Don't pull a Murph in your practice
But if you wanna join me next memorial day for the actual Murph, that's totally cool.
On Memorial Day, I went to my local crossfit gym and did a workout called “The Murph.”
If you’re not familiar with the Murph, it’s basically an endurance bodyweight exercise that asks you to push yourself just beyond your own limits when it comes to your ability to move your body and not give up in defeat.
It looks like this:
First, you run a mile. (by the way, if you’re hardcore, you do this whole routine with a weighted vest).
After you get back, you complete the following:
100 Pull Ups (I did ring rows instead)
200 Push Ups (I did mine with my knees on the ground)
300 Air Squats (basically, squatting without a barbell or any extra weight, unless of course you’ve got that weighted vest)
Once you’re done, you go run another mile, and you try not to puke at the end of it.
It was about 80 degrees and sunny by the time I got started, and there were only three people in my heat—the rest had gone about an hour earlier at the 10:00 start time.
As I was dragging my feet through the second half of my second 1-mile run, I had to keep telling myself, “you’ve got this. you can do it. just a little bit further. just keep going. you can walk if you need to, but you need to just. keep. going.”
And I did it. I finished the whole thing in just under 55 minutes. Most of the people had gone home by that point, so when I arrived back at the gym, there were a few stragglers who clapped a bit for me and gave me an atta’ boy before turning back to their conversations.
In a rather anticlimactic ending, I stretched out my legs a bit, grabbed a drink from the cooler, and went home.
Okay, so, why am I talking about crossfit and the Murph on a publication for therapists?
Obviously, I want to brag. I mean, we should celebrate ourselves, shouldn’t we?
But in all seriousness, it seems to me that too many of us therapists have been trying to pull off a Murph in our therapy practices, except there is no discernible finish line, and instead of a couple of stragglers cheering us on, we’ve got managers (either external, at our jobs, or internal, in our own minds—often both at the same time) that are telling us that we need to keep up the same pace we set during our first mile, while giving us side-eye us for needing a break or for wanting to slow down, stop, walk, or get off the track.
We’re all dragging ourselves through the heat and telling ourselves we shouldn’t be upset because we chose to run this race. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t need a break because we decided to show up, and because others need the break more than we do because they’re doing regular pull-ups with a weight vest on, and anyway, who will run this race if we don’t?
We tell ourselves that if we can just keep moving, we might round some corner where we see the finish line and a big cheering crowd. But it never comes. We just keep running, squatting, pulling ourselves up to let ourselves down, and pushing away at the ground, only to find ourselves back down there again.
Sounds fun, huh?
Y’all: you don’t have to pull a Murph in your professional life. It shouldn’t feel like an endurance race to nowhere. Just like we’d never expect an athlete to keep going with no discernible end to their race—just like we’d never criticize any of our own clients for not wanting to keep grinding away at a job that gives them no grace, no space to slow down and rest—so, too, should we refuse to push ourselves to collapse, over and over and over again.
You set your pace. You set your level (can you do strict pull-ups? or for now, do you need the rings?). You take breaks when necessary. You nourish yourself spiritually, physically, and mentally. You tell the assholes on the sidelines that their expectations aren’t reasonable, and if they’re not happy with your performance, they’re more than welcome to step in and help. You look for the cheerleaders, even if there are only a few, and you cheer them on too when they run their own race and try not to puke.
Basically, we can’t expect ourselves to keep grinding away endlessly. Things like the Murph (the actual Murph, not the one you/I have been doing in our work) are fun and enjoyable for lots of people because you get to test your limits, and there is an end. There is rest and celebration. There are snacks and the equivalent of adult High-C, there are high fives and people clapping for you (even if you don’t know them) and you can lay on the ground for a while after if you need to before going home.
The stuff I’m going to be talking about in this space is in direct service for those of us who have been trying to pull a Murph for most of our careers. It’s been especially bad since March 2020, because, well…duh.
The stuff in here is going to be about rest—not just sleep and relaxation, but actually:
how do we literally pursue full-body rest and rejuvenation?
How do we rest ourselves from the race, knowing we can get back into it if we want to, or we can take it at a walking pace instead?
How do we allow others to rest without judging them?
What elements do we need present in order to rest (hint: financial security, bomb-ass boundaries/policies, support and community, shit to do outside of work, advocacy, pleasure, and more)?
And how do we make it fun? Because honestly, there is so much heaviness in the work we do—we’ve gotta find a way to lighten things up here, lest we all get caught up in the misery of the 299th squat.
Alright, y’all. That’s what I’ve got. Go drink your water and get some breeze in your beautiful faces. I’ll be back with you later.
-Meg