Paying It Back to C.J. "Murph" Murphy

In August of 2024, C.J. Murphy got the keys to a new building on the first of the month. Two days later, an army of friends, members, and former members showed up and moved almost the entire gym in a single day.

Six days after that, Total Performance Sports was open for business.

Nine days to build out a new space and move a 10,000 square foot gym. People painting walls and carrying plates on their day off for a place they pay to train at. Some of them didn't even train there anymore.

Murph didn't move because he wanted to. The rent was going up more than 60 percent, and the choice was to move or close. So he moved, and the people he'd spent 25 years caring for came back to carry the iron.

Now TPS is closing for good. This time, there's no truck to load.

Murph would never ask anybody for help. He'd never write this article, and he'd sure as hell never ask someone to write it for him.

So I'm writing it.

Nearly 20 Years of Showing Up

Murph has been on Team elitefts for close to 20 years. That's not a name sitting on a roster. That's two decades of work that most people never saw the cost of.

He's written hundreds of articles and blogs. Count the training logs, ebooks, ebook submissions, and everything else, and the number is probably in the thousands. He's hosted seminars. He's spoken at seminars. He sat down with me on Table Talk and walked through the TPS Method, Training for Life, and what it takes to coach a national champion and a guy who just wants to feel better in the same room, on the same day, with the same standard.

None of it was about building a brand. He wrote because somebody out there was stuck, and he knew how to get them moving. That's Live, Learn, Pass On in its purest form. Most of the people he helped will never shake his hand. Didn't matter to him. He did it anyway.

I've watched a lot of people come through this team. Some last a year. Some last five. Very few give what Murph has given for as long as he's given it. After enough years in this business, you figure out there are people who talk about the work and people who do the work.

Murph does the work. He always has.

What He Built

TPS started in 1999 in the back of a karate school. No investors. No fancy buildout. No marketing plan. A place to train and a coach who knew what the hell he was doing.

It grew into one of the most respected gyms in the country. Men's Health named it one of America's 20 best gyms, twice. Boston Magazine put it on their best-of list. Those are nice plaques. They're not why the place mattered.

Walk in on any given day, and you'd see a national-level powerlifter, a strongman peaking for a show, and a weightlifter. Right next to them was somebody who just wanted to drop some weight and keep up with their kids. Same room. Same expectations.

That's a lot harder to pull off than it sounds. Most gyms pick a lane. The hardcore places make regular people feel like they don't belong. The commercial places make serious lifters feel like they can't get anything done. Murph refused to pick. What tied everyone together wasn't the total on the record board. It was accountability. You showed up, you did the work, and you owned the result.

I've been running a business since 1998, and I can tell you that isn't how most owners think. Most are trying to figure out the least they can give and still keep the customer. Murph flipped the math.

That's why the army showed up in 2024. You don't get people to paint your walls and carry your plates with good marketing. You get it by spending 25 years giving them something they aren't willing to lose. Murph wrote about that move himself in Take a Video Tour of the New Total Performance Sports Location. Read it, and you'll know exactly who he is.

What Doesn't Show Up on the Record Board

The resume is legit. Former national powerlifting champion. Retired strongman competitor. Decades as a coach and nutritionist. Years of writing for the major magazines and sitting on their advisory boards. Founder and head coach of the TPS Method.

Plenty of people have a resume. Here's what most people don't know.

Murph ran charity events at TPS that raised tens of thousands of dollars for causes he cared about. Every dollar went to those charities. Not a percentage after expenses. Every dollar.

He also built a crew, and a gym is only as good as the people on the floor when the owner isn't.

And he changed people. Not just their squat or their bodyweight. How they carried themselves. How they handled it when life got heavy. Murph told people the truth, then stayed with them while they did something about it.

That's coaching. The rest is counting reps.

The End of an Era

After nearly three decades, Total Performance Sports is closing.

I'm not going to get into the details. That's Murph's story to tell if he ever wants to. What I will say is that this can happen to anyone who owns a gym, and right now it's happening to a guy who has spent his entire career taking care of other people.

The fundraiser wasn't started by Murph. It was started by Declan Murphy, and he summed it up better than I could.

The money goes to Murph and the TPS staff to cover living costs while they figure out what comes next. No gimmick. No angle. Just people who spent years showing up for everybody else, now needing a hand while the ground shifts under them.

Gyms like TPS are disappearing. Independent. Owner on the floor. Real coaching. Real standards. When one closes, it isn't just a business shutting its doors. It's a room full of people losing the place where they found out what they were capable of.

That deserves more than a sad emoji in the comments.

Live, Learn, Pass On Works Both Ways

I talk about Live, Learn, Pass On all the time. It's the foundation of everything we do at elitefts. Here's the part people miss. It isn't a one-way street.

For almost 20 years, Murph has been passing on. His training, his coaching, his mistakes, his wins. He put it out there for anyone who wanted it, usually after a full day on the gym floor. Lifters he'll never meet got stronger because of something he wrote.

If this community means anything, it has to work in both directions. We can't only show up for people when they're producing content. We have to show up when they take a hit.

Murph has stood next to a lot of us. Now it's our turn.

How You Can Help

You don't have to do much. You just have to do something.

From Murph

Become Hard to Kill

Forty principles covering training, nutrition, habits, mobility, mindset, and resilience, with action steps at the end of every chapter. It's not a gimmick book. It's what he actually teaches, written the way he actually talks.

Get the ebook

He'd Never Ask

Murph spent nearly 20 years making this community better and almost 30 building a gym people loved enough to move with their own hands.

He signs his logs Vincere vel mori. Conquer or die. He's never once asked anyone to carry him.

So I'm asking for him.

Live, Learn, Pass On.
Dave Tate / elitefts