A 25-year-old gym girl’s workout took a horrific turn after attempting the Murph Crossfit challenge. Jessica Johnson, an avid gym-goer, shared that she was hospitalized due to both of her arms exploding in the middle of performing pull-ups.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Jessica Johnson told Kennedy News Agency. “I was definitely shocked and didn’t know that this could happen.”
Johnson was trying to complete the popular Murph Crossfit challenge, which is comprised of running one mile, then performing 300 squats, 200 push-ups, and 100 pull-ups, before finishing off with another mile run. Many people — even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have completed the grueling high-intensity circuit, which demands a high fitness level.
While the tech mogul had better luck with the workout, that wasn’t the case for Jessica Johnson, who admitted that she left the gym feeling ‘pretty tired’ after the challenge and reported that it had been a while since she trained her arms so intensely.
Gym Girl’s Arms Explode Attempting Crossfit Challenge: “I Was Definitely Shocked”
It definitely wasn’t the bicep pump she was looking for. A day after the ordeal, Johnson revealed that her arms became extremely sore and painful. Initially, she didn’t believe anything went awry, suspecting that the discomfort was caused by not training her arms for a while. However, when she tried to brush her teeth, she noticed that she couldn’t straighten her arms normally.
“I was doing 10 sets of five pull-ups,” she explained.
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“I thought ‘I haven’t done pull-ups in forever, it was a hard workout, they’ll go down, it’s fine.”
“Everyone said ‘we just thought you were super jacked or something,’”
She later noticed that her pee had turned into a ‘weird’ color despite drinking lots of water.
“It was darker, almost like an orangey color,” said Johnson. “I was drinking tons of water but I wasn’t peeing much during the day.”
It took till she lost sensation in her hands to seek medical attention. During the visit, it was revealed that she was suffering from rhabdomyolysis. This life-threatening condition causes damaged muscle tissue to break down quickly, leading to a protein release called myoglobin that can affect the kidneys and even cause kidney failure.
“In rhabdomyolysis your cells are basically exploding in your muscles,” said Johnson. “It’s like blood poisoning since your body can’t really filter it out.”
“This was a wake-up call for me to chill out a bit,” she shared.
Blood tests confirmed that her muscles exploded due to rhabdomyolysis. Moving forward, she plans to limit more intense exercise and replace it with “more gentle pilates stuff.” To mitigate the swelling, doctors almost had to cut into both of her arms. Doctors were astounded by the case and the fact that she didn’t have kidney damage.
“They kept telling me ‘we don’t know how you don’t have kidney damage right now with how high your values are.’”
Jessica Johnson intends to lower the intensity of her workouts after the setback.
“You don’t need to be doing super intense stuff all the time,” she added. “It’s okay to do a little bit more of a relaxing workout.”
Surprisingly, Jessica Johnson isn’t the only gym-goer who tried out Crossfit and left with rhabdomyolysis. Former Women’s Physique Olympia Dana Linn Bailey was hospitalized for the same reason. She gave a warning to others as well.
“If you are doing an exercise that is a little bit newer to you or you don’t do often. Take your time and try to step outside of competition mode. Listen to your body. And hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!”
With less intense workouts on the horizon, Jessica Johnson hopes to put this experience behind her. In the meantime, she hopes her story serves as a cautionary tale for anyone who might be pushing too hard through their workout routines.
RELATED: ‘I Was at Risk of Kidney Failure’: Larry Wheels Shares Recovery Update after Rhabdo Diagnosis
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