Recast: How To CRUSH Murph

Hey, Athletes! Recast: How To CRUSH Murph - Episode of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up! 

• Recast: How To CRUSH Murph

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IN THIS 20-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Jerred and Joe are talking MURPH!
• This is a recast of a previous episode
• The guys go through the workout and give out all their tips and tricks
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper…

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you: 

• No study

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

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Recast: How To CRUSH Murph

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

- Jerred

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there. I'm Jared Moon, and I'm with Joe Courtney. We are strength and conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into Garage Gym Athletes over the last decade.

And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience. So let's dive in.

Joe: What's going on garage gym athletes. We have a recast here for you this week, considering it is Murph week coming up. Yes, we have Murph program this week, and a lot of people out there will be doing Murph this weekend because it is Memorial day. So this is a we've talked about Murph a ton on this podcast.

We have so much Murph content. If you either search our podcast [00:01:00] or go into our YouTube channel, we've done a bunch of different videos episodes on it. And this is one of the set episodes where Jared and I are talking about our best ways to absolutely crush an avian PR Murph. So check out this episode and any other Murph content we have, and then we will be back with some more fresh episodes soon.

Jerred: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast. Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. What's up, Joe?

Joe: Not too much, man. What's going on today? What do we got going on today?

Jerred: I think we're talking about basically how to PR Murph, right? Yeah. How to knock Murph out of the park.

Yeah. How do you do well at this workout? How do you think you do well at this workout? How do you do well at this workout? It's like a question within a question. There's there's how do you think, and then there's how do you actually do it? There's two questions.

Joe: Okay preparing ahead of time, for one.

So we're just gonna, okay, so there's no actual questions leading up. No, we're just, how do you PR Murph? We're just gonna get into how you

Jerred: PR Murph.

Joe: Alright definitely, this means that you've [00:02:00] already done the workout a few times, several times. You've done it in the past year, or in the, yeah so that's why you're PRing it.

Because You already have one set so you know what the workout is and you know you're mentally prepared for it or you're better preparing for it so physically preparing for it is what you need to do now so if you already have your game plan as we've said before Breaking, going from once again, Murph is running a mile, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 sit ups, and then running a mile

Jerred: squats.

Joe: Yes. Way different. Way easier getting messed up now. And you can partition those as much as you want. And the unpartitioned version of Murph isn't. necessarily official. It's just, if people want to make it harder and go longer, but if you want to crush it, then yes, partition typically the best way to do it is five, 10, 15, meaning five pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats.

And that's how you can go as fast as [00:03:00] possible. You have your plan in mind and I think preparing in weeks, the weeks in advance, the weeks leading up to it is going to be a huge benefit to what you're to, to getting there. And if you're not. Doing a lot of push up and squat volume now, then this is the time to add it in as much as you can.

And one thing that especially that we've done in the program in the past, and then now on the Murph burner track is to do the Murph practice 20 minute workouts or Fested Cindy, and these make huge difference, which is 20 minutes of 5, 10, 15. That same breakdown, but wearing a vest. So what you would do and really your goal would be to hit 20 rounds into the 20 minutes, you go in as, as much as you can with that.

And just speaking from doing the Merck burner now from week one to week two, I added like 35 reps to my. To my score. So over around, I fit in the 20 minutes just going from a week to the next. And then this week I will probably add more. And that's usually how it works because [00:04:00] adding that volume will get you through the muscle fatigue so much more.

And even like from, from week one to week two, my muscle fatigue was so much better. It was more about the the cardio aspect, the breathing aspect and grip with the pull ups. But so that makes a huge difference. So adding the volume in now. Is going to make a such a big difference, and you can do it any which way you want, whether it's in your workouts or push up grids and squat grids, because once you hit that fatigue level in the workout, it's going to be hard to go further or to go faster to keep your pace, and then you're gonna get more winded because you're so fatigued.

So add the volume now in the next couple of weeks. Every little bit helps. What's your tip? What's your next one?

Jerred: Yeah. If you, so this is assuming I won't get into the prep work as much as Joe did. Cause that's all that's all the same stuff I would say. So you do need to prep ahead of time. If you want to get faster in the miles start some zone two training and then do that for [00:05:00] about two years.

