THE IDEA TO attempt a half-tonne deadlift first came about directly after the 2015 World Deadlift Championships (which was the support event for Europe’s Strongest Man) where I’d broken the world record by pulling 463kg (1,020 lb). I’m pretty sure this is on camera somewhere but I remember saying to Colin Bryce after the show that if he could find a backer who’d be willing to put up the cash, I would pull half a tonne at next year’s event. Now, I know for a fact that Colin didn’t think I could pull 500kg (1,102 lb) at the time (nobody in the world did apart from me), but he obviously thought it would make a good spectacle and so without pissing around he found a backer and told me we were on.
At the time, such a lift was considered to be impossible and I remember reading discussions on strength forums entitled, ‘Will we ever see a 1,100-lb deadlift?’ Every single person who replied to that initial question said no, it would never happen, and thinking about it sensibly, you can understand why.
Since time immemorial, if somebody had attempted to break the world deadlift record they’d probably go up by 1kg (2.2 lb), which is what the likes of Benni and I had been doing for a couple of years. It wasn’t something that happened every day, and because not all attempts were successful it was obviously a very gradual progression. Going up by a massive 37kg (82 lb), or about 8 per cent, was beyond ridiculous but what sealed the deal and made everyone assume it was impossible wasn’t the increase, it was the weight itself. Half a tonne is the equivalent of a very heavy racehorse and, to the vast majority of sane human beings, that was beyond the possibilities of man.
It was these pundits’ certainty – their unequivocalness – that first caught my imagination. The more people told me that a half-tonne deadlift couldn’t be done, the more I told myself it could.
As a challenge this ticked so many boxes for me. First, but not foremost, it had a good lump of cash attached to it and as a professional strongman that was music to my ears. Secondly, I’d be doing something that nobody had ever done before in the history of the world and that in itself floated my boat big-time. Do you know that since time began, over 110 billion people have walked the Earth? If I did manage to lift half a tonne off the ground I’d be making history, and it didn’t matter how many people either matched it or bettered me in the future, I’d always be the first. That’s the difference between something like this and winning World’s Strongest Man. Winning that title means you follow in the footsteps of some amazing athletes and it means you’ll always be part of what is a very special club. That’s just it, though, you’re part of a club. One of many. Following in other people’s footsteps doesn’t make you a history maker. The last tick-box, and by far the biggest, was that it provided me with the ultimate motivation – that nobody in the world (that I was aware of) thought it was possible. That really is my lifeblood.
When I eventually went public with my intentions, the reactions from people were perfect: a mixture of negativity and incredulity. I knew I could find encouragement if I needed it (and I was sure I’d be needing some on the night), but for the time being I was quite happy feeding off all the pisstakers and naysayers. Their negativity fuelled my positivity and if it hadn’t been for so many people doubting me I don’t think I’d have been arsed. Seriously. If everyone had turned around to me and said, ‘Do you know what, Ed, I reckon you’re going to pull that half a tonne,’ I’d never have attempted it. Proving myself right is fantastic, but proving others wrong is even better.
The icing on the cake was seeing Brian Shaw and Žydrūnas Savickas, two of the strongest men who’ve ever lived, both come out and say that it couldn’t be done. They didn’t take the piss or anything, they were just giving their honest beliefs. I remember Brian saying that he simply thought it wasn’t possible, whereas Žydrūnas thought it could only end in injury. Maybe he was right?
The only distractions I’d had leading up to the lift, apart from a few personal appearances, had been Britain’s Strongest Man, so I’d been able to remain pretty focused. I’d worked out that in order for me to support 500kg I would have to weigh at least 185kg (408 lb). That meant putting on over 15kg (33 lb) in the final six months. I did it, just, but a lot of that went on in the final few weeks. From the second I woke up until the moment I went to bed I would either have food in my mouth, in my hand, or within reaching distance. There was no science behind the 185kg, by the way, it was just an educated guess. I needed something to work towards, and 35 per cent of the weight I was lifting seemed about right.
That’s one of the mad things about my sport; we don’t have any coaches or advisors. Given what we do in the gym and at competitions that’s absolutely ridiculous. I was looking at the event list for World’s Strongest Man the other day and I thought to myself, In a few weeks’ time I’m going to be on the other side of the world doing Viking presses, tyre flips, truck pulls and atlas stones at the biggest strength event on the planet yet I have never been coached in any one of these events. Now you can look at that in one of two ways: you can either you shake your head and think, That’s a disgrace! Why doesn’t the sport do more? Or you can see it as an opportunity and work out how you can change things for the better. Welcome to the Eddie Hall school of strongman! It could happen.
That’s another paradox. Successful strongmen, on the whole, are bright guys, and the reason I know that is because we’re left to our own devices so we have to figure it out for ourselves if we want to do well. It doesn’t matter how much natural talent you have, if you can’t work out how to train properly, refine your technique and work out what food to eat, you’re going to get left behind. It’s not just survival of the fittest, it’s survival of the sharpest.
Let me give you a quick example of exactly how this culture of self-sufficiency has worked for me. About a year ago I was in Sweden doing a guest appearance at an expo and about half way through I was told by the organisers that in ten minutes’ time I’d be required to do a demonstration deadlift of 400kg (881 lb). It wasn’t anybody’s fault but unfortunately this hadn’t been communicated to me so I told them that I wasn’t ready.
