The World's Strongest Book: Ten Rounds. Ten Lessons. One Eddie Hall

Introduction

You know what I get asked all the time? ‘Can you lift me over your head for a picture, pretty please?’

Now I appreciate that sounds like a pretty odd request, but when you are known as one of the strongest men in the world, it’s to be expected. I usually say yes, too. I’m always very happy to meet the fans and the lift is a little bit of free exercise. Plus, the photos do look very cool. Every now and then though, I’ll get asked another question.

‘What does it take to be strong?’

How do I respond to that? My entire career has been dedicated to answering that question, and I’m still not sure that I’ve fully figured it out. That said, I’ve won multiple Strongman titles and I’ve broken world records, so I probably know more than the average person in your local gym.

This book is an opportunity for me to go some way towards answering that question, ‘What does it take to be strong?’ I reckon the best way to answer it is by taking you behind the scenes of my toughest challenge yet.

You’re about to go through ten rounds with me – ten lessons I’ve learned in my career and that I called upon in preparation for ‘The Heaviest Boxing Match in History’. That was the name given to the ring showdown between me and Thor Bjornsson, which took place in Dubai on 19 March 2022. I’m going to introduce you to my team, as well as a few of my mates who happen to be elite in their fields. So welcome to the training camp, buddy. Welcome to Team Beast.

I’ve competed in a lot of competitions in my life, but I think getting in the ring with someone when you’re both trying to take each other’s head off is a hell of an experience. I mean, I’ve been in a lot of fights in my life, but obviously you don’t set fights up, you know, fights in general life just happen.

Boxing’s almost a surreal experience. I found I was walking into an arena, like the gladiators must have done thousands of years ago, and at the end of the day you’re doing it to entertain people. And I suppose that’s kind of how I felt, like it was a night of entertainment for everyone. And it was one of the world’s historic spectacles, in my opinion. Two of the biggest men on the planet going head to head – World’s Strongest Man versus World’s Strongest Man. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

After the fight, my pal Ross Edgley sent me a message, a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

This book is a diary of me daring greatly. It’s a record of my two-year odyssey to prepare to fight Thor. It details the highs and the lows, the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s raw, it’s unvarnished and it’s the truth. I’m really taking you behind the scenes and everything that you are about to read is 100 per cent me and 100 per cent authentic.

I’ll let you in on a little secret – I had done precisely zero boxing training before I signed on for this fight. You could say I had a mountain in front of me. In this book, I take you with me on my journey from total novice to a professional showdown in the ring. Along the way, I’ll tell you about my life growing up in Stoke, I’ll share with you what it takes to smash world records and I’ll let you in on how much blood, sweat and tears it took for me to win the World’s Strongest Man in 2017.

What does it take to be strong? Over the course of this book, you’re going to find out. But here’s a little spoiler for you. It ain’t just pulling weights in the gym, or hitting 12,000 calories a day, or staying hydrated. Sure, you have to do all that stuff. But to reach the top, there’s another kind of strength that you have to work on. That is strength of mind. And it can only be developed through time and experience. As I share my story with you, you’ll begin to understand how my mindset was formed and the role it has played in getting me to where I am today. Over the course of ten chapters, I talk about harnessing the power of the ‘fight or flight’ instinct, the role preparation plays in achieving your goals, and how to use setbacks and failures to power you to success. I also take you deep down to the dark place of pain and show you how to break the impulse to quit. I talk about how to deal with complacency, what separates the good from the greatest, and how to seize the opportunity for victory when it presents itself.

I am living, breathing, sweating, swearing proof that it is possible to achieve the impossible. One of my earliest memories, and this is no lie, is watching the World’s Strongest Man with my parents and brothers in the room. I said, loud as anything, ‘I’m going to be the World’s Strongest Man one day.’ What do you think happened? Of course, the whole room erupted in laughter. My older brothers both slapping me on the head saying, ‘Oh, shut up, Eddie. How’s a kid from Stoke-on-Trent going to become the World’s Strongest Man? Impossible. Impossible, Eddie.’

Impossible. That’s the worst thing you can say to me. That word gets my back right up. When I hear it, something wakes up inside me. I’ve always found a way forward no matter the obstacle in front of me. When I hear the ‘I’ word, it just makes me want to go out and prove people wrong. I don’t want to stick it to people in a nasty way, but I do want to show them that it is possible to achieve amazing things in life. It is possible to do things that everyone else says can’t be done.

