When to Put Your Knee Sleeves On (And When to Take Them Off)

First time I did Murph with knee sleeves I left them on the whole way through. That seemed like the sensible thing to do - I'd put them on, why would I mess around taking them off and putting them back on mid-workout? By the mile-and-a-half mark I'd sweated through them completely, my knees were hotter than they had any business being, and somewhere around push-up number 140 I caught myself thinking about the sleeves more than the workout. They weren't helping. They were just there, getting in the way, making my legs feel like they were wrapped in warm rubber.

That experience is what made me actually think about what the sleeves are there to do, rather than treating them as something you either wear or you don't. The answer - which sounds obvious once you say it out loud - is that different movements in a WOD make different demands on your knees, and a sleeve that's doing genuine work during the squats is largely a passenger during the runs and the pull-ups. Once you understand that, the question of when to wear them stops being complicated.

What Murph Actually Asks of Your Knees

For anyone not familiar, Murph is a Hero WOD: one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, one-mile run. Usually done with a 20kg vest if you're going fully prescribed, often broken into rounds of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats to make the middle section manageable. It's a long workout - competitive athletes do it under 40 minutes, most people take 45-70 minutes, and it's a lot of total time under load or under pace.

Now think about what each of those movements is doing to your knees specifically. The runs are moderate cardio load - your knees are cycling through a gait pattern, absorbing impact, but you're not loading them under external weight. The pull-ups are predominantly upper body - your knees are just hanging there. The push-ups are the same story. The squats - 300 of them - are where the knee is genuinely doing work: repeated deep flexion and extension under bodyweight (plus vest load if you're wearing one), 300 times across the session, with accumulated fatigue changing how your joint tracks as the reps pile up.

Those are not the same demand. Treating them as the same demand is why leaving your sleeves on through the whole workout doesn't actually serve you as well as being selective about it.

What the Sleeve Is Doing During the Squats

During those 300 squats, a 7mm knee sleeve is earning its keep. Compression keeps the joint warm and the synovial fluid behaving properly through a lot of repetitive flexion. Proprioception - the joint's awareness of its own position - improves under compression, which matters when you're on your 200th squat and your form is starting to drift. The structure of the sleeve provides some mechanical support to the soft tissue around the knee as fatigue accumulates, which is particularly relevant in a workout like Murph where the sheer volume of squats means you're asking the joint to perform properly long after it would rather stop.

If you've got any history of knee niggles, the case gets even stronger. Repeated bodyweight squatting under fatigue is exactly the kind of load that tends to aggravate old injuries - the squat depth gets shallower, the tracking gets messier, the knee starts caving in slightly by the end. A sleeve doesn't fix any of that but it does give the joint feedback and support through the movement, which tends to slow the deterioration in mechanics as you get tired. I've gone into the science of what compression is actually doing at the tissue level in a proper piece on the science of compression if you want the full version.

What the Sleeve Is Doing During the Runs

Not much that's genuinely useful. Running knee mechanics are different from squatting - you're moving through a smaller range of motion at higher speed, and the primary demand is absorbing impact through the whole kinetic chain rather than loading the joint under controlled flexion. The compression a 7mm sleeve provides isn't meaningfully addressing the demands of running. What it is doing is adding warmth to a joint that's already generating heat through cardio output, adding some restriction to a movement pattern that doesn't need restriction, and making your legs feel heavier and hotter than they would bare.

For longer runs in a WOD context, this matters. A two-kilometre run is long enough that the accumulated heat and restriction from a thick neoprene sleeve becomes a genuine comfort and performance factor, not just a mild inconvenience. I've covered the overheating question in detail in a piece on sleeves and heat - the short version is that 7mm in sustained cardio work can push knee temperature higher than you want it, which is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.

The Practical Rule for Mixed-Modal WODs

The framework that works for Murph works for most mixed-modal CrossFit programming: put your sleeves on for movements that load the knee under significant force or repeated deep flexion, and take them off - or don't bother putting them on - for cardio, upper body work, and movements where the knee isn't bearing primary load.

In practical terms, this means sleeves go on for: squats of any kind, deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts, lunges, step-ups with load, cleans and snatches. Sleeves come off for: distance runs, rowing, bike erg, pull-ups, ring work, push-ups, strict pressing. That's not a hard and fast rule - if a WOD is short and the "non-knee" movements are minimal, leaving the sleeves on the whole time is fine. But in a long workout like Murph where you're running two kilometres and spending significant time on upper body movements, making the sleeves work specifically for the squats is the smarter call.

