I didn’t really care if I died the World’s Strongest Man me living...
because, unless I won the World’s Strongest Man there was no point in me living anyway. “In a way it was my suicide. It was a win-win for me; if I died along the way, I died, and if I won, I’d achieve the dream. “I didn’t care about my well-being. I didn’t care about anybody around me – my wife, my kids, my family, mum, dad, brothers – I didn’t give a f***. “I was training four hours a day, physio two hours a day, stretching an hour a day, hot-cold treatments an hour a day, hyperbaric an hour a day, meditation, I was sleeping 13 hours a day, food prep, eating food. “Honestly, no joke, I would see my wife and kids for an hour or two a week at most. “And that put so much strain on me mentally because, if I failed, all that f ****** sacrifice would have been for nothing. And that in itself made me very anxious and very depressed. “I was paying my wife no attention. I would f*** up Christmas, birthdays, meals out, I wouldn’t do anything because I was obsessed with strongman. “It just got to the point where my wife just didn’t have a husband and my kids didn’t have a dad.
“My son Maximus didn’t know me. I’ve got a nine-year-old daughter as well who I don’t know. I’m getting to know her now but I didn’t because I spent so much f ****** time obsessed with strongman.”
On May 28, 2017 Hall was finally crowned World’s Strongest Man – on the 40th anniversary of the competition – in Botswana.
Smoother times are now ahead.
“I can honestly say that, since I’ve won the title, the depression has disappeared,” he says.
“I can now look in the mirror and be content, happy and see success. And that for me made all the worries as a kid disappear.
“All that stress and strain of your career, your GCSEs; that was my middle finger to all those teachers saying, ‘You’re going to be a nobody, you’re going to be in jail or dead’. “That was the middle
finger.”