Eddie Hall Hypnosis Strategy To Deadlift 500kg

 

Eddie Hall hypnosis? What’s this all about?

Here is some context.

In 2016, Eddie Hall shocked the world by deadlifting 500kg.

He broke his own record from the year prior by 37kg.

To put things into perspective,

It took 18 years for the record to move up 36kg between 1996 to 2014.

Eddie made a quantum leap akin to someone beating Usain Bolt’s 100m record by a second in a game that’s measured by milliseconds.

Eddie confessed that the weight did not move up due to his brute strength.

It went up because of the psychological manipulation of his subconscious mind.

In this article, you will learn how to get your subconscious mind to help achieve the impossible by consciously altering your emotional state.  

Physical Limitation & Hysterical Strength

During an interview, Eddie Hall explained that in the year of training for the 500kg deadlift he couldn’t get close to lifting the weight.

“I couldn’t get anywhere near it. The most I ever pulled in the gym was 454 kilo.”

After 6 months of grueling training he decided to take a different approach.

A psychologist told him that the only way to pull such immense weight is by getting into a state of fight or flight.

Eddie recalled how in history there have been many cases of people displaying unbelievable feats of strength when the stakes were high.

Psychologists call this hysterical strength.

The body has natural control mechanisms in place to stop you from using all of your muscle fibers when lifting something.

This is to prevent unnecessary injury.

But in instances of life and death, these control mechanisms get overridden and you are given full access to your body’s strength.

This is what allows a 22-year-old girl like Lauren Kornacki to save her dad’s life after his BMW 525i toppled from the jack and crushed him.

She lifted the car allowing him to escape.

Or famously the story of a crashed helicopter during the filming of a show called ‘Magnum, P.I.’.

A US veteran named ‘Tiny’ lifted the helicopter enough for his fellow veteran friend to escape.

Eddie Hall understood that he needed to use this psychological force to lift the weight, so he enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist.

Eddie Hall Hypnosis and NLP Anchor method

The hypnotherapist worked with Eddie to create what NLP practitioners call an ‘anchor’.

An anchor is something you do to tie a desired emotional state to the present moment.

We all use anchors unconsciously through subconscious patterns.

When you smell a particular fragrance, it might remind you of a memory with your mother from your childhood.

That memory might bring you joy and make you feel good in the moment.

Or perhaps you hear your favourite song which gets you pumped up for your next set in the gym.

This is partly the reason people have playlists for their music.

Each playlist is a small anchor which helps create a desired mood.

Most people don’t understand that you can consciously create your own anchors.

Much like Pavlov’s dogs, this happens through the stimulus-response mechanism.

You anchor a specific gesture with the right memory or visualization associated with the desired emotional state.

You use repetition to embed it into the subconscious mind until it becomes automatic.

In order to create a sense of hysterical strength, Eddie Hall had to use a dark and traumatic association.

“We were able to talk about a situation, and this situation was very dark and gloomy that I can’t say it out loud because you would think I’m an absolute sicko for thinking this in my own head.”

Simply playing his favorite song would not have been enough to move the 500kg.

His anchor needed to be something that tormented his psyche.

Something so dark that only he and his therapist knew.

Eddie Hall has mentioned how during his childhood he had a troubled upbringing and would often get into street fights.

It’s likely his anchor stemmed from some intense childhood event of severe trauma.

Perhaps physical or sexual abuse, bullying, or other shame-inducing circumstances.

The raw pain and anger felt when reenacting such memories was enough for him to channel the hysterical strength.

“It’s very dark, very deep, very disturbing, but it’s something that triggered me. It’s something that after months and months and months of talking about the worst scenario you could possibly be in and creating a pinch point on the back of my hand [he used] Just before I walk out to the crowd that put my body and mind in this different place.”

Creating your own NLP anchors

Just like Eddie Hall you can create your own anchors.

Since your goals likely don’t need your body to be in a state of heightened adrenaline (unless you happen to be a Viking doing a berserker ritual), your anchor can be positive.

Simply think of your desired emotional state.

Let’s say it’s a state of heightened confidence.

Think of a memory in which you were the most confident you have ever been.

Perhaps after making a public speech and receiving great feedback from your peers you felt really good.

Choose a trigger.

This can be physical, mental or a word.

Use your trigger and then think about the chosen memory.

Do this until the trigger alone brings up the good feeling.

The more you associate the trigger with the memory, the more powerful it will become.

Set a reminder on your phone and spend 1 minute daily creating this association.

In time your subconscious mind will allow the trigger alone to change your state.

Do this, and you will be one step closer to living and dying well.