And then you'll be, you'll, your mile times will be a lot faster. And so that's how you get faster mile times. And then occasional speed work as well. So anyway getting into the actual workout stuff. There are some little things that you can do here and there. One, if you're a big heart rate monitor guy or gal ditch the heart rate monitor during your MRF PR attempt.

And I'm a big heart rate monitor fan. But I don't want to see it if I'm going for PR and MRF. I'm not interested in my watch telling me I'm in zone 5 because personally I'm going to get in my head. I'm going to be like, dude, you need to back off. You need to slow down. And that's not the mentality I want when I'm going for a PR.

That's the mentality I want when I'm training, I train 364 days out of the year, one day, if I want one day per year, if I want to hit Murph as hard as I can, then I'm going to go for it. And so just our take on intensity, it's not something that you should do all the time. It's not something that you should do every single day, [00:06:00] but when you are going for an official PR.

Go for it. Okay? In no way should you hurt yourself or whatever, but go for it. Me personally, knowing as much as I do about heart rate zones and everything else, I don't want to see my heart rate at all if I'm going for a MRF PR attempt. I want to, just, I wanna, I want a standard stopwatch on my wrist like Timex, Ironman, traditional, and just okay.

All I'm doing are lap times. I want to see how fast my mile was, I want to see how fast every single round of calisthenics is and that's the only thing input I want in my brain, speed up or slow down, speed up or slow down. Those are the only things I want to be thinking about as I go into it. And that's that's a big one.

If you do enjoy the heart rate monitor stuff just go as hard as you can on the pushups. I used to brief this to let's just say personnel in the air force before PT test. Because I was, I would do everything I can to help people. Squeeze out a couple extra reps, to get a better score on their P.

T. test and on the push ups specifically, [00:07:00] don't lower yourself to the ground, okay? Don't you need to fall. So you, it might, you might need to practice this a little bit because I'm not saying just like fall and hit your chest on the ground every single time. But you should not be lowering yourself slowly to the bottom.

Most people who've served in the military at all already do this. And they might not even know it. Like Joe, you probably do it. I don't know if I've ever actually watched you do a pushup, but you probably do it just because we know if we're going slow on the way down, that's just extra fatigue. That's extra stuff that we don't need.

And when you're taking a military PT test, the only thing that matters is that up. The, they're not doing anything on the down. They don't care about the down. And practice that a few times. I'm not saying like I said, I'm not saying just fall down. I'm just saying don't control it. So much that you are fatiguing your muscles unnecessarily.

That doesn't work as much on the pull ups because if you are doing a kipping pull up and you have no control on the way down, you can end up hurting your shoulder or worse. You're just like getting locked or jerked into a position. And then the squats, I you can do the [00:08:00] same thing with the squats, like slowly lower yourself in a squat, try and get down in that bottom position and shoot, shoot out.

But the big tips I give, I've given before also on the calisthenics is pull ups are going to be hard. Push ups are what they are. You're going to fatigue wherever that may be. Squats is where you will lose all the time. I already told you how to get faster at the mile, go run zone two for two years, and then also add additional speed work.

And then you'll get a lot faster mile times. It's not something you're going to do on the day of Murph. So if you want to get faster than Murph, do not. Be a little baby on the squats. Okay. You need to do the squats as fast as possible, and they need to be unbroken every single time. And I highly doubt that you're actually running into this reason that you actually need to stop.

I had this pointed out to me when I was in the military very early on when we would just do brutal workouts that someone else was leading. We'd either be doing squats or lunges. And. I [00:09:00] don't think this guy was like the most qualified fitness instructor in the world or anything, but he would always say, he's there's no like real reason you can't do another lunge or you can't do another squat.

He's unless you just fall over from ridiculous muscle fatigue and you can't actually get up anymore. The only reason you're not doing another rep is because you have selected to do it takes a very long time for a human to be able to not squat anymore. Now I don't know where your fitness level is, whoever's listening to this.

