As I was depressed, doing it. Unless I won there was no point in
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW a family meal. No hint of the fact his training for the World’s Strongest Man almost crushed his marriage and made him a stranger to his children.
No hint of enjoying the thought that his sporting ambition could lead to his death, thus ridding him of the plague of mental health problems.
Squeezing us both on to a bench in the baking heat, Hall finally gave a glimpse of the pain behind the hard-man exterior. “When I was 12 or 13 my nan was diagnosed with cancer,” he says. “I was having a really hard time at school, I was thrown out of the swimming club – which was going to be my career – I was always in trouble with the police, in trouble with my parents, my
family, always getting into fights and, I don’t know, it just f ****** hit me hard. I got huge anxiety attacks where I couldn’t leave the house.
“Sometimes I just couldn’t go to school and ultimately that’s why I got expelled because, when I was there, I just didn’t want to be there. I was always in panic mode.
“I’d always be wanting to go to the toilet to sit on my own and just rock back and forth and just calm down and get the anxiety out.
“If I had to go out for a family meal or go out with mates, I’d be throwing up before I went out, I’d be that anxious.
“Doctors put me straight on Prozac and straight into counselling. I was on them for about four years and it did help. Then I started doing strongman and it just disappeared.”
Except that it did not. Not entirely. Thrown out of swimming’s World Class Potential Programme after clashing with its “military” discipline, Hall found he was naturally gifted elsewhere too. At just 17 years old he could deadlift a quarter of a tonne. His unbelievable early strength was his route from no-hoper to achiever.
Five years later he was the UK’s Strongest Man, a title he went on to win for six successive years.
The pinnacle, however, was the world title.
But such feats of strength appeared easy compared the road to get there.
Hall describes it as his suicide mission; when the big black dog returned.
“Five weeks before I won it my wife was basically packing her bags... she was gone, she was out the house,” he says. “I had to beg her to give me five more weeks just to let me win the World’s Strongest Man.
“I promised her I’d win it and that our life would get better. And thank f*** I won it because, honest to god, that saved my marriage.
“You see, because of my depression I didn’t really care if I died doing it
In a way it was my suicide mission. It was a win-win for me; if I died along the way, I died, and if I won I’d achieve the dream