Rhabdo, MURPH & Starting Back Up At The Gym

Last Monday was Memorial Day. For the past 5 years, we've honored those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us by performing the hero workout "Murph". This workout is performed by thousands of box gyms around the world, and especially here in the USA, most boxes perform this workout on Memorial Day as a tribute and a tradition.

Since we've opened, Murph on Memorial Day has been our staple. We've enjoyed getting our entire gym together to perform this workout. We've seen up to 85 people at one time working out together to perform it. The scene of many athletes running and hanging from the rig has been amazing, and always sent chills down our spine.

Now, this year, with a Pandemic that rolled through, we realized that a vast majority of our athletes have not been conditioned to perform such a long grueling workout. We also believed that the social distancing requirements would just not allow us to perform it safely, and certainly wouldn't allow us to do a big group like we usually like to do!

Another factor that influenced our decision is the condition known as Rhabdomyalisis: Rhabdomyolysis is the breakdown of damaged skeletal muscle. Muscle breakdown causes the release of myoglobin into the bloodstream. Myoglobin is the protein that stores oxygen in your muscles. If you have too much myoglobin in your blood, it can cause kidney damage and could result in death. 

Rhabdo is very common in newer de-conditioned athletes, or athletes who have taken a long period of time off, then go at the workout as if they never took time off. 

Since the gym is just getting back into the swing of things, and the fact that most of our athletes took some time off, we decided that the safest decision for everyone, is to push MURPH back into July... and, to bring people's attention to Rhabdo as we begin to get back into the gym and the swing of things.