💪 The Murph Challenge

“100 pull ups. 200 push ups. 300 squats. A 1-mile run before and after, all while wearing a 20-lb weighted vest.” This is the Murph Challenge, named after Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL Lieutenant who served in Afghanistan in 2003-05. In Cross Fit circles, this is a bread-and-butter routine, and many people in the US do this challenge every year on Memorial day. I first came across this a couple of months ago, when a high school friend of mine brought my attention to a Mark Zuckerberg interview where he said that he does the murph every year, and that his best time (dividing up the three exercises into 20 sets of 5 pull-ups + 10 push-ups + 15 squats) is under 40 minutes. The simplicity of this challenge (apparently Murphy did this exercise every day, calling it his “body armour”) and the spirit behind it (Murphy saw this exercise as a way to be physically prepared for any challenges to protect his loved ones) really drew me to it, and I immediately went and bought a 9-kg weighted vest. Since then I’ve been doing what I can every morning, and now I do half-murph (1-mile run followed by 50 pull ups, 100 push ups, and 150 squats followed by 1-mile run) in about 40 minutes (UPDATE: Now I’ve done the full murph in 1 hour 20 min.). It’s really impressive to me that Zuck can do the full murph in the same time.. I could probably complete the full murph if I pushed myself, but not under 40 minutes (or 1 hour..). 

Doing the murph has taught me the importance of setting ambitious goals—they really help push you to achieve more than you thought were possible. A definite bonus is that I get to bring my two boys with me and they will hopefully train up to be able to do this by the time they turn 18.