Hype or Happening: The Murph challenge Premium

The Murph fitness challenge, which has been doing the rounds lately, doesn’t seem worth the risk

On Memorial Day, May 29, 2020, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted two photographs on his Instagram account that garnered over 4 lakh likes. The first was a selfie of the Facebook co-founder wearing a sweaty grey T-shirt and weighted vest, looking considerably depleted; the second was of his two daughters doing push-ups on a wooden floor. “I try to do the Murph challenge with the girls every Memorial Day as a tradition to honour those who defended us,” he explains in the caption, referring to the CrossFit workout, believed to be the favourite of Michael Murphy, an American army officer who died in Afghanistan in 2005.

The workout, which consists of running a mile, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and then running another mile, all while wearing a 20-pound (9 kg) weighted pack, was first introduced into CrossFit gyms in 2007, by Josh Appel, an Air Force para-rescue jumper who led the team that recovered Murphy’s remains. Soon, the tradition moved beyond CrossFit, a workout based on high-intensity functional training.

“Anyone can do a Murph,” believes Dr Appel, who co-opted both his 90-year-old father, as well as his 9-year-old daughters. All one needs to do is scale and modify the challenge, to make it more inclusive, he implies in the interview with The Jedburgh Podcast, in May.

Does that mean everyone can take the challenge?

Not really, believes sports medicine physician Kannan Pugazhendi, the co-founder of the Sports Performance Assessment Rehabilitation Research Counseling Institute, which has branches across the country. While he likes the idea of celebrating a hero by replicating the physical and mental trauma he went through in some small measure — the point of the Murph is to push you to your limits and make you feel uncomfortable — he believes the challenge is not for everyone.

For starters, it could be a punishment for children, he points out, adding that it is best suited for competitive athletes above 15 years of age. “You need to already have a baseline level of fitness,” he says, adding that getting to this takes time and focused training. “I don’t think it is worth it otherwise,” he says. Internet challenges should only be carried out by people who train regularly, know the right form for particular exercises, and have the physical capacity (both strength and endurance) to perform them. “People who are not fit will get injured,” he says, questioning the idea of fad challenges that hit social media.