This morning, on a rainy day in late November, in a former train station nestled between a Pilates studio and a Mexican fast food chain, you would have found a number of strongmen lifting massive hunks of rock.
Alongside John Belton, the Head Coach and Owner of No.17, the personal training studio where the lifting was happening, and two kilted strongmen from the Irish Stone Monsters group, was David Keohan, the man who has reanimated the lost ancient art of stone lifting in Ireland.
Keohan was visiting as part of the launch of Ireland's first stone lifting studio, which has taken up residence in No. 17 Personal Training for the 28 and 29 November. The venture by Free Now by Lyft will house classes using stone lifting techniques and actual stones, and taps into the massive community that has sprung up around Keohan's efforts to find and lift all the original lifting stones in Ireland.
Speaking to RTÉ Lifestyle, he explained that his interest in the stones began after he watched documentaries about similar practices in Iceland, Scotland and the Basque region in Spain.
"I thought, even geographically, we have to have that culture here too", he said. "And it wasn't just 'man pick up stone', there was a whole culture attached to these. They were rites of passage, there were stones lifted at the harvest festivals, they were job interviews to become a stone mason or a fisherman."
Our stones, it turns out, are special stones, "some of the heaviest lifting stones in the world", Keohan said, which is enough to make anyone proud on a blustery November morning. "[On] average, you're talking like, 170kg out of 53 stones, so that's a big, big weight. It took a lot of building up of strength and it's nice to know that in my mid-40s I can still do that."
For the Waterford native, however, "the stories attached to these stones are everything".
"The seam of it runs deep through who we are as people, all the way back through our mythologies, when these stones were lifted. To bring back something that's got that much heritage to it has been the greatest honour."
Keohan has made a name for himself - specifically 'Indiana Stones' - by sharing his search for the stones and his efforts to lift them on social media. Travelling around the country, from Connemara to Mayo all the way up to Derry, has been half the fun, he said: "The pilgrimage to get to these stones is almost as important as the seeing and lifting of the stone itself."
You can imagine that transporting an ancient pastime to the present would bring with it outdated ideas of what strength was, but to hear Keohan talk about it, stone lifting sounds like an accessible and fair form of activity. Indeed, he mentions how there is a men's lifting stone and a women's lifting stone in the cemetery in Faha, Co Clare, where three-day-long funerals would include 'funeral games' and stone lifting in the pre-Famine days.
In the same sense, stone lifting today seems to be open to all who are brave enough to give it a go.
So what are the techniques for stone lifting? Luckily for us, a literary text from 1937 features a mini tutorial.
Liam O'Flaherty's short story The Stone explains the three stages of lifting the stone, which Keohan demonstrated in No.17 today.
First step is to get the 'gaoth faoi', to get the 'wind under the stone'. If you got the stone up onto your lap you were "a champion, you were equal of the best", and to get it to your chest and kiss the stone "to show control of it, you were a phenomenon of strength, to be spoken about for generations on these islands", he said.
He himself was able to lift the stone at Mouilín Port Bhéal an Dún on Inis Mór, weighing 171kg all the way up to his chest and kiss it three times, "which is probably the most amazing thing that I've ever done, strength-wise".
So what is the appeal for the people flocking to these ancient stones?
"I always say to people, you're grabbing on to the last person who lifted it", Keohan said. "You're becoming the next link in the chain, and that chain goes way, way back. Who knows how far back?
"They're connecting with what it means to be Irish. They're connecting with a root and marrow-deep culture that has been here for generations. They're connecting with the old ways and I think there's such a telluric resonance from the earth, cultural comeback happening now that the connection to this is so important."
For John Belton, he sees a similar return to the old, traditional ways of building fitness.
"I come from a rural background where strong men were local farmers who were able to lift a stone or lift an object" he said. "I remember a fable about my grandad lifting a trailer out of a bog when it got stuck, so strongman training has always been something I'm very intrigued by and it probably is the reason I'm standing in this gym today because it's what got me into strength training."
The classes, he explained, will use traditional training methods but using stones for weights, "showing people how you can take a very simple thing, like a rock, and have an amazing workout".
"I think we've gotten so obsessed with fancy, shiny, technical equipment when really if everyone just got out and did a little bit of work in a field, lifted a few rocks and got their hands dirty, there's a huge piece of connection here, connecting back into what Ireland did, connecting back into our history on so many levels.
"People want to get out of cities, they want to belong to communities, they want to be around likeminded people."
Of course, as with taking up any new or challenging exercise, consult with doctor if you have health concerns, make sure you mobilise and stretch, learn correct lifting form and enjoy it.
