FOR MANY athletes, the road to success is paved with sacrifice, pain, and eventually triumph.
For Thomondgate native Liam Beville, a devastating accident that led to a long hiatus from powerlifting left him physically disabled and mentally distressed. In his journey back into peak form, he told the Limerick Post that he looked for help in an unlikely area.
“I looked into hypnosis because I was just a bag of nerves,” Liam recalls. “I just fell apart and I was burning nervous energy just waiting.”
Liam had enjoyed sport in many forms since his youth. When he was 18, tragedy struck when he was hit by a stolen car after leaving a nightclub. The crash left him with severe leg injuries and in danger of requiring amputation.
“I was with one of my friends and I was able to push him out the way,” Liam told the Limerick Post of the moments before the life-changing crash.
“I remember looking down on my legs and I could see the bones.”
Soon after, Liam was fighting against a condition known as ‘crush syndrome’, where toxins from broken bones flood the bloodstream.
Despite his trauma, the eager athlete found healing in weight training.
At 27, Liam lifted four times his own body weight, deadlifting 310kg while weighing just 75kg, forging a record still unbroken in Irish powerlifting.
But the catastrophic damage from the crash would come back to once again at the peak of his success. After a slew of surgeries and a lengthy 14-year hiatus, he found himself not only battling physical pain but overwhelming anxiety.
“It really shocked me that I could be that way,” Liam said. “Everything became a chore. I was severely depressed.”
Liam realised he needed a change. After some searching, the powerlifter sought the help hypnotist Enda O’Shea.
“I went in about six weeks before the World Powerlifting Congress, because I was not in a good place. My last competition was a disaster, the expectations were enormous. I was falling under the pressure.”
Sceptical at first, he didn’t believe hypnosis could help with his growing mental struggles, but that all changed as his treatment went on.
“What Enda said was, for the long-term focus, visualise yourself standing on the stage, on the first platform, with a gold medal around your neck and the world record in your hands.”
That was his turning point.
His first major post-hypnosis achievement came when he set a world record in his new weight class.
“I weighed in at 65 kilos on the day and I set the world record.”
Since then, Liam has set three more records for the 75kg, 82.5kg, and 90kg weight categories for powerlifters between ages 50–54 and 55–59.
Now, nearing his 60th birthday, he isn’t done setting goals.
“I’m turning 60 in April and I want to do full power in competition,” he says, meaning he won’t just perform deadlift but return to a full rotation including bench press and squats.
“I’ve qualified for the first of December this year for the UK championships. I lifted it to four nations, and they said we qualified, but that’s for the deadlift only, and I’m injured at the moment, so I may give it a miss until next year, but I’ll definitely qualify … I need that competition.”