‘Don’t worry, Eddie,’ they said. ‘We’ll get you ready.’
About two minutes later this bloke walks in carrying what looked like an enormous car buffer. ‘What the hell’s that?’ I asked him.
‘Watch this,’ he said, and before I could say another word he started working my back and warming me up with this huge car buffer.
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Fucking unbelievable,’ I replied. ‘Better than any warm up I could ever do.’
It was astonishing. Five minutes later I went out into the hall, pulled the 400kg and I was fine. Job done. The moment I got back home I went straight out and bought one of these things and it’s now become an important part of my warm-up routine. If I’d been surrounded by coaches and the like I would never have discovered that machine and the fact that I did makes me appreciate my autonomy even more.
Something else that’s made a big difference to me lately, although this is actually quite specialist, is a mouth guard. The idea, in layman’s terms, is that if your jaw’s moving about a lot then your body follows suit. Keep your jaw fixed, however, and you will remain far more stable and balanced. Believe me it works and is worth at least a couple of extra reps.
Something that you’ll all have seen strongmen use over the years are smelling salts. Even though we know what’s coming they work purely via the element of surprise. Honestly, taking a good sniff of that stuff is like being slapped in the face and the reason strongmen pull so many ridiculous faces when we take a sniff of smelling salts is because it makes us want to kill somebody! Once you’ve had some of that you can lift pretty much anything. Or at least you feel like you can.
Although deadlift was already part of my training routine, I started refining and modernising the sessions from the moment the attempt was confirmed, which was about a year before. Each week I’d alternate between heavy lifting and speed, and then, at the end of every quarter, I’d go for a new personal best. Thursdays were deadlift day and so as soon as I arrived at the gym I’d go straight to the deadlift platform. To warm up for deadlift I always do what’s called a ‘pyramid up’ – one plate ten reps, two plates eight reps, etc. – and then I stretch. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of stretching, regardless of what you do in the gym. Fail to do it properly and as well as never realising your full potential you’re bound to do yourself an injury. A lot of people just can’t be arsed and that’s madness. Take my word for it, when it comes to training it’s as essential as the exercise itself.
All the way through this session I would be eating bananas and drinking cranberry juice. Fast-acting sugars, basically. Once the heavy lifting started I would then eat lumps of steak between each lift. This provided me with natural proteins, natural BCAAs and natural fats. As far as I know I’m the only person who does this but I’d definitely recommend it. It obviously costs a bit but it’s worth the investment.
Before I went professional I could only manage one heavy-lifting session every two weeks as that was the time it took my body to recover. A deadlift, remember, is the only exercise that uses every part of your body, so it makes sense. Everything kills! After going pro, I discovered things like hot and cold treatments and massage. Each one reduced my recovery time, so the more I added to the programme, the quicker I could start lifting again. Once again there’s a cost attached to it but I don’t view that as a barrier, I view it as a motivation. If it’s the right thing to do you can always find a way.
Despite all the massages and ice baths etc., I was in constant pain, especially during the last few weeks before the record attempt. Getting out of bed to eat in the morning was absolutely excruciating and it took me every minute of the time I had between getting up and going to the gym to prepare myself for the next session. Even at home I had to try to block myself off, so despite living with my family physically, we had to be separated emotionally. I know that’s not ideal, especially when you have small children, but that’s the way it had to be. Mentally, I was in a very, very dark place leading up to the lift, so even if I had been able to communicate with my family I would probably either have screamed at them or burst out crying. I’m not sure if it was a depression, exactly. It was just somewhere I had to go. Strangely enough, that actually formed part of my motivation, as I knew it would only last until the lift. Do the job right and it would evaporate immediately. Fail, and it might stay.
Not one aspect of this practice is healthy, of course, but it’s what I had to do. Alex and I have been through hell over the last seven years – or rather, I’ve put her through hell – but what keeps us together is the fact that she knows I’m doing it all for us. Completing the lift would go some way to offering us financial security but I have to admit that I hadn’t envisaged it being quite so intense. Alex and I have been on the verge of splitting up several times and the vast majority of women would probably have walked out long ago. It certainly hasn’t been easy. It rarely is with me.
About two weeks prior to the lift I started having heart palpitations. This was obviously down to the pressure, but the more I had the palpitations the more I thought something was wrong and so it became self-perpetuating. It was all my own fault. I’d created so much hype within the strength community that, should I not manage the lift, I’d be a complete laughing stock. So despite being in perfect shape (apart from the heart!), I now had an element of doubt. Paradoxically, this was probably as essential to my final preparations as confidence itself. Why? Because with over-confidence comes complacency and in order to prevent complacency from creeping in you have to maintain self-awareness. Believe me, a seed or two of doubt can do wonders for your self-awareness. The perspective isn’t always balanced, but at least you’re looking in the right direction.
I’d made an awful lot of claims in my time but, God willing, I’d always managed to back them up. This one was different, though, as basically I was attempting to separate myself from every other strongman who had ever lived. I was trying to create my own exclusive club. One that, regardless of which way it went, would only ever have one member: the first man to lift half a tonne – or, the first man to fail to lift half a tonne. One was quite desirable; the other, not so much.
Now I had only one day to go before the attempt. The next day would be the day I went down in history, or died trying.