring rows if you are if you can’t handle pull ups. And another big thing that I’ve been saying for years, I don’t think the workout should take more than an hour. So there is no time cap in Murph and I get it but like if it’s if your continuous continually moving like you don’t need to stop and you’re still going past 60 minutes. I think you should stop. Because a normal workout is an hour for most people. But there are a lot of there’s rest times in there right? If you’re moving continually through Murph without resting that much but you’re just going that slow. Maybe maybe time cap yourself and I’m just trying keep everyone safe, hear that advice. I don’t want you getting rhabdo or anything like that. And then there was one other thing on that note, Oh, you don’t need to wear a vest until you can do the Murph workout and under 40 minutes been my recommendation for years. So once you get to 40 minutes or less, that’s when it’s okay to strap on a vest. If you can’t do that, you can’t get sub 40 minutes best list, you don’t really need a vest in my opinion. So another kind of If This Then That for your progressing.
Joe Courtney
Yeah, I actually waited until I had a 30 minute even though invested and then I don’t even own invested time. So once I got that point, I was like, Well, I guess I have to purchase the vest now because these are just getting a little bit too fast. And I need to kind of I need to try and stress myself more. But even to this day, back to the push ups is I still break mine up into five. So like I’ll do five and then I rock back onto my knees for like, a couple seconds, just just for that little bit of a little bit of a break and then do the next five. I still do it now. When I do my bodyweight ones I try and do 10 but but now when I do the the Murph practice the vested end workout and things like that, I always rock back to five on my, on my knees, even if like the first 10 rounds, it’s smooth sailing, I know that once I get to 14 or 15, it’s gonna be rough, and then those last few, because once you’re burnt out velocity wise, then you’re just sitting there twiddling your thumbs to recover. If you can’t push yourself, then you can’t push then you can’t put yourself up. And I’m just sitting there doing nothing. But if if I take a little bit longer early on, then I can still cruise through all my rounds with the same time with the same pace.
Jerred Moon
And that’s a good point. Like just having if you want to try and go fast and get a really good time, you know, in but you’re still progressing through this workout, then I think what you said is is good having a game plan for you. Like if I’m just gonna I’m just gonna do 510 15 but you can’t actually handle 10 push ups every single time for 20 rounds. Then you need to have a game plan for altering that. And so just making sure you’re keeping track of your reps I know I when I did it the first year I did the second year I taken some time off and my pushups weren’t where they were before like when you into your Murph or at least when I ended the year Murph, everything was unbroken. It was just a matter of how fast I could do it. It wasn’t there was no muscle fatigue or anything like that. When I start there’s a lot of muscle fatigue because my body’s just not accustomed to it. But I was frustrated because my second year Murph so I’m like comparing myself to like previous times I had and I’m like you’re moving so much slower. And so what I ended up doing mid workout because I was getting fatigued and I like you said I don’t want to sit there and stand around and like, like, okay, body recover, so I can do more. I because I was doing 510 15 I went five 515 five, so five pull ups, five push ups, 15 squats, five push ups, so sticking to the 510 15 in total, but I broke my rounds up to that because after 15 squats, my body had recovered enough to do five more push ups and it kept my pace where I wanted to and still get decent times. So that’s another thing to keep in mind as you’re going through the workout.
Joe Courtney
That’s all I got.
Jerred Moon
That’s all I got. Good luck with this one. Remember, remember remember Michael Murphy and push yourself guys if like I said sometimes it’s the training Murph, but you can’t always be the training where you got to go hard and you got to remember why we do these these difficult workouts. Alright guys, that’s it for this one. If you want to ask us a question, you can go to garage gym athlete comm slash ama and we will get that answered for you. If you’re on the YouTube channel, go ahead and subscribe. Like let us know how you liked the video in the comment section. If you do have a question you can ask there as well. And if you are listening on your favorite podcast player, five star review positive comment we would really appreciate it but that’s it for this one.