Why This Was Impossible With Old-Style Slip-On Sleeves

Here's the part that makes the on-off strategy theoretical rather than practical for a lot of people: traditional 7mm slip-on knee sleeves are genuinely difficult to get on, especially mid-workout when you're warm, slightly sweaty, and under time pressure. You either need to take your shoes off to pull them over your foot, or you fight them up over the shoe, and neither version is something you want to do between a set of push-ups and a set of squats in a workout that's already running long.

That's why Buff Roo's Generation 2 velcro design changes the practical calculation here. The velcro strap means you can get them on and off in seconds without removing shoes. In a Murph context, that means you can genuinely take them off before the runs and put them back on before the squat sets without losing meaningful time. What was previously a theoretical ideal becomes something you can actually do in the middle of a WOD without it being a production.

The Hyrox Version of This Conversation

Murph is the clearest CrossFit example but the same logic applies to Hyrox, where you're alternating running kilometres with functional stations. I've written about the knee sleeve strategy for Hyrox specifically in a piece on using sleeves through a race - the core point is the same. Wearing sleeves through the running legs just to have them on for the functional stations is less effective than being selective, but it only works if your design lets you actually switch them on and off quickly. Hyrox timing makes that more constrained than Murph, which is where the velcro really earns its keep.

Does This Mean Wearing Them the Whole WOD Is Wrong?

No. There are plenty of situations where leaving them on the whole session makes perfect sense. If the workout is short and the non-knee movements don't last long enough for the heat to become an issue, don't bother switching. If you're training in a cold gym and the warmth from the sleeve is helping your joint stay loose through everything including the runs, keep them on. If the cognitive load of managing your sleeves mid-workout is more disruptive than the benefit of taking them off, just leave them on.

The point isn't to create a rule that says you must always take sleeves off for runs. It's to understand that sleeves are a tool with a specific job, and using them selectively for the movements that actually benefit from them is usually more effective than treating them as something you either wear all session or don't wear at all. Most of the experienced athletes at any box who've been using sleeves for a few years figure this out through trial and error. Murph is just the most obvious workout to think it through with because the movement contrast is so clear.

Common Questions on This

What about the pull-ups in Murph - do sleeves interfere at all? Not really. They don't help either, but they don't get in the way of a pull-up. If you're doing pull-ups with your sleeves on because you haven't taken them off yet, it's not a problem. The issue is more about comfort and heat over the course of the run sections than any mechanical interference with upper body work.

Should I put sleeves on before the first run or after it? For Murph, I'd put them on after the first mile and before the squats. The first run is a warm-up for your joints as much as anything else, and you want to start the sleeve-supported portion when the squat volume begins rather than before it. Take them off before the second mile run.

Does this apply to vest-weighted Murph? Yes, and arguably more so. The vest adds load to every movement including the squats, which increases the case for good compression through the squat volume. The runs are also harder under vest load, which is another reason not to add unnecessary sleeve restriction to them.

What if my WOD has thrusters - is that a sleeve movement? Yes. Thrusters involve a full front squat at the bottom, which is exactly the kind of loaded deep knee flexion that benefits from compression. If your WOD has thrusters mixed with cardio, treat the thrusters like squats for sleeve purposes.

I've already broken in my sleeves - do they get easier to put on mid-WOD? Yes, noticeably. A well-broken-in sleeve is more flexible than a new one. But nothing makes a traditional slip-on as quick to manage as a velcro design. If you want to use the on-off strategy consistently, the velcro option is the one that makes it genuinely practical.

The Takeaway for Murph and Every WOD Like It

Sleeves are a tool for supporting a loaded knee joint under repeated deep flexion and heavy strength work. Murph has 300 of those squats. That's where they belong. The runs, the pull-ups, the push-ups - your sleeves aren't doing meaningful work there, and in a long workout under Australian summer heat, they're actively making things worse by overheating a joint that doesn't need the extra thermal load.

Put them on before the squats. Take them off before the runs. It takes a few seconds with the right design. Your knees will feel the difference across those 300 reps, and you won't finish the second mile with legs that feel like they've been wrapped in a wetsuit for the past hour.

Buff Roo's Generation 2 Knee Sleeves are 7mm neoprene with a velcro strap that makes the on-off strategy something you can actually execute mid-WOD rather than just think about. Available in five sizes at buffroo.com.au.

- Andrew