Suffering for Memorial Day: Gym to open

MOSES LAKE — If you’re looking for a way to commemorate Memorial Day, you could do worse than a Murph.

It’s not the easiest workout, said Dan Crawford, the owner of The Box, a CrossFit gym set to open on Memorial Day. The Murph, named after Navy SEAL Michael Murphy, who earned a posthumous Medal of Honor in Afghanistan in 2005, involves a 1-mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, and another 1-mile run.

All while wearing a 20-pound vest, if you choose to.

“Memorial Day is always done with a workout called Murph,” Crawford said. “It’s the staple of all CrossFit, the number one workout.”

Crawford and Kevin Walz, owner of Garage Doors & More, are opening a little CrossFit studio at 3192 Bell Ave., in the industrial area south of the Moses Lake Municipal Airport, and are inviting folks to come on Monday, starting at 10 a.m., for a workout, a raffle and a barbecue of carne asada.

“Everybody can come out, but not everybody has to participate,” Crawford said of their opening day celebrations. “We will encourage everybody to participate.”

The workouts are the reason that Walz and Crawford have started the business, tough and intense workouts that combine just about everything — movement, weights, exertion — designed to give someone the opportunity to push themselves to the extreme in a “workout of the day” (WOD).

“A lot of the staple workouts are called Hero WODs, and they are named after some sort of military person who died in combat,” said Crawford, himself a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. “The idea is we sweat and we suffer because they suffered that much more.”

While it sounds very intimidating, Crawford said there is room for everybody of all levels in CrossFit. What really counts is the community formed around the workouts encouraging everyone who comes to workout, at whatever level, to do their best and do a little bit better every workout, he said.

“What CrossFit gave me was the ability to have that community that I was missing in the military, and have that friendly competition,” he said. “We’re competitive, and we’re always rooting each other on. Nobody fails.”

“The worst person in the gym that finishes last is the one we’re cheering the most,” Crawford added.

“It’s almost more rewarding to help somebody do something for the first time than it is doing something yourself,” Walz said. “We’ve had multiple people in the gym who didn’t think they could do a lot of things. But through hard work, effort and encouragement, it’s all obtainable.”

In fact, Walz said he was one of those people who once couldn’t do much at first, and that doing CrossFit has changed his life.

“I’ve lost 90 pounds doing CrossFit in the last four or five years, and I really enjoy it,” Walz said. “Made me feel better.”

“It’s an addiction,” Crawford added. “But it’s a good addiction because you’re getting healthier.”