6 Week Murph Training Plan

The Murph Workout Actually Sucks, Here's How to Not Suffer So Much

The Murph is a hero WOD named after Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, a Navy SEAL who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. The workout is one mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and another mile run. Most people do it in a 20-pound weight vest for men and 14 pounds for women. It's typically done on Memorial Day. A lot of people try to jump straight into it and end up either unable to finish or spending 90 minutes on it. That's fixable with some structure. I've watched too many people attempt Murph untrained and pay for it for days afterward. The problem isn't the workout itself — it's that people have never trained their bodies to handle that volume of pulls and push-ups after two miles of running. The 6 Week Murph Training Plan I'm outlining below assumes you can already do a mile run and maybe a few pull-ups. If you can't do a single pull-up yet, start with something else first.

6 Week Murph Training Plan

Week one is about establishing the habits. You're running three times a week, starting with half-mile repeats. Pull-ups go first in the workout since you're freshest for them. Aim for five sets of whatever your max clean set is — not to failure, just a hard but controlled effort. Push-ups get three sets of twenty-five. Air squats, four sets of fifty. Throw on the vest for the runs only. Don't add it to the bodyweight work yet. Your shoulders will thank you later. Week two builds slightly. Runs go up to three-quarters of a mile. Pull-ups increase to six sets. Push-ups jump to four sets of thirty. Squats move to four sets of sixty. Still no vest on the calisthenics. Week three is where things get interesting. This is the first week you introduce the full chipper format, but scaled down. One mile run. Then fifty pull-ups, one hundred push-ups, one hundred fifty squats. Break the pull-ups into sets of ten, the push-ups into sets of twenty-five, and the squats into sets of fifty. Time yourself. Write the result down. Don't race it — just see where you stand.

Week four adds volume again. Runs are still a mile each, but now you're adding a second half-mile run before the main workout. So it's: half-mile run, full mile run, then the 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats scaled to 80/160/240. Vest comes on for everything — runs and calisthenics both. This is the hardest week of the plan. You'll feel it for two days after. Week five is a recovery week. Drop the volume back down but keep the vest on. Two half-mile runs. Sixty pull-ups, one hundred twenty push-ups, one hundred eighty squats. The goal here is to accumulate time under load without burning out. If you skipped this week and went straight to week six, you'd be carrying too much fatigue into race day. Week six is peaking and tapering. Three days of easy half-mile runs with the vest. Two days of light movement work — twenty pull-ups, forty push-ups, sixty squats just to keep the joints moving. Then race day. The actual Murph. Go out at a conversational pace on that first mile. The pull-ups will be the filter. That's where most people break down. Take breaks on the bar, don't swing, kipping is fine but don't overdo it early. The second mile always feels longer than the first because you're already tired. It is longer. Just move through it.

What Nobody Tells You About Training for This

The biggest mistake I see is that people focus entirely on the calisthenics and ignore the running. The running is half the workout. If your mile time is seven minutes or slower, you're looking at a very long day. Run twice a week minimum during this plan. Don't do speed work — steady state is what matters. A six-minute mile with a 20-pound vest is closer to race reality than a fast barefoot mile. Another thing: grip strength. People forget about grip until their hands give out on pull-up set seven and they're sitting on the ground staring at the wall. Dead hangs at the end of every session, three sets of maximum hold time. It takes thirty seconds and it makes a difference by week four. Here's a specific problem I ran into with a guy I trained — he could do the pull-ups fine on the ground, but the moment he added the vest, his shoulder mobility collapsed and he couldn't get a full range of motion on half his reps. He spent weeks grinding out partial pull-ups and it was miserable. The fix was simple but he didn't want to hear it: fifteen minutes a day of shoulder dislocates with a band or a stick, plus passive hangs with gentle internal and external rotation. He did it for two weeks before he even started the vest work and his pull-up efficiency jumped noticeably. Don't skip the prep work for your shoulders.

Also, eating during the workout matters more than people admit. If you're aiming for under an hour, you need calories in your system. I've seen people crash on the third set of push-ups just because they showed up empty. A banana or some gels during the first mile run helps. It's not glamorous but it's practical. The plan works if you actually do it. It doesn't work if you skip weeks or try to add extra volume on top because you feel good one day. That's how people get hurt. Stick to the schedule, log your times, and adjust based on how your body responds rather than following the plan like it's a religious text. If you have zero running base right now, this plan isn't for you. Finish a solid tenK training cycle first. If you can't do five strict pull-ups, spend a month on that before starting. The Murph punishes unprepared people hard and there's no shortcut around that. But if you've got a decent foundation and follow the progression, six weeks is enough to make a real difference. Good luck.