So with an asterisk. This was being said with very fit individuals. When I started my military career, so take that with a grain of salt. But I do think that when I watch people do squats, there's like this, they open the hips and then they add three or four seconds and then they do another one, three or four seconds, walk around after 10 squats and okay, what are we doing here as fast as you possibly can.

Unbroken every single time. That's how you need to do the squats. That's where you make up all your time. And to be [00:10:00] honest, if you just implement that one little tip, you're probably going to PR your Murph time. Granted, if everything else is the same on your mile times. So that's calisthenics.

If you want to PR and then again, I always say it on that last mile, you need to go as hard as you possibly can. And I've, I've had some last miles, you push yourself to whatever you feel comfortable, but I've pushed myself to levels where I'm not sure I'm going to stay conscious on the last mile.

So maybe just like right below that, not that hard. And see where you go. Cause I've been to those points too, where I think there's no way you can go harder. And then you actually push to that level and then you find out that everything's okay. And it's like breaking a barrier. You're like, Oh, I can live here.

I can live in this space. And most people just don't want to get there because it's uncomfortable. But I think that's about it. Don't go too fast on the first mile. Joe, I think you recommended, and it wasn't in this episode, but you recommended like 80 percent of your mile to 90 percent of your mile PR.

And I agree with that because the, [00:11:00] I know it can give me a no chance of hitting a PR or a slower Murph time. And that is going too fast on the first mile. I remember one time I did a, I don't even remember what it was. I think I posted my Instagram several years ago, but it was like a five 20 or something stupid.

Like I did a five 20 on my first mile and I just, I was like, I'm gonna PR and I did a five 20 and. One of the slowest Murph times I've ever recorded because I literally like close to PR'd my mile time and then I had a hundred pull ups to do, two hundred two hundred push ups, three hundred squats and another mile and my body just wasn't having it.

I was like shutting down. I was like not gonna happen. Go a lot Pace the first mile. Okay. I think 90%, like you said, Joe's that's probably good, but don't try and PR it cause it will ruin the rest of the workout. At least that was the case for me. Not, I think that's about it.

Make sure everything's like close. Like I have a pull up bar. That's right. At my grip at my reaching height, if you will. That way

Joe: I think your previous [00:12:00] house where you had to get on the stool and then jump up.

Jerred: Yeah. Yeah. That was, that slows you down. That slows you down quite a bit.

So if you have a high pull up bar, you want to pull a bar that's like just within reach. We're talking about the minor tactical things here to make sure that you get that PR. And so the minimal reach on the bar and then just drop right from that bar and the pushups in place immediately to the squats all in the same place.

There should be no walking around to different locations. It should be all one spot. And you get those calisthenics has done as fast as possible and then do whatever you can on the miles. But I think all those said and all said and done, that's about as tactical as I can get with the doing now the mental side of it, you just have to go there and, I talked about this.

You have to go there. Like there, there is no stroll in the park PR like this happened to me when I was trying to PR mild times over the last couple of months is you feel like you put in all this training. And so you should just go out to the track and PR that mile. And then you're six seconds slower than you thought you were going to be.

[00:13:00] And you're like, Oh yeah, you didn't try. You didn't try as hard as you possibly could. And then I tried again and then I PR my mile. That's you can't do that. Even if you've been trained, there are a lot of athletes listening to this, doing the Murph burner track. It's great. You've been training for it.

Doesn't guarantee that you're going to do amazing. I think for some, if you had like a crazy time, like a bad time, you will, but if you're trying to shave off seconds or just a minute here, you're gonna have to put everything you got. And so go there mentally and make it hurt.

Joe: So just last couple things for me, another game plan that I do when I'm trying to PR or go as fast as I can.

Is at, since I do the five, 10, 15 split, that's 20 rounds of those for kick calisthenics at the five, 10 and 15 mark is when I reapply chalk. And cause basically I know I can do five rounds with the chalk that I have. So it's right there. And I just reapply it real quick because if you start to slip or tear, then you're just not going to be good.

But I also know that I don't need to reapply chalk every two to three rounds because that's just [00:14:00] an excuse to be taking a breath and taking a rest. So I know I have it every. Every five rounds, because then I can also break it up to, okay, read, apply now five more rounds, and then I get to reapply again, you get a couple of breaths then, but it's only those three breaks.

