Glam mum rushed to hospital after muscle tissues ‘broke down’ after ‘coaching too exhausting’
A life-threating condition has hit a mother after she returned to the gym after a break and trained with a personal trainer who pushed her to do a workout she wouldn’t ‘normally do’
Nicole Sepe, 34(Image: Kennedy News & Media)
A mum was rushed to hospital due to her muscles breaking down after a guy in the gym “told her to do weights that were too heavy.”
Nicole Sepe had returned to the gym after a six-month break last April. However after the woman “trained too hard” with a PT who urged her to push herself she was hit with a horrifying health issue. The 34-year-old says she went to sleep the night after training with the fitness fella wearing a waist trainer.
The morning after the intense workout Nicole woke up to “excruciating pain” – but dismissed it as having “crushed it at the gym”.
A waist trainer is a compression garment similar to a corset which can be increasingly tightened to “enhance curves” – though many sites advise against sleeping in them or wearing them too tight. Nicole says she had been wearing the device a couple of times per month to “get her waist back” after giving birth to her son in 2021. The brand marketing and production worker says she initially dismissed the soreness as being from “crushing her gym session.”
But after a “pouch of fluid” formed on her stomach, she went to the emergency room. In hospital blood tests revealed she had rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening condition causing muscle breakdown.
The condition is often caused by high-intensity exercise and leads to muscles breaking down and release harmful substances which can result in organ failure or even death. The mum-of-one believes the cause was a combination of pushing herself too hard in the gym and wearing the waist trainer to bed.
Nicole, from Los Angeles, California, said: “I was starting my fitness journey again and I trained with a guy, which I normally would never do. I know that guys train harder and this was my first time back in the gym for six or seven months.
“The guy kept telling me to do things that I know I shouldn’t have been doing because it was my first time back in the gym. He was putting me on the heaviest weights.”
Nicole says she slept in the waist trainer that night – but woke up in “excruciating pain” and struggled to walk. She went to the emergency room after noticing a “pouch of water” forming on her stomach that day, 3 April. And was later diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis.
Rhabdomyolysis is a potentially life-threatening condition caused by the rapid breakdown of damaged muscle with the release of the intracellular muscle contents. These contents include things such as myoglobin, creatine kinase and various electrolytes, into the bloodstream and extracellular space.
Nicole said: “I’d been using the waist trainer after pregnancy a couple of times a month – it did help me get my waist tighter and back together. I woke up in the most excruciating pain ever and I felt like a bus hit me.
“I couldn’t really walk too well but I was doing my best, I was waddling out of bed. I went on with my day and then I looked down and my stomach had started forming a water pouch.
“That really scared me – my stomach looked like I was five months pregnant. I went to the emergency room and I was diagnosed with rhabdo – it was very scary.” Nicole stayed in hospital for a week where she was put on IV fluid. Over the past year, she has been recovering at home and taking part in light exercises – but has only recently returned to weightlifting.
Nicole said: “It’s been a year since I’ve really got back into it because I was in quite a lot of pain. I would go on hikes and I would feel like my stomach would be in pain after rhabdo.
“I’ve just been taking it easy, resting a lot. I did do light exercises that I know wasn’t pushing my body too hard – I was doing yoga, stretches, walking and hiking – nothing too crazy. This past couple of months is when I started to really get back into the strength training.”
Nicole says she has been “too nervous” to wear her waist trainer again since her experience and is urging other people to build up their strength in the gym gradually.
The mum said: “I haven’t worn the waist trainer since this happened – I was too nervous to. I would warn other people to gradually work your way up to strength training. When you’re getting into it, don’t go heavy weightlifting – work your way up to doing it, you don’t want to force yourself into it.”
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