Until a few months ago, if someone had told Rohit Mehra he would voluntarily sign up for a workout involving a kilometre run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another kilometre run—all without rest—he would have laughed it off. The 34-year-old Delhi marketing executive was neither particularly athletic nor someone who lived at the gym. Yet, on a sweltering June morning, he found himself standing at the start line, determined to give the challenge a shot.
As expected, he did not finish gloriously. But the experience left a deeper mark than he anticipated. “It changed something,” he says. “Not about how I look. About what I think I can do.” Mehra’s ambition was to complete a Murph—one of the world’s hardest workouts. Like him, increasingly many are seeking something a regular gym session simply cannot give them.
The workout is named after Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael P Murphy, killed in action in Afghanistan in June 2005 at 29. Murphy’s favourite workout, a one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, another one-mile run, ideally in a 20-pound vest, was renamed the Murph by his CrossFit community after his death.
Soon it migrated well beyond US borders. Globally, the 2024 CrossFit Open, the world’s largest functional fitness competition, of which the Murph is among the most iconic workouts, drew 3,44,396 athletes, a 6.7 per cent increase over the previous year, with roughly 1,17,000 of those completing their first Open.
Fitness communities across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune now programme the Murph into their annual calendars. “The growing popularity of Murph reflects a broader shift in how people view fitness today,” says Dr Akhilesh Rathi, Director of Orthopaedics and Sports Injury at Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute, New Delhi. “More individuals are looking beyond aesthetics and focusing on performance, endurance, discipline, and mental resilience,” he adds.
But for all its appeal, it’s not without risks. “Murph combines prolonged cardiovascular exertion with a high volume of bodyweight exercises, placing considerable stress on the muscles, joints, and tissues,” he adds.
A hundred pull-ups loads the shoulder’s rotator cuff repeatedly in a fatigued state. Three hundred squats, deceptively simple in isolation, grind down the knees and lower back when performed after everything preceding them.
In the end, the Murph isn’t a test of muscle alone; it’s a lesson in respecting both grit and recovery