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Here are the two most frequent thoughts that go through your mind when watching Olympic swimmers: Wow, they are fast and Wow, they have good abs—and not necessarily in that order. And with Aquaman Michael Phelps having officially retired with a mere twenty-eight medals, U.S.A. Swimming is going to need to find a newest set of fastest abs in the water. Ryan Murphy may just be that man. The 21-year-old went 3-for-3 in gold medals in Rio last summer, in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke and in the 4x100-meter medley relay (in which he set a world record for fastest 100-meter backstroke split in the process). He also just finished college—winning the 100- and 200-meter backstroke national titles, the Pac-12 Swimmer of the Year, and the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year, all at Cal. Needless to say, he was not on the typical undergrad's Oreos and Easy Mac diet.
GQ: You’ve been swimming since you were 4. How do you not get burnt out?
Ryan Murphy: Until I was 12, I did football, baseball, soccer, and swimming. And that’s the time when traveling baseball, traveling soccer, tackle football were all starting. I decided on swimming because there’s always something to improve on: recovery, nutrition, sleep, strength, endurance, technique. It’s almost like this little game. You’re striving for perfection in a sport that it’s not possible to reach perfection in. It’s almost like an addiction, trying to be the best you can.
And what’s your first meal every day?
On days I do doubles, I’ll wake up at like 5:20. I’ll have a PowerBar and a banana before practice. After practice, I’ll come back or go to the dining hall and have some eggs, spinach, some fruit, usually some oatmeal, maybe some Greek yogurt with granola and fruit.
You eat all of that?
Sometimes I’ll just make eggs and the granola, or eggs and the oatmeal. Usually I switch off between those two. And then, through my day, I’ll usually have trail mix or something with me. I’ll have a little sandwich for lunch. And then, after [the second] practice—this is something I got into a lot before the Olympics, not so much now because it kind of tastes bad—I make a smoothie and put it in the fridge. I buy raw beets from Whole Foods, chop that up. Put in the beet leaves, a stalk of kale, some spinach, some berries, some dry oats with some soy milk, and I’d put in a sweet juice—a splash of orange or cherry juice. And if I was pretty hungry, or I felt like I didn’t have enough fat in my diet for the day, I’d put in some almond butter. I scoff that down right after practice, just to make sure I’m immediately getting nutrients.
And for dinner?
I usually have a whole mash of stuff. I’ll make pasta with tomato sauce, turkey, cut up some onions, throw some peppers in there, boil down some spinach and throw that in. That has everything that you really need in it.
Do you track calories?
A little bit. I actually gain weight pretty easily for a swimmer. I would say I’m probably around 4,000-5,000 calories a day. So [it’s] not like these crazy, 12,000-calorie diets. If I’m eating chocolate chip pancakes in the morning, I’m probably going to gain some weight. So I try to stay away from stuff like that. And super fatty foods I try to stay away from. I figure that way I’ll stay decently lean.
What was the hardest thing to cut out? I mean, you’re in college! That’s when you’re supposed to eat whatever you want.
I have a terrible sweet tooth. I’m a big sucker for those Brookside Dark Chocolate Covered Acai and Blueberries. I’m a big ice cream guy. Chocolate. I love those Trolli Eggs. Like once a week, I try to let myself have frozen yogurt or something like that. Because I think if I was just totally locked down on my diet all the time, I’d probably go insane. So I think it’s good for me to have that one day to look forward to, like, “All right. I can get through today because tomorrow I’m going to have a dessert.”
After you were done in Rio, did you congratulate yourself with whatever you wanted to eat?
The line at McDonald's was always terrible, so I didn’t actually go to McDonald's, but I just went to the dessert section in the dining hall, and my dinner after the last relay consisted of chocolate cake and the little ice cream bars and stuff like that. I just binged dessert for two weeks. I gained eight pounds.
Swimming has always struck me as one of the most painful sports.
When you hit the 115-meter mark in a 200-meter backstroke, you’re just over halfway and your legs are starting to hurt. But you train for being uncomfortable. So you can push through that and it just hurts. But by the time you reach 175 meters of a 200 back, hard to pick up your legs. Your legs just feel like they’re not moving anymore, these big bodies of mass just floating behind you and weighing you down, and you have to find a way. The last 25 is like, “Ugh! Get. To. The. Wall.” I’m trying to look around, see where people are and use my competitiveness to get there. But it’s insane. Your legs just don’t work. If you watch my reaction after the 200 back [in Rio], I physically couldn’t celebrate. I was so pumped to have won, but I couldn’t even lift my arm because I was so tired. So I just hung on my line and died for a little bit.
How much did your diet play into your success there?
Eating right was huge for me this past year, probably the first year that I really took diet seriously. I cook most of my meals for myself, so it was easy to track how much oil I was using, what type of ingredients I was buying, and make sure that everything was prepared as healthy as possible. Essentially, I didn’t have a bad practice for three months in a row, just because I felt like I was doing everything right.
How many hours of sleep do you get a night?
I usually try to shoot for at least eight. Last year, we trained four mornings a week, and then two afternoons a week. So on the afternoons days, I was probably hitting ten hours, and on the mornings, I was making sure I was hitting eight. And I took a lot of naps.
When are you training?
On doubles day, it will be 6:00 to 8:00 A.M., and 1:00 to 3:30 P.M. So mornings are all swim. Afternoons, we’ll do an hour of weight, then stretch for fifteen minutes, then come down to the pool. And those are usually more speed-oriented. Those days are brutal. There’s only five hours between practices, so you’re still pretty tired going into that second practice.
And how do you suggest we get swimmers’ abs?
We do a lot of abs, probably at least ten minutes a day. You want to make sure you don’t have an arch in your back, so really working on the lower abs, so you can kind of shift your hips forward in the water. We do L-raises. You have to make sure your lower back is on the ground the entire time. If you arch your back and thrust, you can get your legs up, but controlling it is key. We usually do 20 at a time. A lot of plank holds, too, so plank on your stomach, plank on your side, you get the obliques. And then we do lower-back training, too, just to make sure all the stabilization muscles are working well. You gotta look good to rock a Speedo.
What other exercising are you doing in the gym?
We’ll do weightlifting. And if we’re doing heavy squats, we’ll combine it with box jumps. Because, in our sport, the races are less than two minutes most of the time, so you still have to have those fast-twitch muscles, so we don’t really lose track of that when we’re in the weight room. And then we’ll do medicine balls, abs, the typical pull-ups, push-ups.
And what about recovery?
Massage. Ice tubs. I’ll do cupping, depending on the time of season and how much time I have before my next race. It has to be pretty targeted. You have to know your body for that to be effective. It works pretty well in conjunction with other stuff, like stretching and lacrosse balling, making sure that you’re working out the muscles after you get cupped. Because that just brings blood to the surface, so you gotta make sure you find a way to work that out still.
How often are you working out?
We go six days a week. We have Sunday off. I’m usually so tired by that point, I just sink into my couch, watch some football.
