This Guy Did CrossFit's Murph Workout Every Day for a Month

The Murph is more than just a notoriously difficult CrossFit workout; it’s also a “Hero WOD,” a grueling routine that honors members of the military and emergency services who lost their lives in the line of duty. More recently, it’s become a way for fitness YouTubers to push themselves to the point of near-vomiting in the form of month-long challenges.

The Unlazy Way’s Jonne is the latest vlogger to take on 30 Murphs in 30 days. The Murph consists of a 1 mile run, 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, followed by another 1 mile run. That amounts to 3,000 pullups, 6,000 pushups, 9,000 squats, and 60 miles of running.

Prior to the challenge, Jonne is able to run a mile in 6 minutes 17 seconds, his pullup max is 10, and his pushup max is 34. He also notes that he was completing his pullup reps without a weighted vest, so by his own admission, “it’s not the toughest version of the Murphs… the described Murph is for real badasses, and I’m not one of them.”

On Day 1, Jonne completes his first Murph workout in 2 hours 35 minutes. “I think we just broke the record for the slowest Murph ever,” he says. “The only way from here is up.” However, by Day 6, he’s feeling frustrated with his lack of progress. “I’m not getting anywhere with the pullups, my form’s not good,” he says. “It feels like I’m not recovering from the workouts. And most of all, it’s just taking way too long!”

For the first week, he does all of the Murph exercises in one go, back-to-back, unaware that dividing each round into sets is an option. Once he knows he is able to do that, he begins to make progress. Jonne breaks the workout down into 33 sets of 3 pullups, 6 pushups and 9 squats, then a single set of 1 pullup, 2 pushups and 3 squats to bring him up to his target, with minimal rest in between, and immediately is able to finish in just under an hour.

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He then begins to come up with variations of the Murph to keep himself stimulated. In order to build endurance, he does 10 sets of 10 pullups, 20 pushups and 30 squats, with 60 seconds of rest between. During these sets he uses bands and “easier” versions of the exercises to achieve higher rep ranges. “I hoped that this workout would stimulate the slow twitch muscle fibers and enable me to do more reps,” he says.

Another version of the workout he tries is what he calls the “technique Murph”, consisting of 20 sets of 5 pullups, 10 pushups and 15 squats, with 2 to 3 minutes of rest. “I varied my stances and grips from wide to narrow, and tried all sorts of variations that could improve my technique.”

Ultimately, he finds that partitioning the workout into sets of 3, 6 and 9, with a rest of 45 seconds, is what worked best for him. Over the 30 days, he is then able to reduce that rest period to just 30 seconds.

In order to optimize his recovery, Jonne begins doing thorough warmups and cooldowns (including foam-rolling and stretching), and tries to sleep a full 9 hours each night. He also decides to take just about every supplement under the sun during the challenge, including both whey and casein protein, “fast” carbs, creatine, BCAA, beta-alanine, L-glutamine, energy gels, and pre-workout, although he later says that he didn’t really feel any different (aside from palpitations from his heightened caffeine intake).

By Day 30, he is able to complete his final Murph in 43 minutes 49 seconds. His 1 mile run time has improved to 5 minutes 11 seconds. “But then the pushups and pullups were a catastrophe,” he adds. His pullup max increased from 10 to 13, while his pushups went up from 34 to 46. “After 3,000 pullups and 6,000 pushups, I was expecting a bit more.”

Still, he acknowledges that he learned a lot about endurance and the importance of recovery during the challenge, even if he didn’t see the kind of progress he’d been hoping for.

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