Murph 2024
- a-crewandy
- May 28, 2024
- 3 min read
Murph 2024
I purposely left this weeks blog until today because I knew I would want to write about the Murph workout that not just the gym I coach at but CrossFit Gyms all over the world (and many people not officially ‘doing CrossFit’) took on over the weekend. I’m not going to go into loads of detail on the background of Murph but I really liked the clip that Dave Castro and CrossFit themselves put out about it:
Sitting and reflecting the day after and the thought I keep coming back to is how the workout, with everything that now comes around it, it is actually the epitome of what CrossFit is, should and can be.
If we look at one of the biggest distinguishing factors between and CrossFit gym and a normal gym offering say a spin class is the community aspect. The hallmark fact that you can, and frequently do, build genuine connections with people though CrossFit irrespective of where you are on your fitness journey and you know that you will be supported. This day in particular is about people coming together, to do something hard, and achieve a great physical feat together. If I look at the gym I coach at, I did Murph at 6am with a fantastic group of people. Later on in the day I coached two classes of Murph and whoever you talked to, other coaches, people who hard done it in other classes or people who were coming in to do it afterwards, everyone had that one thing in common and it created a real buzz about the place. On a personal level I love standing in front of a class in the evening, having done the workout in the morning, it gives me confidence and a sense of legitimacy. On this day in particular it's that knowledge, for the people I have in classes, that I have been through the same as they are about to. If we then take a step back and look on a Macro level, how often is it that you can bring a global community of people together to honour a person and group of people over the course of one weekend. In such a divisive world thats actually a remarkable feat.
And here’s the other beauty of it. It didn’t matter who you were or what fitness level you had. Everyone could do it and make it challenging. Maybe it was doing it without a weighted vest, doing it partitioned, or scaling a movement to 100 ring rows. Maybe you scaled the numbers. There was an option for everyone and guess what… No matter what version of the workout you did everyone achieved something fantastic and their achievement was celebrated for what it was (and what it was, was awesome!). The crux of that being that this, at it’s core, is a CrossFit workout. And every single day we scale workouts for people to meet them where they are at. Done well Murph is a fantastic example that CrossFit is genuinely for everyone, no matter if you are right at the start of your fitness journey or an elite athlete.
Let's be honest, CrossFit still isn’t a world renowned sport and there are certainly barriers to entry, be that though misinformation, accessibility or the economic climate. But all over social media across the weekend, a weekend where we are right in the middle of Semi Finals for the Games, all you could see was people talking about or doing Murph. Talk about a good advert for the sport. You could argue that Murph did significantly more for getting people through the doors of CrossFit Affiliates than anything over the course of the Open did.
I’m not going to drone on too much more about it except to conclude by saying a massive well done to everyone who took on Murph this weekend, at our gym and gyms across the world, it was a fantastic advert for everything positive that CrossFit can and should be.
Andy
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