Now, there’s a reason some people believe some things are impossible. It’s because they’ve butted up against the boundaries time and again. It requires something special in order to break through what other people see as limits and push beyond them. I should know. It takes dedication. It takes sacrifice. It takes commitment, consistency and self-belief. Those five qualities – dedication, sacrifice, commitment, consistency, belief – they’ve been the cornerstones to everything I’ve achieved.

And I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to achieve anything. I left school when I was fourteen. I was a truck mechanic till I was twenty-seven. Absolutely nothing wrong with leaving school at fourteen or being a truck mechanic. School wasn’t for me and I learned a lot of life skills fixing up trucks. All that being said, I always had a vision for something more for myself and for my family. I knew in my heart that I could achieve the things I dreamed of. However, any bookie in Stoke would have laughed me out of the shop if I had put a bet on that I would break the world record for a deadlift or win World’s Strongest Man.

I got into Strongman around 2007, ironically at the urging of my brothers, the same ones taking the mickey out of me when I was a five-year-old watching the competition on the box. I’d been knocking about the scene for about eight years and knew if I was to close the gap between myself and the freaks like Zydrunas Savickas, Brian Shaw and Hafthor Bjornsson, then I needed to go professional. It was 2015 when a combination of me backing myself and circumstance allowed me to finally do it. It was in turning professional that I felt I finally had an opportunity to land the prize I’d longed for since I was a kid – World’s Strongest Man. One thing I figured out very fast was that being a professional was not actually about being paid, although of course it’s always nice to earn money from something I love doing. You might at this point ask, ‘Eddie, if being paid is not the point of being a professional, then what is?’ For me, being professional is about what the money allowed me to do. In my case, it freed me to focus on achieving my goal of winning World’s Strongest Man. In turning professional it meant there were no excuses for failure any more. Whatever I did or didn’t do, it rested entirely and solely on my shoulders.

At the beginning of 2015, I was exhausted. I was working nearly a hundred hours plus a week in the day job as a mechanic. I was doing something like twenty to twenty-five hours a week running a door security company, making sure that the great and good of Stoke-on-Trent behaved themselves when they were having a night on the tiles. As well as that, I was putting in about twenty-five hours a week in the gym. I was eating everything in sight, every minute of the day, which was partly why I had to work all the hours that God gave me in order to cover my food bill. Not forgetting there was my family – I was trying to be a good husband to my wife Alex and a loving father to my children Layla and Max. AND I’m trying to back up my five-year-old Eddie’s bull – win World’s Strongest Man. There’s a lot of me to go around, but even I recognized at that point that there were too many demands and not enough time. I had a decision to make.

Was I going to be the guy in the pub at sixty or seventy years of age saying – I could have been World’s Strongest Man? Nah. That seventy-year-old grandpops just sounds like somebody who didn’t back himself as a twenty-five-year-old. And I always back myself . . . I wanted to be the kind of guy down the pub who said, ‘You know what, I took a risk, I quit my job, and I bet on myself to deliver.’ Which is exactly what I did. I backed myself. I bet on myself that I could deliver. And then I did. Sure, it’s a lot of pressure, and a lot of risk, but that’s the name of the game. It was time to focus on the thing I wanted more than anything else – the World’s Strongest Man trophy on my mantelpiece. It was time to back up my bull.

I sold the security company. I quit my job as a truck mechanic. I had enough in the bank to see me and the family right for a couple of years. The nest egg that I had saved literally bought me the time I needed. I had made serious progress in the eight years since my first novice Strongman event in 2007. I knew I was good but if I were to become the greatest, I knew I still had a serious gap to bridge. For one, I was not as genetically gifted as Brian Shaw or Hafthor. They are 6ft 8–9in, so their frames are primed for adding mass to them. If God was to design two athletes to compete in Strongman events, Brian or Thor would be it. Brian has unbelievable strength. Have you seen him with Atlas Stones? Freak. And then there is Thor. He’s a big lad. Enough said. I’m 6ft 3in on my best day. I’m still waiting on that growth spurt I was promised when I was seventeen. Without those extra 6in in height, I had to eat and train my way up to their size in order to even be in the conversation.

For two years, I was obsessed. Winning the World’s Strongest Man was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning, and the last thing before I went to sleep at night. The time in between? Every minute of my day was built towards gaining a competitive edge over my opponents. My mindset was, and still is, if there is something I can do to make even a quarter of a per cent improvement, then I’ll do it. It is a philosophy of marginal gains.

