Eddie Hall has been on quite the journey since becoming the first human to deadlift 500 kilograms (1,102.3 pounds) at the 2016 World Deadlift Championships. He won the 2017 World’s Strongest Man (WSM) contest, retired from competitive strongman, embarked on a short-lived boxing career to fight 2018 WSM champion Hafthor Björnsson — Björnsson won their brawl by unanimous decision — and then briefly returned to strongman to lead Team UK to a win over Team USA at the 2022 World’s Strongest Nation (WSN) contest.
The turn of the new year has Hall’s sights set on yet another adventure in his strength sports career: his bodybuilding debut in the last quarter of 2024. The former WSM champion took to his YouTube channel on Jan. 8, 2023, to share the announcement and take his 2.27 million subscribers through the introductory process of his bodybuilding journey. Check it out below:
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Hall is no stranger to putting on muscle mass. When he was active in strongman, his peak weight was 430 pounds. Force-feeding is common in strongman to pack on the size to move the massive implements in competition. Bulking is the current plan for Hall, who intends to get his muscles “juicy” again before cutting toward the back end of 2024.
I was massive — literally a spheric human being.
At the time of the video recording, Hall weighed approximately 360 pounds at a height of six feet, three inches. For comparison, former two-time Mr. Olympia Mamdouh “Big Ramy” Elssbiay, who stands five feet, nine inches tall, reached 341 pounds in his off-season leading up to the 2022 Olympia.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnKW7jmN4gP/
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Hall stripped down to show off where his physique is at post-holidays and shared what his current lifting capacity is in training. He said he squats 300 kilograms (661.4 pounds) “relatively easy,” and bench presses 250 kilograms (551.2 pounds). He expects his erectors and upper back to be well-defined and sufficiently dense once he drops his body fat significantly due to the many years he’s spent pulling heavy deadlifts.
Although Hall has immense muscle mass, he doesn’t expect to reach a physique similar to Big Ramy. His desired goal for his physique is an aesthetic between Men’s Physique competitor Ryan Terry, who has given Hall posing lessons in the past, and four-time Classic Physique Olympia champion Chris Bumstead. Hall didn’t mention a target weight or body fat percentage he’s striving for, but offering a target of somewhere between Terry and Bumstead suggests Hall will get much leaner than he’s ever been before.
The rest of 2023 and the front half of 2024 should be exciting to see if Hall’s training prominently adapts to his bodybuilding goals. We’ll see what bodybuilding contest will claim Hall’s debut in the fall/winter of 2024.
Featured image: @eddiehallwsm on Instagram
