A 25-year-old fitness enthusiast said her arms 'exploded' when she was left in a life-threatening condition while training for a viral exercise challenge.
South Carolina resident Jessica Johnson wanted to take part in the Murph Challenge, a Crossfit Hero Workout of the Day challenge in which participants run a mile before completing 300 squats, 200 push-ups and 100 pull-ups, then run another miles. , typically while wearing a weighted vest. Lt. Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL who died in 2005 while serving in Afghanistan, is being honored.
“I'm a very athletic person,” Johnson explained on TikTok. “I've been a gymnast all my life. I ran a Division One track in college. So it's not like I'm an incompetent person [sic]. My neighbor and I started training for Murph last week…We think it's the pull up [that caused this].”
“I did 10 sets of five pull-ups,” Johnson said The New York Post from his third training day. He left the gym “pretty tired” as he hadn't given his arms this level of exercise in “a while”.
While the Murph challenge could certainly be completed safely, a frightening series of events soon followed for Johnson. When he awoke the next morning, his arms were severely swollen and in pain he had never experienced before. “I thought, 'I haven't done pull-ups in a long time, this was a tough workout, they're going down, it's OK,'” Johnson recalled. But as he got up to brush his teeth, Johnson realized he couldn't straighten his arm.
“I just went about my week and didn't think anything of it,” Johnson said on his TikTok. But as the week progressed, Johnson's swelling became so severe that friends and family began comparing him to the Hulk. “Everybody said, 'We just thought you were really rude,'” she said. During this time, Johnson noticed that his urine had taken on a “weird” color. “I was drinking tons of water, but I wasn't peeing much during the day.”
When Johnson lost all feeling in his hand, he knew it was time to seek medical attention. Tests and further investigation determined that Johnson had rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening condition in which muscles break down and release toxic chemicals into the bloodstream. The condition is caused by high-intensity exercise and can lead to organ failure or even death.
“During rhabdomyolysis, your cells basically explode in the muscles,” Johnson explained. “It's like blood poisoning in that the body can't really filter it out.”
Doctors feared that Johnson's kidney organs would be permanently damaged, but he managed to survive the incident without permanent damage. He said hospital staff were “so surprised” by the positive turn of events. “They kept telling me, 'We don't know that you don't have kidney damage right now.'
Although he suffered some liver damage, Johnson was released from the hospital after four days and has since made a “full recovery.” The incident opened his eyes to safe fitness exercises. “It was a wake-up call for me to relax a little bit,” he said. “Exercising too much and exercising too aggressively is not good for you and it's not healthy.”
@jessjohnsonr Answering @AJ, enjoy story time 🫡 #fi #egéssségügy #egéssségügy #kórház #történetidő
♬ original sound – jessjohnsonr