Game of Thrones star Hafthor Bjornsson unrecognisable as basketball ace 14 STONE lighter
HAFTHOR BJORNSSON looked unrecognisable when he was 19-years-old playing basketball and 14 stone lighter.
The Game of Thrones star revealed his incredible body transformation which was dedicated to his strongman training and 10,000 calorie-a-day diet.
Bjornsson, 35, is known for his strongman success and starring as "The Mountain" on the TV series Game of Thrones for five seasons.
But as a kid, he had aspirations of playing in the NBA.
At just 16 stone he started his senior basketball career playing for his country Iceland's youth teams but in 2005 he sustained a troublesome ankle injury.
The blow forced him to retire when he was 19 and shattered his dreams of becoming a pro.
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After recovering from his injury he began to train like a bodybuilder.
And the actor has shared his body transformation on his comparing an unrecognisable photo of him playing basketball as a teen to him weighing 28 stone.
In the photo, a message read "Hafthor Bjornsson (The Mountain) used to be a 230lb basketball center.
"Four years later, he was 396lbs and took third in the World's Strongest Man."
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Just a year into his intense training four-time World's Strongest Man Magnus Ver Magnusson spotted the 20-year-old 6ft 9in 22 stone Icelandic and pushed him to do strongman.
Since his drastic career change, Bjornsson is the first person to have won the Arnold Strongman Classic, Europe's Strongest Man, and the World's Strongest Man competitions in the same calendar year.
To achieve his mammoth physique the bodybuilder has revealed on his channel he was eating 10,000 calories a day from 2018-2020.
He had six to eight healthy meals a day with his breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, french toast and some orange juice.
But from mid-2020 he downsized his calorie intake to 5,000 calories a day to pursue a new career in boxing.
To build his boxing body, he started to train twice a day and included boxing, weights and endurance into his workout routine.