We have done a mini-Murph at the Vortex before, a half-scale version of the “Murph Challenge,” named after Navy SEAL Lt. Michael P. Murphy. In preparing for this morning’s version, I learned more about “Murph” (the short tribute above with audio from his Medal of Honor ceremony is powerful and introduces his story pretty well). As we know, his favorite workout was a mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 merkins, and 300 squats, followed by another mile run—all while wearing his 20-lb body armor.
I wonder if he preferred this workout not because of the fitness benefit but because it forced him to confront and play through pain and limitations? A successful Murph involves dozens of decisions not to quit: each time one climbs back onto the pull-up bar, for instance, gets back down for another set of merkins after reaching total muscle failure only seconds before, or tries to run a fast mile on Jell-O legs. Online fitness blogs are literally filled with examples of folks who cut the Murph short or modified it in-progress because the sets became too painful. Maybe Lt. Murphy believed the tiny decisions not to give up during his favorite workout were habituating him for more costly acts of courage and self-sacrifice.
We divided into two groups (of roughly nine each) for our mini-Murph, after the customary warm-ups. One set of PAX ran a mile on the field, while the other did 50 pull-ups, 100 merkins, and 150 air squats on the playground, apportioned as desired. The first to finish did SSHs until all were done—at which point we switched immediately. After the second round, seal jacks until both groups had finished. We then did a short sprint and 12 cadence-count merkins to be sure we still had fast-twitch muscles before the final event.
For the remaining time, we split into two groups and lined up facing one another on opposite penalty boxes. We then all bear crawled to midfield, where half did 12 cadence-count military presses with sandbags and the other half did 12 cadence-count shoulder lifts with cinder blocks. All returned to the starting position by crab walking and did 12 burpees. We then repeated. Most PAX made it through a third rotation, in which they did whichever exercise they had not yet done at midfield before crab walking it home. YHC was too optimistic about our Murph completion time, and we had to cut this crowd-pleaser short, ending with a plank in lieu of Mary.
I am grateful for the sacrifice of our troops and for the inspiration and encouragement of the men in F3. It was good to share the morning with so many PAX, 18 total.
