Ryan Murphy is getting creative with his quarantine workouts.- The backstroke specialist who won three gold medals at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has continued his training at home in Berkeley, California.
- He and one of his roommates, fellow Olympic medalist Josh Prenot, tried to push Murphy's car up a hill to get in a good leg workout.
"We ultimately couldn't get it up the hill, because I think this car is like 5,000 pounds," Murphy told Insider. "The car is very heavy... but that was a nice way to work out the legs."
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Even though there are 14 months until the now-postponed Olympic games in Tokyo, the most esteemed athletes on the planet are still trying to stay in tip-top shape.
For swimmers, that can be a bit challenging, as the coronavirus pandemic has limited or completely eliminated their access to a pool and a proper weight room.
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Ryan Murphy — who owns the world record in the long course 100-meter backstroke — told Insider he's enjoying "getting creative" with his conditioning during quarantine, which ultimately led him to try pushing his car up a hill.
He and fellow Olympic medalist Josh Prenot live together in Berkeley, and the duo was searching for a way to get a good leg workout in when Murphy came up with an idea.
"I feel like it's really easy to do upper-body exercises without a weight room but [Josh and I] were like 'I don't really feel like we've worked out our legs that much. What could we do?'" Murphy said. "I looked at my car and I was like 'Dude, I guess we could try to push my car and see how far that goes' and he was like 'Alright, let's do it.'"
They put the car in neutral and asked Prenot's wife — former collegiate swimmer Tiffany Sudarma — to take over the wheel "because there are lots of cars parked on the street in Berkeley."
Then, they pushed.
"We were pushing it along the road and seeing if we could keep trying to get it up a hill," Murphy said. "We ultimately couldn't get it up the hill."
"The car is very heavy," he added.
In fact, a quick Google search indicates that the car — a Jeep Grand Cherokee — weighs just over 4,500 pounds. But Murphy and Prenot manage to move it with relative ease in the video they shared on Instagram.
That is, until they reached the hill.
"We just tried it a couple of times and we couldn't get it very far up the hill," Murphy said. "But that was a nice way to work out the legs."
Surely the most eccentric workout Murphy has tried was pushing his SUV up the road. But he's found some other new training routines — including boxing, biking, and pull-ups on tree branches — to add to his repertoire.
"We're a very routine-oriented sport, so for the past six or seven years since I've been training at Cal, I've had the same sort of practice schedule and I've had similar weights," Murphy said. "This has been really interesting to experiment with new things and I'm finding things that I want to keep in my training plan."
"I'm trying to stay flexible and really be able to change my direction really quickly — this is a good time to practice that," he added. "There are a lot of things that I'm learning in this time that are applicable to when life goes back to normal. Honestly, I view it as a challenge to stay on top of everything mentally."
Check out the video of Murphy and Prenot's unconventional leg workout below:
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