The World's Strongest Book E-Book

Eddie Hall

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Go behind the scenes with Eddie 'The Beast' Hall as we follow his incredible journey from World's Strongest Man to competing in 'The Heaviest Boxing Match in History' against his nemesis Hafthor 'Thor' Bjornsson. 'No human can visualise the impossible like this man' Jason Statham THE BEAST In 2017 Eddie Hall became the World's Strongest Man. He was the first person to pull half a tonne off the floor when everybody else said it was impossible, setting a new World Record. Impossible is a recurring theme in Eddie's life - from the streets of Stoke-on-Trent to the pinnacle of Strongman - at every step on his journey he has blasted through the obstacles in his way. THE BOXING MATCH Now, Eddie brings you into the heart of his training camp as he prepares for his greatest challenge yet - a boxing ring showdown with his nemesis, Hafthor Bjornsson. Witness Eddie's two-year journey as he transforms his body and mind from strength athlete to titan weight boxer. Get ringside access to Eddie's formidable mindset, he reflects on the lessons he's learned over the course of his life and draws on them to overcome each new setback. Featuring training diaries, 10 rounds of mental preparation and contributions from iconic friends including Ross Edgley, James Haskell, Paddy McGuinness, his family and inner circle, this is Eddie as you have never witnessed him before: 100 per cent authentic, honest and raw.

Leseprobe

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2022 by Allen & Unwin,an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Eddie ‘The Beast’ Hall, 2022

The moral right of Eddie Hall to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

the prior permission of both the copyright owner and

the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders.

The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify

any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 711 7

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 859 6

E-book ISBN: 978 183895 712 4

Typeset in Caslon Pro by Avon DataSet Ltd, Alcester, Warwickshire

Printed in Great Britain

Allen & Unwin

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.allenandunwin.com/uk

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Dedicated to my Nan – Sheila Jackson, my wife – Alex,and my Mum and Dad – Helen and Stephen.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

ROUND 1: Fight or Flight

ROUND 2: Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

ROUND 3: Find a Mentor and a Nemesis

ROUND 4: Be a Lover and a Fighter

ROUND 5: Setbacks are Signposts to Success

ROUND 6: The Dark Place

ROUND 7: The Smelling Salts

ROUND 8: The Good and The Greatest

ROUND 9: The Taper

ROUND 10: The Mountain

CONCLUSION: Backing Up Your Bull for Life

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PLATES SECTION

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. But I knew if I could win it, it would change the opportunities in my life. I knew if I could win it, I could change the lives of the people I loved. Most of all, if I could win it then I could finally let go of this obsession that started when I was five years old. If I could win it, I would be free.

What happened next? I stepped up. I seized the opportunity that had taken me ten years of graft, I backed up my bull and I won World’s Strongest Man 2017. Rather than elation, the overwhelming feeling was one of relief. I had beaten Zydrunas, I had beaten Brian Shaw and I had beaten Hafthor. I was going back to Stoke with the trophy I’d craved since I was five years of age. It was the pinnacle of my career and a massive weight (literally) off my shoulders. I could finally let this obsession go and move on to the next stage of my life.

We were literally just off the podium when a reporter asked me to respond to allegations that I cheated. What cheating did I do? The World’s Strongest Git, Thor, claimed that he was the victim of a conspiracy. He said the organizers of World’s Strongest Man wanted me to win the title that year and that the referees docked him points in the Viking Press event to ensure that I would win the overall title. It makes me sick to even have to repeat his lies. Take a look in the mirror, pal, and own your performance rather than creating fake news. But of course, the world loves a scandal, even if it’s not true, and that became the story.

Thor tainted my victory, a victory that I had worked my guts out for, that I’d risked everything for. He was supposed to be a friend. He blackened my name. He blackened my win.

Look, he’s not a big deal for me. I’d done the work, I’d won fair and square and it all just looked pathetic as far as I was concerned.

ROUND 1

Fight or Flight

‘Be normal, Eddie.’ I’ve heard that for years. From everyone from my parents to my wife to even my doctors. But I’d ask myself, ‘What’s so great about being like everyone else?’ I never wanted a normal life. Actually, being normal is my biggest fear.

What does normal look like to me? When I close my eyes and visualize it, it’s me back in my old house, I’m back working as a truck mechanic, I’m back struggling to put food on the table and pay my bills. When I think back to that time, it scares me. Because I was not living, I was existing. I was on the hamster wheel going round and round and getting no closer to my own goals. At the same time, I was struggling to get by and yet I was working my backside off to make somebody else rich. That period of my life I was a sheep. I was just like everybody else.

It made me depressed because I felt like I couldn’t shift my life in the direction I needed it to go in. I had no control; my time was dictated to me rather than the other way around. I was stuck. I couldn’t see how to change things.

I went to the World Deadlift Championship, a Giants Live event held in Leeds, in July 2014. The deadlift had always been one of my favourite events, probably because I’m built for it. My legs have always been the most powerful part of my body. I’ve found that there’s something very satisfying about the whole ritual of a deadlift. The lift makes me feel like I’m using my body the way it was designed to be used.

