In 2016, Eddie Hall became the first person to deadlift 500 kg in competition, more than 1,100 pounds. In this clip from his 2019 London Real interview, he tells Brian Rose why he set himself that target, how he got his mind to do what his body couldn’t, and what happened afterwards, which was far more dangerous than most viewers realised.
It’s a 15-minute story, and one of the most gripping on the channel.
▶ Watch the full episode: Eddie Hall – The Strongest Man in History
Why 500?
Hall had already set a world record of 463 kg in 2015. At 27, he looked at the history: the deadlift record had risen about a kilo a year for two decades. He could have broken it a kilo at a time for years. Instead, he decided to do something extraordinary. Andy Bolton had been the first man to pull 1,000 pounds. Hall wanted to be the first to pull half a ton.
Once he’d said it publicly, he says, there was no going back. “I want to be the guy that says something and delivers.” It was a jump of almost 40 kg, which he compares to Usain Bolt taking nearly a second off the 100 metres.
It was about money, too
Hall is candid: he did it partly for money, not out of greed but because competing at the top was expensive. He estimates he was spending around £800 a week on food, physiotherapy and recovery treatments, and his savings were running out. A headline record was a way to fund his goal of winning World’s Strongest Man.
The mental trick
The problem was that, in a year of training, the most he ever pulled in the gym was 454 kg. Six months in, he feared he’d made a mistake. Then a scientist on his team explained that people only use part of their muscle capacity in normal life. In extreme situations, such as a parent lifting a car off a child, a surge of adrenaline lets the body do far more. That response can’t be faked.
So, working with a psychologist and a hypnotherapist, Hall built a mental scenario he could trigger on the day, a pinch point on his hand that put him somewhere else entirely. He won’t say what the scenario was, only that it was very dark. On the day, he says, he closed his eyes, pulled, and remembers nothing until he woke up at the top of the lift.
The aftermath
His mistake, he believes, was holding the bar at the top and smiling at the crowd, a message to everyone who said it couldn’t be done. When he dropped it, blood poured from his nose. He drifted in and out of consciousness, gave a speech to the crowd, then collapsed backstage. Paramedics struggled to get a reading: his heart rate was over 200 and his blood pressure was too high to measure. He lost the centre of his vision, and bled from his eyes and ears.
The next day he couldn’t remember how to drive. At his son’s birthday party he didn’t recognise relatives and repeated the same conversations. He had concussion-like symptoms for two weeks, and a specialist warned him that if things didn’t improve, he was in serious trouble. Gradually, he recovered.
Would he do it again?
Yes, he says, with more weight, perhaps 510 kg. He believes the lift itself was comfortable, and that the hold at the top did the damage.
What to take from it
Hall’s story shows how far commitment and mental preparation can push the human body, and how high the price can be. It’s inspiring, but it’s also a reminder that extreme feats carry extreme risks.
Who is Eddie Hall?
Eddie Hall is an English strongman from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, known as “The Beast”. He set the 500 kg deadlift world record in 2016 and won World’s Strongest Man in 2017 at his sixth attempt. He has since worked in television and on YouTube, and speaks openly about mental health.
In his full 2019 London Real episode, he tells Brian Rose about his journey from swimming to strongman. You can also watch another clip from the same interview: Eddie Hall – The “Hercules Gene”.
See everything Eddie Hall has done with London Real on his guest page: Eddie Hall on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Eddie Hall – Why He Decided To Lift 500 kg, And What It Cost Him
0:00 Brian Rose: So you hit the deadlift, which was 460-something in Melbourne, and beat your previous record.
0:05 Eddie Hall: Well, I pulled 461, but because I dropped it, it was disallowed. That’s what made me go on and do the deadlift in front of Arnold, and then I think three months later I pulled 463 for a new world record. And that’s where the 500 kilo started. I believed I could pull 500 kilos off the floor, and that’s when I started putting the statements out. Once I pulled 463 at the World Deadlift Championships in 2015, I went to the promoters and said, I want to pull 500 kilos.
