A 25-year-old fitness enthusiast said her arms “exploded" when she developed a life-threatening health condition while training for a viral workout challenge.
South Carolina resident Jessica Johnson was looking to take part in the Murph Challenge, a Crossfit Hero Workout of the Day challenge during which participants run one mile before performing 300 squats, 200 push-ups, and 100 pull-ups, and then running another mile, typically while wearing a weighted vest. It honors Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL who died in 2005 while serving in Afghanistan.
“I’m a very athletic person," Johnson explained on TikTok. "I was a gymnast for my entire life. I went on to run Division One track in college. So it’s not like I’m a un-fit person [sic]. My neighbor and I started training for Murph this past week...We’re thinking it’s the pull-ups [that caused this]."
“I was doing 10 sets of five pull-ups,” Johnson told The New York Post of her third day of training. She “left the gym pretty tired,” as she hadn’t given her arms that level of workout “in a while.”
While the Murph challenge can certainly be completed safely, for Johnson, a scary series of events soon ensued. When she awoke the next morning, her arms were badly swollen and sore in a way which she’d never experienced. “I thought, ‘I haven’t done pull-ups in forever, it was a hard workout, they’ll go down, it’s fine,’” Johnson recalled. But as she got up to brush her teeth, Johnson discovered that she couldn’t straighten her arms.
“I just carried on with my week and didn’t think anything of it," Johnson said in her TikTok. But as the week progressed, Johnson’s swelling became so severe that her friends and family began comparing her to the Hulk. “Everyone said, ‘We just thought you were super jacked or something,'” she told the outlet. During this time, Johnson noticed that her urine had taken on a “weird” hue. “It was darker, almost like an orangey color,” she said. “I was drinking tons of water, but I wasn’t peeing much during the day.”
When Johnson lost all feeling in her hands, she knew it was time to seek medical care. Tests and further exams determined that Johnson had contracted rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening condition where muscles decay, releasing toxic chemicals into the bloodstream. The condition is caused by high-intensity exercise and can lead to organ failure or even death.
“In rhabdomyolysis, your cells are basically exploding in your muscles,” Johnson explained. “It’s like blood poisoning since your body can’t really filter it out.”
Doctors were concerned that Johnson’s renal organs would be permanently damaged, but she managed to survive the incident with no lasting injuries. She said the hospital staff was “so surprised” at the positive turn of fate. “They kept telling me, ‘We don’t know how you don’t have kidney damage right now.'”
While she did sustain some damage to her liver, Johnson was released from the hospital after four days and has since made a “full recovery.” The incident has opened her eyes to safe fitness practices. “This was a wake-up call for me to chill out a bit,” she said. “Working out too much and doing too aggressive of a workout is not good for you and not healthy.”
@jessjohnsonr Replying to @AJ enjoy the story time 🫡 #fy #health #healthcare #hospital #storytime
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