Strongman Eddie Hall officially retired from the world of professional weightlifting back in 2017 when he won the World’s Strongest Man competition. Since then, he’s tried his hand at boxing, losing to Game of Thrones actor and fellow World’s Strongest Man Hafthor Bjornsson, and made a brief return to strongman competition last year, representing Team UK in their win against Team USA at the World’s Strongest Nation 2022 contest.
No stranger to a challenge – particularly one where bulking and building muscle is involved – Hall has now announced bodybuilding as his next venture, describing the activity as ‘a great transfer over from strongman’.
Revealing his plans for 2023 on his YouTube Channel, Hall said: ‘[It’s] not 100%, but it’s something that I’m gonna try my hand at just to see where I can get to.’
Weighing 162kg, Hall gave viewers a glimpse of his current physique before going on to explain what his first steps will be in the gym: ‘I’m gonna do a big bulk, so I’m gonna blow up, get all my muscles big and juicy again, and then we’re gonna do a trim. [I’m] hoping to get on stage at the back end of next year, so probably October, November, December.’
Hall has since released chest workout video on his YouTube channel to his 2.3 million subscribers – the first of his workouts specifically tailored to building his new bodybuilder physique.
Laying out his intentions for the session at the beginning of the video, Hall said: ‘[I have] still been doing strongman workouts as of now, but I think I’m really going to tune in and get more [of a] bodybuilding workout in today. It’s going to be a lot of time under tension, loads and loads of reps, getting loads of tension in the chest. It’s going to be new for me.’
Hall warms up with a 60kg flat bench press, while bending his knees and raising his feet off the floor to engage his core. He then moves up to four sets of 25 reps at 110kg, then repeats with an incline bench press at 100kg, making an effort to minimise the time in between sets ‘to maximise the lactic build up in the muscle’.
Next up, Hall moves on to three incline sets on the assisted bench press machine starting at 80kg, before moving up to 120kg and 160kg. With the first two sets he pushes to almost failure and the last all the way.
Hall finishes the workout on the chest fly machine at 140kg, before ending with 10 reps of ‘super slow’ standing press ups without locking out at the end of each rep.
