Medicine

Can CrossFit kill you?

It’s the world’s hottest workout regimen, but CrossFit has a dark side.

Say hello to Uncle Rhabdo, the unofficial and troubling mascot that is commonly referred to within the CrossFit community.

Uncle Rhabdo is an exhausted, but muscular cartoon clown connected to a dialysis machine with what appears to be his kidney, large intestine, and plenty of blood spilling onto the floor around him.

Uncle Rhabdo

Uncle Rhabdo the clown has Rhabdomyolysis – a kidney condition most commonly induced by excessive exercise.

The muscles become so overworked that the tissues begin to break-down and myoglobin, the bi-product of muscle fibres, is released into the blood stream. It can lead to kidney damage or, worse, failure.

The image of Uncle Rhabdo originally served as a tongue-in-cheek way for CrossFitters to prove that they had worked hard, but problems arise when athletes – and their trainers – don’t know when to call it quits.

As early as 2005, the New York Times documented Rhabdomyolysis associated with the culture of CrossFit in an article entitled, Getting Fit, Even If It Kills You .

“There’s no way inexperienced people doing this are not going to hurt themselves,” a sports medicine specialist is quoted in the piece.

One woman has now shared her shocking story about being hospitalized with acute rhabdomyolysis, according to medium.com.

The young woman – a physical therapist, who was a regular CrossFit-goer – woke the morning after a particularly grueling partner session consisting of hundreds of reps of arm exercises and couldn’t bend her elbows.

“Still entrenched in the CrossFit culture of deplete, endure, repeat, she quieted the alarms and stoically pressed on to go to work. It didn’t take long to realise she not only couldn’t bend her arms, they also had no strength”, the article outlines.

“By that evening, her slender arms had continued to swell into plump hotdogs of ache and regret, and she was starting to come to the realisation that the morning’s danger alarms were legitimate.”

The woman was diagnosed with acute rhabdomyolysis, and hospitalised for over a week.

While in emergency they tested her creatine kinase (CPK) levels which were more than 45,000 – normal is around 100.

When calling to cancel her CrossFit membership her instructor asked why. Upon informing him that she was in hospital, he instantly replied, “Is it rhabdo?”

Rhabdomyolysis is rare. In fact, it’s so rare that one study reported its overall annual incidence to be 0.06 per cent. Yet, it seems it’s so commonly encountered in CrossFit that they have developed a cartoon for it.

When done correctly, CrossFit is not inherently bad or ineffective. The danger lies with new athletes, flocking to the thousands of CrossFit facilities to get join the latest exercise craze. But often, beginner muscles can’t tell the difference between training to failure and simply getting a good workout.

The original article appeared on News.com.au