In front of a crowd of 14,000 screaming fans, I pulled a world record deadlift which, at that time, was 462 kilos. I locked out the lift and soaked up the moment. I’d broken a world record and the crowd were letting me know how much they were loving it. The referee, Magnús Ver Magnússon, had instructed me before the attempt that he wanted the bar lowered back down to the floor. In my excitement at locking out the lift and breaking a world record, I let the bar crash back down to the floor and with it went my achievement. Magnús disallowed the lift because I hadn’t followed his instructions. I disagreed at the time, and I still do, but what I thought didn’t matter. He’s the ref and that’s that.

I felt so deflated at that point. I was putting everything I had into Strongman because I saw it as a way to change my life. I saw it as a way to not be normal, a way to not be a sheep. But what was the point? I asked myself some hard questions like ‘Why am I working 100 plus hours a week?’ ‘Why am I training twenty plus hours a week?’ ‘Why am I spending all my money on Strongman?’ ‘What do I think it’s going to do for me?’

That weekend to go and compete in Leeds cost me £500. I didn’t make the lift, or rather I wasn’t given the lift by Magnús, so I got zero prize money. A big fat zero. It wasn’t like I had that £500 just sitting around the house waiting to be spent on a jolly. Plus, I’d already earmarked the prize money to help with my training expenses for the next few months. To my mind, I’d spent £500 of my money to entertain a stadium full of people and I’d made myself look like an idiot in the process. Was this really how I wanted to spend my time, my energy and my money?

I came home from Leeds feeling so deflated. I was irritable with everyone and everything and I knew something needed to change. I felt I had a decision to make, and my decision was to quit Strongman. I’d been plugging away for seven years at that point and I wasn’t even close to breaking even, let alone putting away a few quid in the bank. No, there was obviously no money in it. I felt that I was never going to get anywhere with it. If my life was going to change, it wasn’t going to be because of Strongman. Besides, I had a wife and two kids to think of. The responsible decision was to concentrate on my door security business, keep working at the day job as a mechanic and quit Strongman. That was 100 per cent the right decision. I’d have more time with the family as I wouldn’t be training as much. There would be more money in my pocket as I wasn’t putting away 12,000 calories a day. Best of all, I’d no longer be tormented by Strongman. I’d be free of the training sessions and the trips to Leeds to look like an idiot in front of 14,000 people. I’d be pulling in fifty or sixty grand a year. Not bad for a twenty-five-year-old. I would have an ordinary life. I would be normal.

I sat down with Alex to tell her the news of my decision.

‘What are you on about?’ she said. ‘You’ve just pulled a world record deadlift. You’ve just proved to yourself that you can be the best at something. And now you want to quit?’

It’s fair to say that this was not the reaction I was expecting. I thought she’d be delighted for me to give up Strongman. But instead, Alex turned around and challenged me with the truth. As I’ve said already, Alex is a hero and here’s a moment that proves it. She said, ‘Listen, Ed, you’ve broken a world record. Yeah, it might not count because of some technical nonsense but nobody could deny that you lifted and locked out a world record deadlift.’ I’d pulled 462kg from the floor and made it look like it was half that. My response to that achievement was to quit? That was my final decision?

This was my fight or flight moment.

Fight or flight is an instinctive reaction to a threat. It goes back to when we were cavemen. It’s amazingly powerful because it’s what kept your caveman grandpa from being eaten by a tiger or having his secret stash of bananas robbed by the bloke down the way.

You are here today because of fight or flight. The brain registers a threat, and it primes the body for a reaction. Nowadays stress is the more likely trigger than tigers. And I hope what I’m sharing with you about all that stuff back then is making you realize I was in a pretty stressful situation.

It’s such a primal thing, the fight or flight response, that it can often override the more rational part of our brains and allow emotion to cloud our judgement. How many times have you said or done something in the heat of the moment only to later regret it? Alex rightly called me out over my proposed retirement from Strongman. It was a decision I made because I felt like an idiot. I had said I was going to break a world record. I broke it. Then my record was disqualified due to a technicality. I did it in a stadium full of people who had paid money to see me do it. I felt like I’d let them down. I felt like I’d let Alex and the kids down. Most of all, I felt like I’d let myself down. Therefore, I was an idiot. Or at least I thought I was.

All this stress triggered the flight response. My kneejerk reaction was to run away and be done with the whole world of Strongman forever. When I said fight or flight is pretty powerful, that’s what I’m talking about. It triggered an impulse to leg it from something I’d dedicated seven years of my life to. I was ready to give up on everything I’d worked so hard for just as I was on the cusp of all that hard work finally starting to pay off. I was ready to become normal.

Alex’s challenge to me was, what if I chose to fight? What if I harnessed that primal, caveman energy into achieving my goal? Could I use that same stress, and the strength of those emotions that told me to quit to do the opposite? Instead of flight, could I fight my way to the very top of the Strongman game?

Well, what do you think?

