Hey Athletes! Want to know how to tackle a year of MURPH?? Tune into this week’s AMA to learn how!
Episode 21 of Ask Me Anything is up!
How to Tackle a Year of MURPH
For this week’s Ask Me Anything, Jerred and Joe talk about how to tackle a year of MURPH. They each give their own tips and advice on how an athlete should start this journey!
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
How to tackle a year of MURPH
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. It’s up. Joe.
Joe Courtney: Is it still me? I can’t tell under all this facial hair.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, and people get to see it. Like if you, if you don’t venture to the YouTube channel often because you’re listening to the podcast, like go.
Just go to YouTube maybe today, just to see. Quite unfortunate. It’s worth a whole
Joe Courtney: lot. I’m digging myself.
Jerred Moon: all right, so we’re doing an ask me anything. So I wasn’t actually asked. So is this, unsolicited advice?
Joe Courtney: Yeah, there you go. See, people aren’t at the gym right now to get unsolicited advice, so we’re just throwing it out there.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And so the I, I mean, I think I. I may have been asked or I will be asked. I’ve done a year of Murph two times. So I did it for a year. I took a long time off. sometimes when I say that people think I did it two years in a row every week for a year, I didn’t, I did a year of Murph, took [00:01:00] some time off and then did a year of Murph.
And now I’ve been offered several months. and now all of a sudden after having done it for two years already. Trampoline gets an idea that he is going to do a year of Murph. I announced that he tramp, this was around when I was doing the year Murphy at the beginning, but he didn’t commit. so he’s making up for it and he is apparently pretty good at talking people into really bad decisions.
Joe Courtney: What’s up with that?
Jerred Moon: It’s a skill, I guess. It’s, Maybe he’s in sales. I don’t know.
Joe Courtney: So a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves. Exactly. Yeah.
Jerred Moon: So anyway, now he’s got, I don’t know, it sounds like at least half a dozen garage gym athletes, if not more. hitting up a year of Murph. every week for 52 weeks, they started technically on Memorial day.
That was zeros, zero one. and so now they’re going to hit it up 52 times. And so my unsolicited advice and, and kind of what we are going to dive [00:02:00] into is just, you know, best advice for tackling 52 weeks of Murph. But I want to start hypothetical because Joe, you haven’t done it. So I’d love to know your thoughts.
If you were to start like today or on Saturday. Your a year of Murph journey. What are some thoughts and considerations that you would be going into as someone who hasn’t completed it? You know, just like what would you be thinking and how would you want to tackle it?
Joe Courtney: So at first it’s, you’re starting a new habit and this is a.
Pretty, pretty big habit to build. Cause I mean, even though it’s once a week, it’s still a tall order to ask what to do once a week. So I think the first month you just need to do any sort of version start lighter, start easier just to fill a form, the habits so that you know, it’s Saturday and you’re like, Oh, okay, it’s Murph day or whatever, you know, once a week.
You just know you have to do it for that time. So start off with just body weight. So don’t, don’t do the vest first for the first month. I think that’s even what you did and lowered your, your time some
Jerred Moon: right.
[00:03:00] Joe Courtney: Yeah. So start off with just body weight for like a month. Do it, you know, start off with like 80% effort and then maybe build it up a little bit and then, get in your de-load week.
So once per month, I’d say make it a zone two Murph, which we, which is something which you didn’t even, we didn’t even start until after your two years of marathon, I don’t think.
Jerred Moon: No, I did it. I did it. Well, actually, you might be
Joe Courtney: right on the tail end of the first one or the
Jerred Moon: second one in the very end.
Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Courtney: But so still incorporate your deal on weeks, keep it easy at first, and then, you know, after six or seven weeks, you know, you can either throw the best on it, depending on how you’re feeling. If your your, times are getting lower and you’re really feeling like, okay, yeah, this is, this is just my thing for once a week.
And I think also what I would do is, I think you were very dogmatic or very strict about doing it on Saturdays. It’s like, it’s a Saturday. That’s what I’m doing it, or what I’d say don’t. Set yourself up for such strict parameters, just try and tick the box for the week.
Jerred Moon: So say [00:04:00] in a seven day time period, you need to complete it.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. So say even if you did it on Saturday, but then you know the next week and you’re going away for a four day weekend, then just go, okay, well I’ll do it on Wednesday or Thursday, which there are people that have been, that have been doing morph on Thursdays for just whatever reason. Or they move their Saturday work on a Thursday anyway, so I think just as long as it’s within the seven or so day period, then.
then that’s fine. Just so, a little bit of loose parameters, the first, and if you really needed to challenge yourself, then do that as it goes along, but you don’t want to say you’re going to start something and then fall off the wagon early.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And so I don’t disagree with any of your points. I would say the moving in reverse to what you said, starting with the last thing you said about loosening up, like when it gets done.
