The Dinnie Stones
On the 7th of March 2020, I made the 5 hour trip, with friend and client adam Sanders, to the Potarch Cafe and Restaurant to lift the Legendary Dinnie stones (unassisted for time) in aid of the Joseph George Fucile Fund…
…Below is the story!
The Dinnie ‘Steens’ as they are known locally are 2 giant granite boulders located outside the Old Potarch Hotel between Aboyne & Banchory, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Together they weigh 332.49Kg or 733Lbs in old money. The 'smaller' of the stones weighs 144.47kg (318.5lbs) and the larger a massive 188.02kg (414.5lbs).
The stones were reportedly selected in the 1830s as counterweights for use in maintaining the Potarch Bridge. They were lost following World War I, but were rediscovered in 1953.
Only a handful of men have ever lifted the stones in their almost 200 year EXISTENCE with The world record hold at an incredible 46.2 seconds.
I was aiming for a 20 second hold on the stones with the hope of holding for longer if my grip held up to help raise money for the Joseph George Fucile Fund.
The Joseph George Fucile Fund
The Joseph George Fucile Funds goal is to raise funds to help children with disabilities in the here and now.
They aim to work closely with local schools and organisations to provide specialist toys, sensory gardens and to provide practical advice and support for affected families in our local area and further afield.
‘We believe by keeping the spirit of Joseph alive we can bring enjoyment and fulfilment to many special children.’
Darren & Janines Story
On 6th June 2011 I Darren and my wife Janine, were blessed with the arrival of our precious son Joseph George who was a beautiful brother for our 12 year old daughter Alicia. During the first few weeks of his life Joseph was a happy boy with no problems apart from a few feeding issues and we were enjoying being new parents again with our little man.
At seventeen weeks and after a couple of suspected chest infections our lives were to be turned upside down as Joseph was admitted to Sunderland Royal Hospital with yet another suspected chest infection and refusal to feed. At this point Joseph was having to be tube fed through his nose via a NG tube, he was being tested and treated for heart problems and encephalitis, he had to have a lumber puncture, EEG (brain test to check for abnormal brain activity) and multiple blood tests including many blood gas tests as his CO2 level was unusually high. Doctors also discovered that Joseph had an irregular breathing pattern. After two weeks of tests which Joseph took in his stride, he was transferred to the Great North Children’s Hospital, in Newcastle for specialist treatment where he spent a further six weeks undergoing more tests including an MRI Scan, Doctors there discovered that he was also suffering from epileptic seizures. Throughout all of this, Joseph never complained, he was such a fighter with a huge heart who faced up to every battle without a whimper. We managed to get Joseph home in December 2011 after he had become stabilised and he spent a happy Christmas at home with his family. After another two short spells in hospital in early 2012, we were delivered the devastating news that one of the blood tests had come back as a match for a very severe genetic condition called MeCP2 which is part of the RETT family, this meant Joseph had a vast range of disabilities and both myself and Janine, after the initial shock decided to focus on all of the positives. We both wanted to give Joseph the best life possible, we both went part-time at work so we could spend as much quality time with Joseph and continue with is 24/7 care. We managed to enjoy a lovely family holiday in the Lakes, Joseph also enjoyed his weekly physio and portage sessions, as well as going to Sunningdale School where he had some great times.
We had gained a lot of knowledge about Joseph’s condition and we tried everything possible to give Joseph the best chance of survival until a cure could be found, but unfortunately in October Joseph had a bad episode which put him back into hospital on a ventilator, after initial tests we were told that Joseph didn’t have any chance of living without the ventilator so we took the heart breaking decision to turn the ventilator off, we would never have let him suffer and our beautiful, precious boy with a huge heart fell asleep on October 12th aged 16 months.
He was such an inspiration to everyone who met him and we were so proud to be able to call him our son, even though he was only with us for a short time, he taught us a lot about the important things in life. We will miss him immensely and he will never be forgotten, he touched the hearts of so many people and will continue to do so for a long time.
Darren & Janine
The Training
I could talk all day about the training, but i’ll keep it short.
Training in general went well and was largely based around building up time under tension and accumulative volume of holding the stones for the hands.
It was an 8, or 9 week run up, bunched into a 14 week build to BNSF which subsequently didn’t go ahead because of COVID.
Its really was lucky as Adam & myself were in the last group of people to lift the stones before everything shut down.
Big thanks goes to Dan Tonge who borrowed us his Dinnie Stones Handles to train on.
I tret the Dinnies like you would treat most other lifts.
I worked back from where I needed to be and ramped up the intensity through the weeks getting a little heavier each week until at 4 and 2 weeks out, I hit the full lifts.
The video above is a training lift at what I believe is around 90% of the full stones weight.
As with most holds, the trick is to build volume and I did this with EMOMs and building time at lock out and with the stones in the hands rather than working on sets with multiple reps.
Lastly, onto problems…
I was training 5 days a week in the build up to the Dinnies due to BNSF shortly after.
Juggling the deadlifts and grip work was a tough one as along with the Dinnies I had a deadlift medley coming up in BNSF too, so that took a little bit of ingenuity in the program to make sure I wasn’t over doing it, but truthfully the only problem I had through training was keeping my hands in good enough condition to lift through the rest of the week, even while keeping on top of hand care.
The Lift
We went up the night before and stayed over night.
It got to the day of lift and I was confident, but was in for a sharp reminder of why its important to at least train on the kit before a competition (Obviously this wasn’t an option because theres only one set of these.
This is all just excuses on my part, but the size of the stones and the ground really changed my stance to how I was training which killed any power I had off the ground meaning I missed my first two lifts.
After a pep talk from Adam… And a change of shoes… I went back in for my 3rd attempt. It took me a little while to get it locked out, but ultimately I ‘put the wind beneath the Stones’… and then the grip training kicked in.
I came short of my 20 second target, but made a hold of 11.71 seconds narrowly missing out on the longest hold of the day by around half a second and becoming the 149th man in its nearly 200 year history to lift them.
You can hear the camaraderie when I get them off the ground and see it when the lift finish’s!
Its why I love strength sports.
After the lift we all went for cake and coffee at the hotel and then headed back to Bret’s house to pick up some other heavy rocks including the nichol walking stones, Balogle Stone and the Nichol stones in which i became one of only 20 something people (At the time) to ever get air under them… which might explain why I felt like death for around 10 days after…
I also might put those videos up later, but they’ve not seen the light of day yet.
Genuinely I had a blast!
final tally
The Joseph George Fucile Fund, Darren, Janine and myself would like thank everyone who donated to a great local cause as all in all we raised a fantastic £375.50 for the Joseph George Fucile Fund!
£287.78 through Just Giving and £87.72 through in gym collections.
That money will buy 7 sensory boxes and give 7 children in the North East a chance to continue to improve and develop their motor skills while having some much needed fun and make a huge difference to some children lives.
Thank you for reading and hopefully it won’t be too long before I can do something like this again!
Adam
