Every athletic accomplishment I have ever made was earned on the heels of long-term planning, tons of hard work, and absolute consistency. Planning is the easy part. So is the work, actually, because I love the work.
The problem is consistency. Distractions, when fed and watered, will kill consistency. If I don’t have a purpose and a significant level of accountability, things like minor injuries, time constraints, and almost anything else can and will come up, and the temptation to set aside the work for even a day can be compelling.
The solution is for me to share the goal with my family and friends. Maybe even entice them to take on the challenge with me.
Every Memorial Day, there is a challenge, or workout, called The Murph. It’s most prevalent in the CrossFit community, where it was first celebrated, but it’s grown beyond that culture, and now many groups take on the challenge each year in honor of its benefactor, Navy Seal and Medal of Honor recipient, Lt. Michael Murphy.
Who was Lt. Michael Murphy
Michael P. Murphy was a Navy SEAL from Patchogue, New York who was a star student and athlete at Penn State and turned down law school offers to join the Navy SEALs instead. He was known for standing up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves — as a teenager he intervened when he saw a disabled classmate getting bullied, and he stuck up for a homeless man being harassed.
Operation Red Wings
On June 28, 2005, Murphy was leading a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province as part of Operation Red Wings, hunting a high-value Taliban target. The team was ambushed by a much larger Taliban force. Badly outnumbered and taking fire, Murphy moved into open terrain — fully exposing himself to enemy fire — to get a clear satellite signal and call for backup for his team. He was shot while making that call but stayed on the line long enough to complete it, then went back to fighting. He died in that firefight, along with two of his three teammates; the fourth, Marcus Luttrell, was the lone survivor and later wrote about it in Lone Survivor. Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.
How the workout got its name
The workout itself wasn’t invented in his memory — it was one of Murphy’s own favorite workouts, which he’d named “Body Armor,” and it first appeared on CrossFit.com on August 18, 2005, about seven weeks after his death. CrossFit renamed it in his honor, dedicating it: “In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan, June 28, 2005.”
As prescribed, it’s brutal by design: a 1-mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 air squats, finished off with another 1-mile run — traditionally done wearing a weight vest or body armor, the way Murphy trained.
A twist on how it spread
One detail that makes the tradition hit different: Dr. Joshua Appel, the man who helped popularize the annual Murph Challenge, discovered by accident that he was the pararescue team leader who had rescued Marcus Luttrell and recovered the bodies of Murphy and fellow SEAL Danny Dietz. He started organizing group Murph workouts on Memorial Day as a way of “suffering together” in memory of what he’d witnessed.
Today it’s done every Memorial Day at CrossFit gyms worldwide, and the Murph Challenge has served as the official annual fundraiser for the Lt. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation since 2014, raising more than $2 million and helping fund a Navy SEAL museum in his hometown.