These gains came at a price. For one, it meant sacrificing time with my family, with Alex having to take on all of the household responsibilities. Right up front, I have to say without Alex there is no way I could have won World’s Strongest Man. She is a saint and a superstar. She took on everything else so that I could purely focus on becoming the best. A special mention has to go to her cooking skills. She prepared all of my meals, no small task when I was trying to get as big as possible by putting an obscene number of calories into my body. I was getting up to a British 31 stone, or if you’re French 196 kilos, a ridiculous body weight in any language. It put a massive strain on my body which resulted in more than a few health scares.

Going hand in hand with that was the dedication and commitment to training every day. From 7 a.m. to midnight I was either lifting some serious heavy metal in the gym; or I was eating to fuel my body so it could lift that heavy metal; or I was doing hot and cold therapy between trips to my custom-built hyperbaric chamber to aid my recovery from lifting the same heavy metal. Are you sensing a pattern? My entire life was built around lifting to get bigger and stronger.

There really was no space or time for anything else in my life. Well, that’s not entirely true. If there was something which could give me an edge, then I would find the time and the money to do it. You want some examples? I was the only strongman on the circuit to have regular physiotherapy. It cost me a few quid, but it gave me an edge without doubt. I mentioned my hyperbaric chamber which I built myself to aid my recovery. I built it myself because to buy one would cost around £100,000. And going DIY? Just £5,000. Like I said, nothing is impossible if you’re willing to find a way forward. I also spoke with sports psychologists who were integral to the development and strengthening of my mindset. When I think of all the things I did, it was the psychology that gave me the most edge over my opponents. I learned that mindset is the one thing that separates the good from the greatest. And my mindset was the thing I had greatest control over to bridge the gap between myself and the best in Strongman.

I was clinical in my consistency and there were some days it was a grind. But you know what? That’s part of being a professional. I put myself through an enormous amount physically and mentally day after day. I had days that were a struggle to get through. But I didn’t miss one session, training or recovery, in the entire year leading up to 2016. I credit my mindset with being able to get me through it. I was so focused. Well maybe I was just a teensy bit obsessed. Scratch that. I was totally obsessed. I had one job, and I was going to do it as well as I possibly could.

Since going pro, I created an environment for myself where there were no excuses. I put myself under huge pressure to perform and win at the World’s Strongest Man 2016. I was very confident going into that competition and I was desperately unfortunate to have a freak bit of bad luck. The day before the competition started, I broke my hand during the familiarization section. I finished third that year. The injury was not an excuse. Other strongmen had won it injured before. But I was not to be one of them.

Still, it burned away in me. I had to be called the World’s Strongest Man. I had to go again. I had to win it; I was either going to win World’s Strongest Man or I was going to die trying. But I also had to convince Alex. Strongman had taken over both our lives since I turned professional and there is no doubt it was putting a real strain on our marriage. Alex made her voice heard and had very reasonable reservations about my push to come back and win it in 2017. She also knew I was never going to quit. So, we agreed together, it was to be another year of sacrifice, dedication, commitment, consistency and selfbelief. Another 365 days in pursuit of this goal.

Five weeks before the 2017 World’s Strongest Man, Alex and I weren’t speaking to each other. I mean we were, but every conversation was about the competition. Every waking moment was consumed by this obsession of mine. It was my marriage that was paying the price. It was Alex who was paying the price. Looking back, I’d pushed myself and everyone around me to the absolute limit.

Alex moved out and I understood why. The atmosphere was too intense. I was too intense. This is horrible to say, and I’m somewhat ashamed to say it, but at that point if I was given a choice between my marriage or winning World’s Strongest Man, it was World’s. Every time. I still struggle to reconcile my thinking. Alex is my everything. And yet, so was winning. I know I keep saying it, but I was obsessed, that was my mentality. I said to Alex, let’s deal with everything in five weeks’ time. Let me go to World’s in Botswana and then let’s sort everything out once I get back from that. That’s what we did. I’m forever grateful to her for that. There are not many women who would allow their husband to put something else before their marriage. But she did and she’s an absolute hero for doing it. Because it freed me to focus solely on winning.

Going into World’s Strongest Man 2017 there was so much pressure on me to perform. I’d put everything on the line for two long years. All of my time, my energy and my money had gone into getting me here. I’d put my health at serious risk being the size I was. Now my marriage was on the line, too.