Most of you have probably never heard of Rhabdomyolysis, (RM) for short. If you spend anytime in the gym or are an athlete of any sort you should at least be aware of it, because you can die from it. RM is the rapid breakdown of muscle tissue. The byproducts of this muscle breakdown (myoglobin is the main one) are released into the bloodstream and are very harmful to your kidneys. They essential plug up your kidneys and can cause renal failure. Guess what we are doing day in and day out in the gym....yep, breaking down muscle tissue. For the most part, all we ever experience from our gym sessions is some DOMS, no big deal and we aren't going to end up with renal failure from it. Now lets take someone who is for the most part a newb in the gym and run him through one of our squat till you puke routines. You can see the potential for some severe muscle trauma to occur and RM could very likely occur.

RM can also occur in highly trained athletes. Take my case for example. I competed in a bodybuilding competition about a month or so ago. I competed in 3 different classes and all of those ran pretty much back to back. So I exited stage left and right away entered stage right several times in a row. Now lets basically do that all over again for the night show. That is a ton of isometrics. Every single muscle in your body is being flexed as hard as you possible can for the entire time you are on stage. There is no such thing as a "relaxed pose". You want to have the toughest workout of your life. Hit a pose and hold it as hard as you can for several minutes. Long story short all of that posing caused some severe muscle trauma that my body couldn't recouperate from.

Here is how it all went down. After the show was done for that night I was just cramping up a bit and felt a little sore. Nothing out of the ordinary after doing a show. The next morning I could barely walk to my car from the hotel because my legs were cramping so bad and they just locked up on me. I had to sit down on my cooler I was pulling halfway in the parking because I couldn't move from the cramps and pain in my quads. Finally made it home and for the next few days all I could do was just lay immobilized on the couch because if I tried moving my legs would start spasming and the pain was unbearable. I finally realized this was more than some good old fashioned DOMS and ending up being carted away in an ambulance to the emergency room because the pain was so bad (I ended up passing out in the ambulance because the pain was to intense, the dulatid didn't kick in quick enough). I told the doc what was going on and he knew right away what the deal was. He informed me I would be spending the next few days in the hospital hooked up to an IV. My myoglobin levels at this point were 179,000 (high normal is 1,000) so he was real concerned about my kidneys. My other reading (CK or something like that) was 185,000 (I think normal was supposed to be around 100). I definitely had some severe muscle trauma from all my posing.

The pain was so intense from this that I had to be put on 10mg of dulatid for pain control and 10mg of valium to control the spasms in my legs (think of being electrocuted and having your legs beaten with a baseball bat, that is how bad my quads would feel when they started spasming.) I was on the pain and muscle relaxants for about 3 weeks until the pain became tolerable. I don't remember much that whole time but apparently I ended up back in the ER a couple of days after they discharged me, but I can't remember why. My legs were also so weak that I was not able to walk without the aid of a walker. After about a month of rehab I was able to walk somewhat normally without worrying about my legs giving out. What also really sucked was I ended up with TMJ from clenching my jaw because of the pain and was put on some prednisone for that. After 5 months of prepping you want to eat afterwards but the TMJ made that difficult since I couldn't open my mouth or chew.

The scary part about this was the doc said my muscles would keep eating themselves up if we couldn't get it under control right away. All I could think about was my bodybuilding career was going to be over with because I would end up with chicken legs if my muscles in my legs kept getting eaten up by this.

Enough of my horror story, here is some more info if you are interested.

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/rhabdomyolysis-symptoms-causes-treatm...