MEMORIAL DAY MURPH
MURPH IS FOUR WEEKS AWAY!
Americans celebrate the lives and honor the memories of their fallen soldiers every Memorial Day. As CrossFitters, on this day, Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Murphy is memorialized by thousands of people completing the CrossFit hero WOD (workout of the day), which is titled “Murph” in his honor. This is meant to be a day for community and remembrance, and we want everyone to have FUN and stay SAFE and HEALTHY as they tackle this challenging WOD.
Murphy was deployed to Afghanistan in April 2005. During a mission (later depicted in the movie Lone Survivor), he died while climbing to higher ground to make a call for help. Despite suffering severe wounds, he was able make the call and continue fighting. During that mission, Michael Murphy, Matthew Axelson and Danny Dietz were killed. The fourth member of their SEAL team, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, was able to escape, partly because of the call made by Murphy. We honor his heroism with the following benchmark WOD:
1 MILE RUN
100 PULL UPS
200 PUSH-UPS
300 AIR SQUATS
1 MILE RUN
While this is a daunting workout no matter how you cut it, there are TONS of great ways to scale to make it work for you:
- Break up the reps in easy bit sized pieces. Most people opt for 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 air squats (for 20 rounds) to get to the 100/200/300 total rep count.
- For most, the PUSH UP is the first part to fail. If this is an area of weakness for you, consider breaking up the push-ups even more. Go 5 push-ups, 5 pull-ups, 5 push-ups, 15 air squats (for 20 rounds).
- Consider doing “TEAM MURPH”. Find two or three friends (or we can pair you up) and split the volume. For those of you who love partner WODs, this is a super fun way to attack the day!
- HALF MURPH is a great option as well. You can cut the runs to 800’s and then hit 50, 100, 150 reps. We still STRONGLY advise you to break up the reps it smaller sets!
- Or you can just do it as an AMRAP. Let’s say 30 minutes is a good “feeling” time cap for you. Go for a run then do a 10 or 12 minute “Cindy”. Then hit another run! Cap yourself at 30 minutes.
We are working through all the details of the day, but here are some things we DO know:
We will have indoor AND outdoor options for you to do the workout.
We will run multiple heats of 20 athletes going every 45 minutes.
Your spot MUST be reserved in Wodify and we ask that you stick to your heat time.
If you are doing “Partner Murph”, each partner counts as a single sign up (meaning, if ten teams of two are going at once, that is a heat of 20)
“Outside Murph” will have pull-up subs including barbell rows, sit-ups or ring rows (we have a limited number of rings outside)
The event will kick off at 9:00am Memorial Day (Monday, May 31st) with the National Anthem, welcome remarks, and standards review.
Rolling heats will run every 45 minutes until we get everyone through.
And yes, we will have a community potluck-style party after!
While things are certainly not back to ‘normal’, we will do our best to safely honor the remembrance, celebration, and community that this day is all about.