Filming EE's 'Yes Boys' Campaign: Stone Lifting, Strength and Supporting Each Other

Stone lifting has taken me to some fairly unusual places over the years.

I've lifted historic stones around Britain and Ireland, performed feats of strength in Trafalgar Square and spent more hours than I care to count trying to convince enormous lumps of rock to leave the floor.

In 2026, it also landed me in a field in Enfield, surrounded by a full camera crew, filming an advert for EE.

And, strangely enough, the reason we were there summed up one of the things I love most about lifting stones.

The EE 'Yes Boys' campaign

EE's Yes Boys campaign launched ahead of the 2026 summer football tournament and was designed to promote positive communities and healthier examples of masculinity for young men.

The campaign followed research commissioned by EE which found that 42% of boys aged 11–16 encountered online content telling them things like men shouldn't show emotion or that boys simply need to toughen up at least a few times a week.

The idea behind Yes Boys was to show something different: people building one another up rather than tearing one another down.

And that's where London Stone Lifting came in.

Why stone lifting?

We were approached through London Stone Lifting to be involved in one of the films.

The premise was wonderfully simple.

A young lad called Sam sees Charlie and me lifting some enormous rocks. With a bit of encouragement and support from the group, he eventually steps forward and tackles a big stone himself.

Written down like that, it admittedly sounds slightly ridiculous.

Blokes pick up rocks. Young bloke inspired to pick up rock.

But the idea behind it really resonated with me because it's something I've seen happen countless times in real life.

Stone lifting can look like an incredibly individual pursuit.

Ultimately, when you walk up to a stone, you're the person who has to pick the bloody thing up.

But the culture surrounding it is remarkably communal.

"I want you to lift this more than I've wanted to lift anything myself"

Natural stone lifting is still probably practised predominantly by men, although we have plenty of brilliant women lifting with us too.

What I particularly like about the culture is that strength doesn't have to be used as a way of establishing who's the biggest, toughest or most important person in the room.

Quite often it's the complete opposite.

Get a group of stone lifters around somebody attempting a difficult stone and you'll see everyone offering advice, encouragement and occasionally screaming at them like their life depends on getting this particular lump of geology onto their lap.

I've heard variations of:

"I want you to pick this up more than I've ever wanted to pick anything up myself."

And people genuinely mean it.

I've experienced that myself when travelling to lift stones, and I see it every week through our Stone Club at the Commando Temple in Deptford.

Somebody else's success doesn't diminish yours.

You root for them.

That's a pretty healthy lesson to take from strength training.

A slightly unusual day at work

So Charlie, Sam and I found ourselves in a field in Enfield doing something that normally happens every week without anybody paying much attention to us.

Except this time there was an entire professional camera crew pointing lenses at us.

It was a beautiful day and we spent a couple of hours filming different lifts, repeating shots and generally throwing ourselves at some very large rocks.

I lost a little bit of skin along the way.

Standard stone-lifting occupational hazard.

Seeing something we do all the time suddenly being treated as the subject of a proper television production was quite surreal, but it was a fantastic experience.

More importantly, I liked why they'd chosen stone lifting.

Strength doesn't have to mean being the toughest bloke in the room

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be strong.

I have built a fairly substantial part of my life around exactly that pursuit.

But I don't think strength needs to come packaged with aggression, bravado or the idea that somebody else has to be weaker for you to feel stronger.

The best strength communities I've been part of don't work like that.

People teach each other. They encourage each other. Someone more experienced passes on what they've learned. Everyone gathers around when somebody attempts something that matters to them.

Sometimes that something happens to be a massive rock.

That's what the Yes Boys film managed to capture.

The wider campaign focused on helping young people navigate harmful online influences and presenting more positive, grounded examples of masculinity and community. EE described football communities as one way of achieving that; our little corner of the campaign showed that the same thing can happen around strength and stone lifting.

More people lifting rocks is always a good thing

One of the reasons I set up London Stone Lifting was to make this old practice accessible in a city where you'd perhaps least expect to find it.

We now have people from all sorts of backgrounds getting together every week at the Commando Temple in Deptford and lifting stones.

Some are very strong.

Some are complete beginners.

Nobody particularly cares.

You find a stone that's appropriate for you, learn how to lift it and see what you're capable of.

So it was brilliant to see stone lifting recognised on a much larger platform not simply as an impressive feat of strength, but as something that can represent community, encouragement and people helping each other become stronger.

A few hours in a field. A bit of missing skin. And another unexpected chapter in my stone-lifting adventures.

Yes boys.