Maybe it's time to stopr the glorification of all things Navy SEAL?

Until I read about the Tufts lacrosse players who were hospitalized with it, I'd never heard of rhabdomyolysis. 

Rhabdomyolysis (shortened as rhabdo) is a condition in which damaged skeletal muscle breaks down rapidly, often due to high intensity exercise over a short period of time. (Source: Wikipedia)

That "high intensity excercise" likely explains my lack of familiarity with rhabdo. Never been there; never done that. 

But a week or so ago, twelve Tufts' lacrosse players ended up in the hospital after a 45-minute workout conducted by a Tuft's alum who's also a recent Navy SEALs graduate. 

Now, there's certainly a time and place for the Navy SEALs. Like ridding the world of Osama Bin Laden. And their special operations work certainly requires them to be in superb physical shape and possess a supreme degree of mental toughness, braveness, bravado, and ferocity. So, hooyah to their training. 

But it seems to me that, over the past couple of decades, we've begun overglorifying these warriors. Tough, brave, ferocious: sure. But some members of this vaunted outfit have been implicated in war crimes. And they often give off an air of toxic masculinity, and scorn for anyone who ain't them. So there's that. 

Anyway, the level of workouts the SEALs endure may be entirely appropriate to prepare them for the tasks they'll be called on to perform, especially given that the most strenuous workouts aren't what the training starts with, but what it leads up to over the course of their course

Yet here were the young men on the lacrosse team, in a voluntary, unsupervised workout session taking part in an extreme workout, pretty much starting cold. Not that these fellows aren't in good shape. Lacrosse is not for the lazy-arsed or faint of heart. But they're in normal college athlete fitter than fit shape. Not in Navy SEALs, jump in to a firestorm with a hunting knife between your teeth fitter than fit. 

As a result of the workout, nine of the lacrosse players were treated in the ER and released. As of Monday, three were still hospitalized. (Note: I've seen slightly different reports on how any of these athletes were actually hospitalized. But the "three still in" seems to be factual.)

Beyond the wikipedia definition, rhabdo can be absolutely dire. 

Rhabdomyolysis is a rare condition in which muscles disintegrate, leading to muscle death. It is a life-threatening condition that can cause kidney damage after toxic components of muscle fibers enter the circulation system and kidneys. (Source: Boston Globe)

This is scary stuff, especially when you consider that three of these kids are still in the hospital after a week. Yikes! 

Tufts is no big athletic powerhouse. They're mascot is Jumbo the Elephant, and their primary color is light blue. But its lacrosse team is highly competitive, and they're the DIII NCAA lacrosse

champions. So these fellows are no doubt LAX bros who might be drawn to the SEAL mythology. But mostly Tufts is a pretty good school, and these young men are student athletes. They're not Navy SEALs. 

Hope they're okay. 

And hope that folks stop irrationally glorifying the SEALs, let alone thinking that their level of fierce training is appropriate for civilians, especially a bunch of impressionable college kids.