And then if you really want to, and try this out, like with all the research and studies did on the podcast at the 10 round mark, halfway through, maybe do a car brains, try that out. I did that recently when I did I, I did a Murph a couple of months ago and it actually made a huge difference because I usually do it fast anyway, but that carb rinse really made a difference.

Jerred: Yeah. And one thing, so not a sponsor here at all, but I recommended it on the podcast and then Chris Morgan started doing it. The supplement slash electrolyte drink liquid I. V. So the reason that one specifically because what I typically drink just to show that there is no actual sponsorship or whatever is noon.

I like noon because it's an electrolyte drink and I use that a lot in the summer. But it only has one gram of sugar, which is [00:15:00] great. That's what I typically want, especially if I'm just drinking it during the day. But liquid IV has 11 grams of sugar. And it's still like soup. It's like non GMO.

It's like organic cane sugar. Like it's a really like clean supplement overall, but 11 grams of sugar is quite a bit if you're just sitting on your ass, in front of a computer or whatever, and, but it's not a lot. If you're about to do Murph. And so either have that like right before I'm not talking like right before you start, 30 minutes before 15 minutes before something like that, or make that your drink during.

Cause if you're running into any sort of like energy level. Thing that it probably is just food related. You're for me, I'm in zone four, zone five, that entire workout. That means I'm burning primarily in predominantly sugar, just sugar. That's what my body is. It's burning glucose. It's not really, it's moved away from fat oxidation at that point.

I'm burning sugar and I need sugar. And so if you are metabolizing sugar your body can use it pretty fast. So liquid IV is one that I do like. And you get that 11 gram sugar shot and that should help you [00:16:00] out. And like I said, Chris said that it was helping out a ton in his Murph project of doing 52 in the month of May.

And it's helped me out a lot with different workouts I've been doing as well. So that's a. Not sponsored recommendation there for supplement.

Joe: Yeah, I'll have to check that out because I've noticed I need that about halfway as well. Because I've gotten nauseous a few times because I just, I've been fasted and then I'm going at high intensity and I just got nothing left.

Jerred: Yeah, you're not, your body's got nothing there this is, we can get a keto conversation and everything else, but you're, Your body needs glucose. If you're going to be at that high intensity level, there's no way around it.

Joe: And I think that was it. I know that the insane amount of air squat volume that we've been doing on the Murph burner workout is made air squats a breeze when doing Murph practice.

That's probably the easiest part now. Which in the past, it's yeah, you after a while, your legs get a little heavy, you get a little fatigued, and your heart rate's going up. And it still jacks the heart rate up because they're air squats, but it's still like smooth like butter the entire time.

So yeah,

Jerred: it's something that [00:17:00] you can get very accustomed to. I, my brother's been training with me recently, and I had him do the five minute test. I also programmed this on a BCT. So it's five minutes of a bunch of different types of calisthenics, just as many reps as you can possibly get in five minutes.

And We got to the air squats. So we're all, we're doing this together, right? Cause it's five minutes on a couple minutes rest. And then we get to the air squats and we're like three minutes in and he's just starts laughing and he's you have not stopped. And I didn't stop. I did a squat continuous.

And fast for five full minutes. And he was like taking breaks cause he's not in the greatest shape at the moment. And he was like taking breaks every 15 squats and 20 squats and all this stuff. And he's like, how on earth do you just do squats that fast for five minutes without stopping? I'm like, just a lot of practice, there's nothing like special about me.

I've just done a lot of squats. I've done a lot of Murph. You can just do a lot of squats. Your body can handle it, but you do have to get accustomed to it. Yeah,

Joe: so that's huge, but this is my main, those are all our main tips to crush Murph. At least for me. [00:18:00]

Jerred: Yeah, that's all I got. Try hard.

That's the last one. And just go faster. All right. That's it for this one. If you want to ask us a question, go to garagegymathlete. com slash AMA and submit your question. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to the channel. Give us a thumbs up and a comment. Let us know how we're doing. And then if you're on your favorite podcast, Player five star review, positive comment really helps show out.

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