Sam Burgess has revealed how praying helped him overcome some of the challenging moments on the SAS Australia course.
In a recent episode, the retired NRL star and sprinter John Steffensen were seen saying grace before tucking into their military rations.
Sam, 32, told Nova’s *Fitzy and Wippa* on Thursday that turning to prayer made the dire food situation slightly easier.
“I mean John Steffensen on the show, we sat together nearly every meal time and he praised his food and now I started joining him in prayer, and prayer – it sounds crazy – helped me with the food,” Sam explained.
“I appreciated it more, it gave it more flavour, I looked at it totally different, the portions were tiny and I love my food.”
Sam went on to reveal the “most uncomfortable position” he was put in on the show was during the tunnel challenge, where the recruits were required to crawl through a narrow underground pipe.
“I thought I was in there for over an hour. That was the most uncomfortable position I’ve been in throughout the whole show, my whole life,” he said.
“I still to this day don’t know how I made it through that tunnel. I kind of just faced out, got in a rhythm and I was moving with my shoulder blades.”
Sam praised Chief Instructor Ant Middleton for helping him get through the near-impossible task.
“In that situation I’m in a pipe underground, it was pretty scary but Ant Middleton is brilliant, he got me through that. If he wasn’t there I wouldn’t have made it through,” he said.
Sam also discussed with Fitzy and Wippa how he was affected by an MS misdiagnosis after recently opening up about the medical condition on the show.
Sam said that while the misdiagnosis was scary, it was a stark reminder to take his brain health more seriously.
“I did some cognitive testing and have to revisit that every two years and get an updated brain scan every six months,” he explained.
“Thankfully it’s nothing serious really, for a lot of players in the game it is an issue. It just shed some light on brain health because we really don’t know anything about the brain and the damage collision sports can do.
“It was a scary few hours after being told I had MS and driving to the specialist and doing my test and everything.”