Bank Holiday Stone Club: Ten Lifters, Plenty of Stones
Bank Holiday Monday at the Commando Temple meant another evening of natural stone lifting, sandbags, Atlas stones and a lot of people finding different ways to challenge themselves.
We had ten lifters at Stone Club this week, with different levels of experience, different strengths and very different goals. That's really what these sessions are about. There isn't one prescribed workout that everybody has to follow. Instead, we get the stones and bags out, find something that presents the right problem and get to work.
Starting with Natural Stones and Sandbags
Freya and Sanna started out shouldering our 61kg natural stone. It's a great stone for developing the transition from simply picking something up to actually controlling it well enough to move it around the body and onto the shoulder.
Nearby, Harriet and Orsa worked with sandbags around the 50–60kg mark, while Lara made short work of a 60kg bag and threw it onto her shoulder.
At the heavier end, Ollie hit a huge lift with the 123kg sandbag, while Dara somehow managed to scoop the 140kg bag from the floor as though it weighed considerably less than 140kg.
That's one of the things we like about having stones and sandbags being worked on at the same time. The basic principles of getting close to an awkward object, breaking it from the floor and extending through it carry across both, but the problems they present aren't quite the same.
Linking Reps on the Stones
Not every Stone Club session needs to revolve around finding the heaviest stone you can lift once.
Hugh spent time with the 115kg Brazil stone, chaining repetitions together from the hip and repeatedly extending through the stone. It's a horrible but very effective way of accumulating work through the glutes and hamstrings while practising the extension needed to finish heavier stone lifts.
Ben did something similar with Delilah, our 183kg natural stone, hitting three big extensions rather than treating every encounter with the stone as a maximal single.
There's real value in this sort of work. Natural stone lifting can easily become a constant hunt for bigger numbers, but repeating positions with a stone you already know gives you an opportunity to improve technique, build endurance and become more comfortable under an awkward load.
The stone doesn't become any more cooperative just because you've already lifted it once.
Working Towards the Shoulder
Freya also had an excellent lift with the 107kg natural stone, taking it strongly to the chest.
The next challenge is figuring out how to turn that chest lift into a shoulder.
This is where Stone Club becomes less about simply being strong enough and more about problem solving. Getting a natural stone from the ground to the chest is one problem. Moving it from there, changing your position and finding enough space to guide an irregular lump of rock onto the shoulder is another.
Sometimes the strength is already there. You just need enough attempts to work out what the stone is asking you to do.
Onto the Atlas Stones
Later in the session we moved over to the Atlas stones.
Sanna, Orsa and Harriet worked on loading stones onto the platform before the weights started climbing.
Darren and Hugh both managed the big 140kg Atlas stone without tacky, using nothing more than chalk. There's something particularly satisfying about getting a heavy Atlas stone up without adhesive — especially after you've already spent a good portion of the evening lifting everything else in sight.
Finishing on a Big Shoulder
The session finished with Freya returning to the natural stones.
After her earlier work with the 61kg and 107kg stones, she finished the evening with an excellent lift of the 86kg natural stone to the shoulder.
A pretty good way to round things off.
Ten People, Ten Different Challenges
That's probably the best way to describe a typical Stone Club.
On the same evening, one person might be learning how to shoulder a 61kg stone while somebody else is trying to extend a 183kg stone for repeated reps. Someone is fighting with a sandbag, somebody is loading an Atlas stone and somebody else is staring at a lump of rock trying to work out where on earth they're supposed to put their hands.
Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses, so everybody's challenge looks slightly different.
What makes the sessions work is having a community around it. People encourage each other's lifts, share ideas, offer advice and celebrate somebody overcoming a stone regardless of what happens to be written on the scales.
Natural stone lifting is ultimately a very simple pursuit: there is a heavy thing on the floor and you're trying to find a way to lift it.
Put ten people around that problem, though, and you get ten different approaches, plenty of experimentation and a very enjoyable way to spend a Bank Holiday Monday in Deptford.