Okay. I mean, I think that’s a very, That’s, that’s good advice because like, let’s be realistic. Doing something every week for a year can be challenging. so if it’s just the physical challenge of getting it done, I think that’s great advice. Part of the challenge for me was to be to do it on Saturday when I’m having, you [00:05:00] know, I’m on vacation or whatever, cause it would force me to, like, I remember one time we were, and this was during the first year of murder, if I had to wake up, I think we were leaving at like five or five 30 in the morning for a road trip.
Cause we had to make it pretty far in a day. It was on Saturday and the road trip was going to be like 14 plus hours with kids. And so I think I woke up at like three 30 that day to do Murph and then pack the car and then whatever hit the road. And those are the things that, that’s what makes it super challenging to me is like to be able to get it done on that day.
But I think Joe having me, having done it like some of those days, like where I do it, it was like the last thing I did that day where I did it like. 8:47 PM you know, like way later than it should have been, but I’m getting it done. You’re just kinda like pissed off. You’re not trying to go fast. You’re just, you just get it done.
So realistically, if you, aren’t going to be a freak about the day, I think that that’s really solid. I’m also completely agree with Joe. It took my body. [00:06:00] I think it was 14 to 16 weeks to fully acclimate to doing Murph. and I’m talking about, I used to be wrecked. When I would do it, I would do the workout.
I’d be pretty tired that day. I’d. Go to bed early, like Superstore the next day, and it took 14 to 16 weeks before that went away. So just let everybody know, you know, that’s maybe some of your expectations. And I did do exactly what Joe said. the first year, the second year, I didn’t do that, but the, the, no, no vest.
I didn’t even own a vest when I started that project. so like. I just did body weight until my vest came in. Essentially. I think it was like first four weeks or whatever, and then I would mix it up throughout. so going between vest every 10th one I would make really hard. That was one thing. If you want to like kind of just break up the monotony, you have something to look forward to.
Do a double Murph occasionally. You know, it’s that good, good advice
Joe Courtney: for double weighted.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. Double weighted triple [00:07:00] Murph. no vest, whatever you, you can throw in and make it however you want. so yeah, those are kind of, I guess all my tips and pointers, because don’t worry so much about your performance.
That’ll come, I would say. One out of every four was a performance Mer for me, where I would be like, I’d be in the right attitude, the right, you know, mentality, physically ready to be able to just fit. I’m going fast today and then I, you know, as you get further in the project, you, you want to do that more often where you have the ability to, but yeah, I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t start there. I wouldn’t start with that. I don’t go to too hard because one thing I did notice is like going too hard all the time. I seem like my central nervous system was a little bit suppressed and so I didn’t have a strong desire to like lift heavy and all these other things, and I’ve talked about that on the podcast before.
I would kind of check the box on those things, but I just felt a little bit different. I think that it was, the intensity was too high on those Saturdays and I wasn’t bouncing enough recovery so. I think that’s it. But to your zone two point, there’s some guy, I’m following Instagram, who I think he was doing [00:08:00] it.
I don’t know if he’s like every day or
Joe Courtney: there’s somebody that tried to do every day for like a month, which was just,
there’s
Jerred Moon: one guy who did it every day for like 52 days and he’s about to finish or maybe finished at Memorial day or something like that. But what he did, he’s, he’s one of our athletes, But he just had, I don’t know, he’s part of , I don’t know, obviously he’s not following program if you do Merv everyday. but he, did a lot of zone tumors. Like I think he did like 15 or 20 or something in a row. And what was really cool, because he would report like his time and his heart rate data, like his average heart rate and his time came down and his average heart rate, you know, decreased.
And I just thought that that was like. Incredible. You know, cause there’s a zone two range, right? Upper and lower zone two. And so he was like getting faster times and being in lower zone too. So I don’t have, I haven’t done that, but I think that that was just such a cool experiment that he kind of inadvertently did.
Cause that means his, him, his fitness improved [00:09:00] a great amount.
Joe Courtney: Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. And last couple of thing is, is if you actually are doing our programming and you’re worried about like, okay, what’s the best track to do? Well during this, it doesn’t matter. Craig Lewis did his year Murph and he was training for a strong man.
So he’s still focused on his goals, but then still having the Murph on us side is like a side challenge. There’s thinking in that light, unless you just really, really want to, you know, say break a world record or something. So, yeah, whatever you want.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. and I will be doing a lot more Murphs than I planned.
kind of in light of this, in light of some other information too, I’m sure you guys will hear about it eventually, but I’ll be throwing down not for a year, but probably a lot. For at least half of it, so, okay, that’s it guys. Thank you so much for not asking a question and me giving you unsolicited advice.
if you do want to ask a question, which plenty of people do, you can go to dot com slash AMA submit a question. Let us know what you think. or you can even ask questions in the Facebook group. If you’re [00:10:00] there, let us know and say, you want to see it on the show and we can do that. but if you are watching on YouTube, we’d love if you subscribe.
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