After winning World’s Strongest Man in 2017, I think it’s fair to say I was feeling exhausted and exhilarated. I’d fought for my dream and for my obsession, and finally I had conquered it. It was the culmination of a ten-year journey. I had reached the pinnacle in Strongman. The final push from being good to becoming the greatest began with that fight or flight reaction. The primal energy it unleashed was like splitting the atom. I realized if I could find a way to tap into that energy whenever I needed it, then I could use it to power me to bigger and bigger challenges. I figured out how to do that and a whole lot more.

Then I was presented with a new challenge. A huge challenge. A challenge I could really sink my teeth into – fighting in the heaviest boxing match in history. Over the course of this book, I’ll share with you all the insights, the techniques and the tools I developed and utilized to win World’s Strongest Man, and how they helped me every day as I became the best boxer I could be.

I’ve learned that there’s a very fine line between the good and the greatest. And I truly believe it was my mindset that separated me from the competition. All the failures and setbacks that I came back from, my refusal to take shortcuts in my preparation, the hunger to get better every day – all of these things came from my mindset.

If you follow me online, you’ll know one thing about me is that I always back up my bull. In this book, I’m going to illustrate to you exactly how I do it. I’m bringing you into my training camp so you can learn first-hand how I’ve used all of these tools and techniques to get my mind and body in peak condition for the showdown of a lifetime.

Why did I decide to fight Thor? Well before I get into that, let me tell you about what happened after I was crowned winner of World’s Strongest Man 2017.

Winning World’s Strongest Man was the pinnacle of my strongman career and the emotions in the aftermath were overwhelming. I had staked everything on victory – my marriage, my family’s financial security, my own sense of self-worth. The obsession to win World’s Strongest Man had been tormenting me mentally for years, so to be finally free of it, to have finally reached the summit of my mountain, it was pure relief. The family were super proud, I had fulfilled a promise to my nan which I’d made on her deathbed. I fulfilled five-year-old Eddie’s dreams too. There were very happy tears shed in those moments after the win. Boom. Done. What’s next?

I was surprised and disappointed by Thor’s reaction to my win. I thought he’d be man enough to accept that he’d been bested on the day by the better competitor. All the negative press that followed Thor’s cheating allegation took a bit of shine off the enjoyment of my achievement. I’d worked my guts out for it, but ultimately, who had the trophy in the cabinet? That would be me. No amount of nonsense on the internet was going to take it away. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry than Thor. I had to get home to see Alex.

As soon as I got home and we saw each other, all the tension we’d had in the run-up to World’s faded away. We were reunited and back to our old selves together. We finally went on our honeymoon to Mauritius at the end of 2017, just five years after we got married! It was the first time we could both sit back and take stock of how far we had come together.

We returned home to Stoke-on-Trent and the euphoria I felt from winning began to fade. It’s well documented in Olympians or other sports people, once they achieve their goal, they can experience a bit of a downer after that huge high. I definitely experienced that and it’s a tough thing to take. It almost felt like grief. I suppose in a way it was. It was the death of my obsession with winning World’s Strongest Man. I had to make my peace with it, that the quest to win was finally over. Life moves on just as it should. I’d had my moment of glory and with time the euphoria faded. I was left with a deep sense of achievement. I’d reached a level I never thought possible: for one year I was the strongest man in the world. Nobody could ever take that away from me. I had made the impossible, possible.

What was the next challenge in front of me? What was going to get me out of bed in the morning?

I’d always said winning World’s Strongest Man was a stepping stone and now I had the time and the money to begin to implement my vision for the next stage of my career – building my TV and social media presence while staying connected to the Strongman world. Things have ticked along nicely, even if I do say so myself. I‘ve had a number of TV shows commissioned, including Eddie Eats America and The Strongest Man in History. I’m a presenter on Channel 5 in the UK and CBS in America for their coverage of World’s Strongest Man. I’m also very proud to say I’m in a business venture and 50/50 partnership with a hero of mine, Arnold Schwarzenegger. We signed a deal and brought the Arnold Classic to the NEC in Birmingham in October 2021 for three sold-out days. I hired a videographer, Hannah, to help me create content for my YouTube channel and my Instagram account. Regular postings helped build my social media presence, especially on YouTube where I post new videos up to three times a week. In just over a year, we grew my subscribers from pretty much zero to nearly 2 million followers, and it’s increasing every day. That kind of growth in one year is almost unheard of. So yeah, I’d been working hard, making some dough and enjoying life.

One question kept nagging me though. Had I made the right decision to retire when I did? If I’m honest, there was a part of me that missed the deep sense of purpose the pursuit of the Strongman title gave me. I was only twenty-nine and at the peak of my powers when I called time on my career. Churning inside me was the desire to test myself again, to really throw myself into another challenge. But what was I going to do? Strongman was finished for me. I couldn’t go back to competing in that world. And yet, I still felt there were more mountains out there for me to conquer.

It started as a bit of joke when I said to Don Idrees at Core Sports that he should put together a fight built around me and Thor settling our bad blood. I told him it should be a proper boxing event with a pay per view sold around the world. I never believed that opportunity would come my way not least because I thought Thor wouldn’t have the guts to get in the ring with me.