Reps can be partitioned any way you like (most people break the 100/200/300 into smaller rounds rather than doing each movement unbroken). Rx athletes traditionally wear a 20 lb. weight vest or body armor (14 lb. for women).

Where Murph Came From

Murph is named for Navy Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005, during Operation Red Wings. Murphy had built this exact combination of movements himself as a personal training routine while deployed, calling it “Body Armor,” since it required no equipment and could be done almost anywhere — a practical necessity for troops stationed without access to a gym.

After his death, CrossFit founder Greg Glassman posted the workout to CrossFit.com in August 2005, renaming it “Murph” in his honor. Murphy was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions that day. What began as an informal tribute grew organically across CrossFit gyms worldwide, and Memorial Day Murph — performing the workout every year on Memorial Day — became a tradition built by the community itself, not something CrossFit HQ organized top-down.

Because of that history, Murph carries a different weight than most benchmark workouts. It’s worth approaching it, and writing about it, with that in mind — it’s a tribute first and a fitness test second.

Why Murph Is Such a Good Benchmark

Murph is less about any single movement and more about volume management and pacing over a long, unbroken effort. There’s no complex skill involved — running, pull-ups, push-ups, and squats are movements almost everyone can do — but doing them at this scale exposes exactly where your endurance runs out.

What Murph actually measures:

• Muscular endurance capacity — 100 pull-ups and 200 push-ups add up fast, regardless of how strong any single rep is
• Pacing and partitioning strategy — how you break up the reps matters more here than in almost any other benchmark
• Mental resilience — Murph often takes 35–60+ minutes, making it as much a test of sustained focus as physical capacity

Good, Average, and Elite Murph Times

Rough community benchmarks for Rx men (with vest):

• Elite: sub-35:00
• Advanced: 35:00–45:00
• Intermediate: 45:00–60:00
• Beginner: 60:00+

Rx women’s times run similarly, with a sub-40:00 generally considered elite. Many people doing Murph for the first time — especially without the weight vest — finish well outside these ranges, which is completely normal for a workout of this volume.

Common Ways Murph Goes Wrong

• Doing the pull-ups, push-ups, and squats in three giant unbroken blocks. Most experienced Murph athletes partition into smaller rounds (a common approach is twenty rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 squats) to keep moving steadily rather than blowing up early.
• Sprinting the first mile. Murph rewards even pacing across a long effort — going out too fast on the opening run routinely costs far more time later than it saves early.
• Skipping the vest, then wondering why times don’t match posted standards. Scaling the vest is completely reasonable, especially for a first attempt — just note it wasn’t an Rx effort when comparing to community benchmarks.

A Note on Scaling

Murph is enormous in volume, and scaling it is normal, not a lesser accomplishment. Reducing reps, substituting ring rows for pull-ups, or dropping the vest are all legitimate ways to do the workout at a level that’s actually productive rather than just surviving it. The tradition matters more than hitting Rx.

Curious what Murph’s volume-heavy demands say about your gymnastics endurance specifically? Compare your numbers on CrossFit Limiter alongside your other benchmarks for a fuller picture.