IN CONVERSATION WITH...
E
verything I had ever read or heard about Eddie Hall worried me. Regularly portrayed as a self-absorbed, coarse, aggressive, angry man. Six feet three inches tall, weighing thirty stone and physically intimidating, a beast! It’s safe to say that meeting him for the first time generated a certain amount of anxiety. A perfect lesson in not judging a book by its cover. Eddie Hall is charming. A strong, physically powerful, focused, self-assured man but with an incredible honesty that makes him very easy to like. Born Edward Stephen Hall on 15th January 1988 weighing eight pounds and fourteen ounces in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. Working class and proud of it. “I was definitely a handful, I think. I wasn’t big on sharing. I’m not that keen today if truth be told.” “I was always into sport, I loved swimming and I was good at it. Hard to believe now, but I was fast.” So fast in fact that Eddie became a National Championship Swimmer between the ages of eleven and thirteen. He showed such potential he was invited to join the Olympic Youth Squad. “In true Eddie style, I messed up big. I was smoking in a dorm and set the smoke alarms off and got thrown off the team.”
Where I lived no-one ever talked about depression. This was a difficult time for Eddie who no longer had an obvious outlet for his energy. “It was about then I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I used to shut down emotionally. To make matters worse, at the same time I got expelled from high school. I was fifteen and lost. I really didn’t know what to do with my time or my life. Where I lived, no one ever talked about depression or understood what I was going through. The only advice I ever got was ‘get a job, that’ll sort you out’. It didn’t. I felt as though everything was closing in on me. I didn’t want to leave the house, I didn’t even want to leave my room. That’s why my mum and dad sent me to a local gym, it was the only way to make me leave the house. Not only did my mood change, I very quickly started to feel in control of my anxiety and depression. For the first time, for a very long time, I felt that I was in the driving seat and I’d found something that I really liked doing. I’d got a purpose, a reason to get out of bed.”
4
I’M ONLY HUMAN Don’t judge a book by its cover… strongman Eddie Hall in conversation with Mark Hudson.
