On Saturday, we performed Murph — a traditional workout that we do every Memorial Day to honor Lt. Michael (“Murph”) Murphy. This year, we decided to do it on Saturday in order to better accommodate our member’s schedules.
“Murph” is just one of hundreds of workouts that are named after military heroes. Because we performed “Murph” on Saturday, we will draw at random a different hero workout today (Memorial Day) from the hopper.
The Hopper
Our method for programming workouts isn’t random, but a few times a year we pull out the bingo hopper in order to determine the WOD. It serves as a great to test one’s fitness.
The hoppers at our gym locations include hero workouts, but picture for a moment if we loaded it with as many skills and drills from as many different sports and strength and conditioning regimens imaginable. Agility drills from track; one-rep-max bench press from football; Fran, Helen and Diane from CrossFit; Pilates, yoga… do not exclude anything. What would you hope doesn’t get pulled out?
And that’s what makes this fun.
You know what you’re bad at and the brief moment of anxiety that comes when someone in the gym pulls out the WOD makes the class exciting.
Don’t feel bad — everyone feels that way. But we have learned that, “There is more traction, more advantage, more opportunity in pursuing headlong that event or skill that you do not want to see come out of the hopper than putting more time into the ones where you already excel. It is a glaring deficiency in your general physical preparedness (GPP). And fixing it will give advantage where it does not always make sense maybe mechanically or metabolically” (Greg Glassman).
Takeaway
As a way of saying thank-you to all military men and women, we load our hoppers with “Hero” workouts. A few times a year, we pull out the Hero Hopper and celebrate those that have given the ultimate sacrifice by doing a workout in their honor.
Every class will pull a different workout. Then, in the evening we make a post on our social media channels thanking those men and women whose workouts we performed.
I hope you enjoy the tradition today.
Happy Memorial Day.
Tyler