0:40 Brian Rose: How do you even get to 500 in your mind? What made you think of that magic number?
0:49 Eddie Hall: When I pulled 463 I was 27 years old. And I just thought: the deadlift world record has gone up 20 kilos in the last 20 years. It’s gone up a kilo a year, and it’s never going to get anywhere. I could do that for the next 20 years, a kilo a year. But when does the point come where you’re not strong enough to do what you’re capable of? I thought, I’m capable of pulling 500 kilos off the floor. Why would I risk missing that opportunity in my lifetime, just for the money of doing a world record every year?
1:46 Eddie Hall: So I thought, let’s up the ante. Let’s do something special. The first man to pull 1,000 pounds was a man called Andy Bolton, and he’s a legend in the strength industry. But I wanted to do something even more extraordinary. I wanted to be the first man to pull half a ton, 1,100 pounds. And it just became so obsessive. Once I’d said it, that was it. I’d committed. People had heard it, and I didn’t want to be the guy who said something and didn’t back it up. To me, the guy who shoots his mouth off and never delivers is a d*ckhead. I want to be the guy who says something and delivers.
2:36 Eddie Hall: So I set off on this journey to pull 500 kilos, and I was 37 kilos away from the world record, which is over 8%. It’s like Usain Bolt taking nearly a second off the 100 metres. It’s pretty special.
2:51 Brian Rose: But you knew you could do it, or you told yourself you could?
2:56 Eddie Hall: I told myself I could do it. And to be honest, I did it for money, but not for a greedy reason. I needed money to become the World’s Strongest Man. I don’t think people realise how expensive it is to be a top pro strongman. I was spending £300 a week on food, at least £250 a week on physiotherapy, another £300 a week on recovery treatments, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers, shockwave treatments. All in, I was spending £800 a week on my body. That’s not the mortgage, not the wife, not the cars. That’s just me. And my savings were quickly running out. I’d saved up enough to quit my job and sell my business, and I thought, I’m never going to win World’s Strongest Man unless I can top up my bank balance and take myself all the way. So that’s where the inspiration for the 500 kilo deadlift came from.
4:25 Brian Rose: On the day you had a big crowd in front of you, and a lot of people have seen the footage. What do you remember from that day?
4:40 Eddie Hall: I set off on this year-long journey, and I couldn’t get anywhere near it in the gym. The most I ever pulled in the gym was 454 kilos. Every week I was getting more and more frustrated, and six months in I thought, sh*t, I’ve made a mistake here. But I’d surrounded myself with an amazing team: doctors, scientists, psychologists, hypnotherapists, you name it. And a scientist sat me down one day and explained that I was never going to lift that weight off the floor the normal way, because the human body isn’t capable of it. But there was one way.
5:40 Eddie Hall: He said a day-to-day person who takes the kids to school, does the shopping and goes to work has access to about 50% of their muscle fibres. Somebody who trains 20 hours a week has access to maybe 65 to 70%. But a woman driving down the motorway who has an accident, with her kids under the car, and lifts the car off them, has access to 100% of her muscle fibres. Why? It’s the fight-or-flight scenario: a massive release of adrenaline. It’s been shown that people can do extraordinary feats of strength when they’re put in that scenario. And it can’t be faked. You can’t just click a switch and release it.
6:48 Eddie Hall: The only way to get it out of you is for someone to put a gun to your head: live or die, pull that weight off the floor. Obviously I couldn’t have someone put a shotgun in my face on the day. So that’s the scenario I had to create in my head. With a psychiatrist and a hypnotherapist, we worked together until I could create a scenario in my head so that when I walked up to the 500 kilos, I wasn’t lifting 500 kilos off the floor. Say I was lifting a car off my kids. That’s only an example. The actual scenario is something I can’t talk about, because it’s very dark, very deep, very disturbing. But after months of talking about the worst places you could possibly be, we created a pinch point on the back of my hand, just before I walked out to the crowd, that put my body and mind in this different place.
