Martin Tye is a world-record beating sportsman and one of the strongest men in the world. He is also disabled. He holds the Guinness World Record for the heaviest seated deadlift, despite his permanent injuries.

Martin is one of hundreds of British soldiers seriously wounded in Afghanistan. Ten years ago, the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by a suicide bomber in Kabul. He was lucky to survive the explosion – many did not. But he was never able to walk properly again.

"I’ve severed my nerves behind my knees," says Martin, "so I’ve got no feeling from the knee down. I’ve got a drop foot on my left side, arthritis in both my knees. I’ve had a lot of operations, metalwork in my knees, metal work on my shoulder, a blast injury to my lung, a traumatic brain injury and smaller ones as well."

Martin went through four years of rehab and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Sport gave him a new sense of purpose. "In Disabled Strongman, basically we do all the events that an able-bodied strongman will do, we just do them in a different way. So, if we’re doing atlas stones it’ll be in wheelchair, deadlift is a seated deadlift."

Martin soon discovered a natural talent he never knew he had and in May this year, he lifted a record-breaking 505 kg at an event in Somerset, England. He has since unofficially broken his own record, lifting 520 kg at a competition in Canada. He has also won 11 medals at Invictus Games in both Toronto and Sydney.

Martin trains alone, without a personal trainer, and credits his partner for motivating him to pursue a sporting career. "Mentally it’s quite hard – just to get yourself out of bed and go and train for 2-3 hours a day. I’m not talking about training light. I’m talking about training really heavy, pushing your body to the limits. It is quite taxing on you. But I love the feeling I get when I’m competing and at a competition."

Martin consumes an astonishing 8,000 calories a day to build up his world-beating strength. Training is tough. Navigating a gym in a wheelchair is a challenge and Martin still suffers from chronic pain. "What training does for me is take me away from thinking about the pain," he says. "I’m so focused on what I’m doing, you kind of push the pain to the side and you don’t really think about it."

His advice to others with permanent injuries or mental health problems is to give sport a try. "It was very hard for me to take that first step to come in a gym on my own to train," he says. "But I guarantee you after that first step, every step from there gets a lot easier and eventually it will make you a much happier person."