Rhabdomyolisis!! Its real!!

session savage

Hi folks,

Because Rhabdo tends to effect circuit fitness people and marathon runners this may be more use in the fitness forum so mods feel free to move to where you think it could be most helpfull.

Im only writing this in case there is some person out there that goes on google in the same state I did the other night.

Over the christmas break I did what many people do.. nothing. But I made a resolution to sort out my diet and work hard to improve my fitness.

At our club we do a fitness circuit before we start throwing or rolling. On the first night back (wednesday) training I decided to start as I meant to continue and put in serious effort to get fitter and stronger. I really gave it everything I had.

Woke up thursday only the slightest bit stiff but felt great.
Went to bed thursday night a bit stiff but nothing else.
I woke up at 1:00 AM in more pain than I have ever been in in my entire life. It was all in my upper arms which is where the fitness circuit was concentrated.
I was in so much pain that I couldnt lift the blackets off myself to get out of bed. I rolled out of bed and went to get some painkillers.

I knew imediately that this wasnt right so I did a quick google of extreme pain after excercise and this word rhabdo kept popping up.

There are three key symptoms of rhabdomyolisis
1-Pain
2-Brown urine
3-Swelling

Well I only had pain so I spent the rest of the night awake in agony conviced that I was just a pussy.

In the morning I wet to the Dr. and explained that I thoought it was just muscle soreness but as it was so bad could I get a blood test for rhabdo. He agreed that without the other syptoms I was indeed a pussy.
He took the blood anyway and said he would call me later.

At 5:00 friday evening the Dr called me back and told me to go straight in to casualty.

Theres something in your blood called creatine phosphokinase (CPK) which should have levels of 40-200
my tests read 20,000

Left untreated this will cause severe kidney damage and can even cause death in extreme cases.

I spent the next 4 days in hospital hooked up to a drip having fluid pumped into me and my bloods taken every two hours to monitor the rate that the levels of CPK were dropping. If they were dropping too slowly I would have need dialysis, but thankfully I didnt need that.

Its now a week later and Im out of hospital but still a bit tender.

The main reason Im writing this is to warn people that you dont have to have all symptoms of Rhabdo to have it.

If your in pain that your gut is telling you is not right. If you cant move because of the pain, then go to your Dr and ask for a CPK blood test.
Its much better for your Dr to think your a hypochondriac than get kidney damage from untreated rhabdomyolisis.

Mind yourselves.

darced

This post has been deleted.

cletus

Thanks for the post, session savage, you have just confirmed two theories I had; you shouldn't make new years resolutions, and you shouldn't do too much exercise *heads off for another slice of cake*

Seriously though, hope you heal up soon

arybvtcw0eolkf

Get well soon man, and how caused this illness?.

Oone thing I can not stand, or understand is a club which does a fitness circuit before training (BJJ/Judo for example) ~ my thinking is that you can only train BJJ/Judo on proper mats, ie not in a field or car park. But you can improve one's fitness OFF the mats and in members own time.

When I train Judo or BJJ that's what I pay for and that's what I want, nothing else.

So what caused your illness?.

session savage

Dexter Old Melon wrote: »

Get well soon man, and how caused this illness?.

Oone thing I can not stand, or understand is a club which does a fitness circuit before training (BJJ/Judo for example) ~ my thinking is that you can only train BJJ/Judo on proper mats, ie not in a field or car park. But you can improve one's fitness OFF the mats and in members own time.

When I train Judo or BJJ that's what I pay for and that's what I want, nothing else.

So what caused your illness?.

I couldn't agree more. I've brought this up numerous times. It doesn't make sense to me to do a fitness circuit before training which tires you out. I end up training with tired gassed out muscles which makes my technique sloppy. I would much rather sort out my fitness on my own time. I go in to learn jiu jitsu not to do circuit training, but hey, I just go with the flow... Well I did, from now on I'm going to do a warm up while they wreck themselves and I'll get my fitness training in on my own time.

As far as how it happened it was a combination of cobra pushups and I think he called them froggies. We did 2 minute rounds of as many of each as we could do with 30 second break between sets for 20 minutes. There were a couple other exercises but it was most definitely these two that wrecked me. Low resistance high intensity.

Subcomandante Marcos

Dexter Old Melon wrote: »

Get well soon man, and how caused this illness?.

Oone thing I can not stand, or understand is a club which does a fitness circuit before training (BJJ/Judo for example) ~ my thinking is that you can only train BJJ/Judo on proper mats, ie not in a field or car park. But you can improve one's fitness OFF the mats and in members own time.

When I train Judo or BJJ that's what I pay for and that's what I want, nothing else.

So what caused your illness?.

Hour long class with 25 minutes of "dynamic warm ups". **** off, I can jog on my own time.

arybvtcw0eolkf

When you're on Judo/BJJ mats grapple, simple as.

Subcomandante Marcos

Dexter Old Melon wrote: »

When you're on Judo/BJJ mats grapple, simple as.

A little stretch before, grand, but if you're grappling for an hour you don't need a "dynamic warm up", you'll get plenty of work done trying to choke eachother.

Mellor

Glad you got better. Rhabdo is no joke. I actually thought I had it once, when urine turned brown. Went to the doctor buy at that point urine was back to normal. Did my annual blood panel at the time but I'm not sure if phosphokinase was on it.


Not just for Crossfitters then.

Black Sheep

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

A little stretch before, grand, but if you're grappling for an hour you don't need a "dynamic warm up", you'll get plenty of work done trying to choke eachother.

I always understood a dynamic warm up to just usually refer to active stretching as opposed to static stretching.

A dynamic warmup, with tumbling and BJJ specific movements like shrimping etc, was the normal pre training warm up at the likes of SBG and Kyuzo, but perhaps that has changed.

I see little point to static stretching before training, could even be counter productive, but a warm up is necessary if you're going into training cold (particularly if you're older). The fact that you'll be sweating mid workout has little bearing on the risk of jumping in with cold joints.

If we were in a warmer climate we could have a briefer warm up or none at all, but nogi training on a freezing mat in the winter? Warm up ever time, IMO.

As far as the rhabdo goes: This discussion brings me back to the early days of CrossFit, when rhabdo was a bigger talking point than it is now. What used to surprise me then around some cases is that it was relatively (on the surface of it) innocuous things that were resulting in rhabdo cases... Glute ham raise machine sit up workouts and jumping pull up workouts were some of the biggest culprits I think...

dancingchicken

Dexter Old Melon wrote: »

Get well soon man, and how caused this illness?.

Oone thing I can not stand, or understand is a club which does a fitness circuit before training (BJJ/Judo for example) ~ my thinking is that you can only train BJJ/Judo on proper mats, ie not in a field or car park. But you can improve one's fitness OFF the mats and in members own time.

When I train Judo or BJJ that's what I pay for and that's what I want, nothing else.

So what caused your illness?.

I feel the exact same. Yet every BJJ club has these silly boring warmups that take up half the class. It's a pity becauase focusing on the technical elements would make everyone there a better grappler

Mellor

dancingchicken wrote: »

I feel the exact same. Yet every BJJ club has these silly boring warmups that take up half the class. It's a pity becauase focusing on the technical elements would make everyone there a better grappler

If everyone was to focus on their own conditioning/mobility/warm-up before class. Then it would be very easy to get right into technical stuff.

But in my experience a lot of people don't bother their hole. And unfortunately that means they drag everyone else down to their level.