7:57 Eddie Hall: When I got strapped onto the bar, I started rocking it back and forth, and just before I lifted, I closed my eyes tight shut and started lifting. Watching the footage back is actually quite scary, because my eyes open, but I’m not looking at anything, and my eye colour changes. You can see it on camera. And I pull and pull and pull, and I don’t remember doing the lift at all. All I remember is waking up at the top of the lift, because I wasn’t in that arena. I was off on that motorway, lifting a car off my kids. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, mentally more than physically.
9:00 Brian Rose: Had you practised that before, or can you only do it once?
9:06 Eddie Hall: Once you’ve done it, it’s gone. You can only do it once. In the months of training leading up, I never went above 450 in the gym. But I’d do my routine: stamping up and down the gym, hiding in the toilets pretending they were the toilets in the arena, then kicking the door open, stomping into the centre of the gym like it was the arena, and attacking the bar. Everything exactly the same, the same touches, making sure the straps were right, the suit was right. But until I actually locked onto that bar on the day and shut my eyes, that’s when I blacked out and woke up at the top of the lift.
10:00 Eddie Hall: There was that pure enjoyment for a split second, and then bam, the bar goes down and I go down with it. My only memory is looking at the ground and seeing a puddle of blood forming very quickly, like a good litre of blood on the floor, pouring out of my nose. The guys got my suit off, and then the blood pressure hit my head and I went unconscious again. I was in and out of consciousness, convulsing; you can see it on the video. After about 15 or 20 seconds I came to, and someone whispered in my ear, “Just get up and make it look easy.” So I got up and did a little speech to the crowd, and then I got backstage and, bam, out again.
11:03 Eddie Hall: I’m on a trolley with the ECG on me, and the paramedics are saying they can’t get the machine to work. They try again two minutes later, and again, and by the fifth time they can’t get a reading, there’s something wrong. My heart rate was over 200 beats per minute. Super dangerous. My blood pressure was unreadable; the machine wouldn’t even take a reading, it was that high. And I went blind in the middle of my vision, like an arc eye from welding: a dark patch in the centre, so everywhere I looked I saw black spots. It took me about three hours to calm down and get my heart rate down, and my vision came back. I had blood coming out of my tear ducts and my ears. Basically, I just blew my brain.
12:30 Eddie Hall: Three or four hours later I was back out doing meet and greets with the fans, doing pictures. And the next day I got up to drive home and I’d forgotten how to drive my car, so I had to get my old man to drive me. The day after, it was my son’s birthday party, a massive party at my house with family and friends, and I couldn’t remember anybody. I’d be talking to people, then go to my wife and ask, who the f*ck is that? “That’s your sister-in-law,” or “That’s your nephew.” I’d have conversations with people, walk away, come back and have the same conversation.
13:38 Eddie Hall: I had the same symptoms as concussion for two weeks afterwards. I was stuttering, I couldn’t get words out. I saw a specialist, and he said if this doesn’t improve in two weeks, you’re in trouble, because basically you’ve burst something in your head, and if it doesn’t heal, you could be in some big trouble. But every day it got better and better, and after two weeks I was fine. That’s how dangerous it was.
14:11 Brian Rose: Would you do it again?
14:13 Eddie Hall: Yeah. I’d put more weight on, definitely. I’d like to do 510. I lifted 500 very comfortably. I think I could have done more. My mistake was holding it at the top of the lift and smiling at everybody. That was the big up yours to all the haters, all the people who said it couldn’t be done. But those four seconds of holding it there absolutely destroyed me and caused all the bleeding in the brain. If I’d been given the down signal and just dropped it, I’d probably have had no problems whatsoever.
15:05 Eddie Hall: I challenge any strongman, any bodybuilder, anyone who trains 20-plus hours a week: put 500 kilos on a bar in a rack and lift it one inch. No one could even lift it an inch. It’s a ridiculous amount of weight.
