Eddie Hall has revealed the extraordinary mental preparation that helped him achieve one of the most iconic feats in strength sport history, admitting he relied on hypnosis and a carefully developed trigger to put himself into what he described as a “horrible dark place” before completing his record-breaking 500kg deadlift.
The former World’s Strongest Man lifted the historic weight in 2016, smashing the previous world record by an astonishing 37kg. While many focused on the physical achievement, Hall has now explained that the battle was won long before he ever stepped onto the platform.
Speaking on Fight Your Corner with Tony Bellew and Charlie Parsons, Hall admitted the challenge looked almost impossible even to him.
“The best example of that was the 500-kilo deadlift,” he said. “The world record on that day was 463 kilos.”
Throughout strength sports, world records are typically broken by the smallest of margins, making Hall’s decision to attempt 500kg unprecedented.
“History has always been, you know, people come and break world records by a kilo or 2 kilos, 5 kilos at most. So to add 37 kilos, it’s like having you go to the gym, you had a 20-kilo plate on either side. That’s exactly what it was, almost.”
When asked what was going through his mind as he stood over the loaded barbell, Hall’s answer was remarkably simple: “Just give it everything I’ve got and let’s see what happens.”
However, he explained that moment was the culmination of months of psychological preparation rather than blind confidence.
“It was months and months and months of mental preparation because I’d never lifted anywhere near that in the gym. I never lifted anywhere near that in a competition,” he said. “The most I ever lifted in the gym was 455 kilos. The most I ever lifted in competition was 462.”
Instead of trying to match the record weight in training, Hall deliberately avoided it for fear of damaging both his body and his confidence.
“I knew it would absolutely fry my central nervous system if I were to try it three months prior and then it would f*** you, and it also f*** your confidence as well.”
Instead, he developed a system centred around explosive lifts at 90 per cent of the target weight.
“I got in my head I had a system where if I can deadlift 90% of that weight fast, I call it like a speed rep,” he said. “I’d get 450 kilos on the bar in the gym. If I can pull that like the speed of standing up out of this chair, I knew if I could do that with 90% of the weight, I knew the 100% would go.”
But Hall’s preparation extended well beyond the gym.
He revealed that he spent a long period working alongside a hypnotherapist to create a mental routine capable of switching him into a completely different state before attempting the lift.
“I worked with a therapist, actually, a hypnotherapist, for a long time, and we came up with a scenario in my head,” Hall revealed. “I had to activate this. I had this pinch point on the back of my hand. So I’d screw the skin on the back of my hand, stare in a mirror and just psych myself up into this horrible dark place.”
The mental image behind that process was far removed from simply lifting a heavy barbell.
“It wasn’t lifting a weight off the floor. It was, for an example, lifting a car off my kids. That was the sort of mentality behind it.”
Despite making the lift successfully, Hall admitted the physical toll was immediate: “Everything just collapsed. My brain collapsed. My body collapsed.”
He believes much of that was due to the enormous pressure he had placed on himself after publicly announcing a year earlier that he intended to deadlift 500kg.
“I said a year previous I was going to pull 500 kilo. Every single person, and I mean this, every single person laughed at me and said I was an idiot, deluded,” he said. “I’m talking about the Strongman promoters, the other Strongmen, 99.9% of the fan base. Everyone said, ‘You’re p*ssing in the wind. There’s no one’s going to break a world record by 37 kilos.'”
However, Hall’s breakthrough proved that what had once been considered impossible could, in fact, be achieved.
Featured image credit: Eddie Hall / Instagram
