Stone Weight

I was watching The World’s Strongest Man competition the other night and Magnus ver Magnusson was competing.  The announcers were in awe as they described his upcoming attempt to squat over “60 stone”.  I wasn’t sure if I should be impressed with someone squatting 60 stone because I didn’t know how to equate this to anything that was familiar to me.  Was this equivalent to 25 baby rhinos, 1 Sherman tank, or the combined weight of the 42 people in line in front of me at the DMV this past weekend?

I continued to watch with increasing curiosity when Bill Kazmeier, host of The World’s Strongest Man competition, finally informed me that “stone” was in fact a legitimate unit of measure. Unfortunately, he did not provide a conversion rate and I was still unable to equate “stone” to something meaningful like pounds or even kilograms.   

As it turns out, 60 stone is equivalent to a rather large Indian family. I know this because I watched in amazement as Magnus proceeded to squat said Indian family as they were suspended above him in a steel cage.  The chalk dust flew and a few blood vessels were broken, but Magnus successfully completed the 60 stone squat. 

Still in search of a conversion rate, I googled stone weight and discovered one stone is equal to 14 lbs or 6.35 kg.  There’s a bunch of history behind the use of stone weight, but all I know is Magnus’ feat of squatting 60 stone suddenly became much more impressive to me as I calculated that he had just squatted over 840 lbs!  At that moment I realized I had been living my whole life using weight measurements that were inferior.  There is nothing exciting about pounds and I’d rather get kicked in the nuts than use kilograms.

Moving forward I plan on using stone as my primary unit of measure.  After all, if a unit of measure is good enough for The World’s Strongest Man, it’s good enough for me.  It just sounds better, it’s Manlier, and our society would be much better off if every Man used it throughout his daily life.  Anytime I need to reference my weight, I will do so using stone.  I will tell my wife to get 1/2 stone beef brisket flat at the market this week.  This Thanksgiving we will be roasting a one stone bird.  That girl over there at the other end of the bar would be smokin’ if she lost 2 stone…the possibilities are endless.

What’s your stone weight?

Advertisement