Murph World Record - Full Breakdown!

June 20, 2021

The full record breaking effort can be watched here: Murph World Record Video

Background:

Any discussion of the workout, Murph, would be incomplete without paying tribute to the inspiration, Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005. The “Murph” Hero WOD was originally posted on the CrossFit Main Site as the workout of the day for Thursday August 18, 2005 (050818) and has since become a Memorial Day tradition. Variants of the workout have also appeared in the CrossFit Games and it is among the most well known of all CrossFit workouts.

The full workout consists of a 1 mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, and another 1 mile run, all while wearing a 20 pound weight vest. In some versions of the workout, the reps are “partitioned” meaning you can do 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 squats (for example). Doing the workout “unpartitioned” requires you to complete all 100 pull-ups before moving on to the push-ups, then all 200 push-ups before moving on to the squats.

Prior to my 32:41 on June 18th, 2021, Hunter McIntyre held the record for the fastest known weighted & unpartitioned Murph with a time of 34:13. I believe the record will fall again soon and continue to drop quickly as more athletes attempt it as a standalone competition. I already know of planned record breaking attempts for later this year - good luck to you all!

Training & Preparation

I had little intention of breaking the world record, although I always knew the workout suited my strengths well. I’ve unofficially posted some of the worlds best scores for Cindy, a similar workout, and thought Hunter’s 34:13 looked very beatable when I originally saw it posted. However, I know that beating Hunter at anything is no small feat, as I’ve never bested him in competition before. So, this Memorial Day, I used 34:13 as target to see how close I could get. Not knowing I could actually do it, I was surprised to finish my Memorial Day Murph in 34:00.

Lots of people around the world have claimed to beat the record, so I put my money where my mouth was and coordinated a live streamed record attempt for just 3 weeks later. I chose that date because I wanted to recover from Memorial Day and have it not interfere with my Hyrox training. I was met with a lot of skepticism (for good reason) but I didn’t let this dissuade me. I knew I could do 34:00 again if not much better.

I’m incredibly thankful for the support of friends and colleagues who helped coordinate a successful record breaking attempt. Hyperwear sent me a new weight vest and friends helped arrange a track and pull-up bar so that I could have the best possible conditions.

I had done no specific training for my 34:00 Memorial Day Murph. I had however, been training for Deka Fit and Hyrox, so I wasn’t deconditioned. Between Memorial Day and 6/18, I did several practice workouts to refine my strategy and pacing. Going into it, based on the training I had been doing, I knew the muscular endurance in my legs and chest would be phenomenal. I’d been doing a high volume hypertrophy cycle with strong emphasis on quads and chest, so I knew they would hold up well. I had been intentionally deloading my lats though and doing an upper back focused training cycle, so suddenly doing 100 weighted butterfly pull-ups completely wrecked my arms for a full week. I put pull-ups back in my training for the 2-3 weeks leading up to my record which allowed me to recover much faster. While strength-wise I felt good, my running is still not what it used to be, so I would have to rely on superior push-ups and squats if I wanted to be successful.

Record Strategy

The best way to split up a high volume of reps is in small, manageable chunks with short rest breaks between. There is a slight “transition” cost between sets, so you don’t want to make your sets too small, but 40 sets of 5 is a lot easier than 20 sets of 10 from a fatigue management perspective. I decided on the following approach.

Mile 1 - must be conservative. It’s important to have good breath control going into butterfly pull-ups so that you can kip/cycle effectively and keep a good rhythm. While Hunter’s first mile had been a 5:20, I knew running that quickly would be reckless. I planned on a 5:50ish so I could begin my first pull-up at 6:00.

Pull-ups - I had tried 20 sets of 5 here, but it felt like a lot of transition and wasted energy jumping up/down from the bar. There’s also a “cost” to starting a cycle of butterfly pull-ups, so I wanted slightly bigger sets here. My plan was a set of 12 followed by 11 sets of 8, with one set starting every 0:20. This would allow me to finish pull-ups in 4 minutes, at a time of 10:00.

Push-ups - 40 sets of 5 starting every 0:12 had been feeling really good here. This is 25 push-ups per minute which would have me spending 8 minutes on push-ups, finishing this portion of the workout at 18:00.

Squats - this is where I’m strongest and I knew I was capable of going unbroken. In practice I routinely did sets of 100 in 2 minutes but knew they would likely slow down a bit, so I planned for 300 unbroken squats in 7 minutes, finishing this portion of the workout at 25:00.

Mile 2 - this is all about survival. I had built in enough margin-for-error that I could run a 9:13 mile and still get the record, but based on my trial runs I figured I would run about 7:30 here. I secretly held out hope that the pressure of competition and a strong kick would push me even faster. All in all, this gave me an initial goal time of 32:30, though I hoped for sub-32.

Race Day Execution

On the day of my record attempt, it was a lot warmer and more humid than I had hoped for. Minneapolis mornings are usually in the high 50’s this time of year, but it was already 74 degrees and humid when I got to the track at 7am.

Mile 1 - I didn’t feel as good as I had hoped for during my first mile, but I tried to shrug off these feelings and stick to the plan. As expected, I finished around 5:50 and started my first pull-up at 6:00.

Pull-ups - things immediately fell apart here, as my pull-up bar was unstable and was wobbling considerably on each rep. I was losing energy trying to compensate, so I started breaking them into smaller sets. My hand also ripped just a few sets in, so I was bleeding and losing grip on my right hand early on. I knew I had built in extra time though, so I stayed calm and allowed myself an extra 40-45 seconds to complete my 100 reps. Hunter had done his pull-ups very quickly, so at this point I was a full 2 minutes behind record pace.

Push-ups - trying to stay focused after some pull-up issues, I got back on track with my push-ups. I stuck to the plan for the first 100 reps, then sped up my pacing to buy back the time I lost on pull-ups. I finished my push-ups at 17:50, right on schedule.

Squats - these went about as expected. I was successful at staying unbroken and they took just a hair over 7 minutes, finishing these around 25:00, on schedule.

Mile 2 - I’ve done a lot of running on tired legs, but this hit me like a ton of bricks that I was not expecting. If I hadn’t been on a live stream attempting a world record, I definitely would have walked. I felt like I was crawling but tried to keep my legs moving and resisted the urge to vomit. After 1 lap, I felt a lot better but was still in pain. I did have a little extra energy in the tank, but it was all too easy to talk myself out of truly emptying the tank. While I probably could have kicked the final 400, I really don’t like throwing up and knew what would have happened. Finish this in around 7:30/7:40 for a final record time of 32:41.

Reflection

It was really quite surreal to set a world record and didn’t feel like something I “deserved”, and I can’t help but think that there’s a lot of people who could probably beat the record if they tried. At the same time, I’ve talked to a lot of incredible athletes who have tried (and failed) to do so, so it does feel pretty good too. As this record gets more attention and more athletes try it, I think we’ll see the record continue to fall. I think with more training and preparation, I personally could lower the record to sub-30:00, but I think there’s an athlete out there somewhere that could bring it down further to the 27-28min range!

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About Me

Hi there! I’m Alec Blenis, athlete, coach and fitness educator.

My passion is helping people move more & move better to accomplish their health and fitness goals. I provide movement education and world class coaching services to individuals around the world.