Eddie Hall’s relentless desire to win didn’t suddenly appear when he entered the world of Strongman.
Long before he became World’s Strongest Man, Hall says that competitive streak was already being forged at home – thanks in large part to growing up with two older brothers.
Hall is the youngest of three boys, alongside his brothers Alex and James, and has admitted that they weren’t exactly easy work for their parents growing up.
“We were little bastards. We were horrendous. Looking back now, I don’t know how the f*** my mum and dad got through it,” he said on the True Geordie podcast.
It was swimming that first gave Hall somewhere to channel that energy.
His mum was a swimming teacher and first took him into a pool when he was just two years old.
By five, Hall was swimming for a club, with both of his older brothers also involved in the sport.
But rather than focusing solely on the other children around him, Hall had two very specific targets.
“I’d have to beat my older brothers. I have to. That’s sibling rivalry,” he said.
For Hall, that competition wasn’t limited to the swimming pool either.
“That’s human nature, isn’t it? You want to be better. You don’t want to be bad. You probably want to beat your brother. It’s tough. You put two pizzas on the table, battling it out quicker than you go. It’s constant, isn’t it? When you’re a child, everything’s a competition,” he said.
That desire to beat his brothers soon pushed Hall beyond them in the pool.
He recalled being considerably faster than other swimmers his own age before moving up to train alongside older competitors, including his brothers.
By the age of 10, Hall says he had surpassed both of them.
From there, the target simply became bigger.
“It’s like, right, I’m better than those two at swimming now, so what’s next? Let’s be the best in the country,” he said.
And Hall’s pursuit of that goal was already remarkably intense for someone so young.
At just 10 years old, he says he was spending between 17 and 20 hours every week in the water, training both before and after school.
Hall would get up at 5am, cycle to the swimming baths for a 90-minute session, go to school, return home to eat and then cycle back for another session.
“I was driven. I was f***ing driven,” he said.
By 11, Hall says he was winning at national level, breaking British records previously held by swimmers who went on to the Olympics and earning a place on an Olympic potential squad.
His eventual sporting destination would be very different.
But years before the weights, Strongman contests and World’s Strongest Man trophy, the mentality that would define Eddie Hall was already there.
It started with one very simple childhood mission: beat his brothers.
Featured image credit: Eddie Hall / Instagram
