Well done to our two junior lifters who competed in their first international competition. Despite the long flight to Canada they both came back with a bunch of PBs. In extremely competitive weight classes Moa (-63kg) finished 5th overall while Dapo (-93kg) finished 4th overall and also took a silver medal for his deadlift.
Congratulations to the amazing Ernie Parkes (M4 u74kg) on winning gold and overall gold medals with his world record 227.5kg deadlift in this year’s World’s Classic Powerlifting Competition. This makes him the first 70yr+ to pull 3x his bodyweight!
Ernie had to jump 15kg to beat the Japanese competitor in an exciting head to head.
He was presented with a lovely cake by Henry Bergson to mark this occasion.
We wish all the best to the lifters competing at the World’s, particularly to the 3 BGWLC competitors Ernie, Moa and Dapo.
For those hoping to catch them on livestream, Ernie is competing on Wed 6th at 2pm, Moa on Mon 11th at 1pm and Dapo on Mon 11th at 7pm (BST).
Congratulations to our lifter Abbie Kasparis who has been selected for Team UK for The Invictus Games in Sydney in October. Earlier this year, Abbie was referred to coach Martin Bass to improve her benching with a view to securing a place in the Invictus team. She was fortunate to get picked (72 competitors from 451 applicants) and is looking forward to October in Australia.
Congratulations to Dapo and Moa (juniors) on being selected to represent Great Britain at the World Classic Powerlifting Championships 5th-17th June 2018 Calgary, Canada.
This year, BGWLC have three lifters selected to compete for Great Britain – Thomas Celestin (105kg) , Ernie and June. They will be joined by current World Masters M2 (93kg) champion Robert Rodney. This is the first European Powerlifting championships and will be held in Helsingborg, Sweden over the course of this week, we wish the lifters much success.
Full results will be available on the EPF website
Ron Whittam’s funeral will be held on 5th April 2016, at 12pm, at the City of London Cemetery. As a mark of respect, the gym will be closed on this day for both the morning and evening sessions.
Ron Whittam, second from right, in 1952
Ron at the gym in 2014
Please note: this post has been edited to reflect our decision to close the gym all day on 5th April.
From 11th July 2015 we have a new Olympic weightlifting coach at BGWLC! Sauro Gardenal is a former British Masters Champion in the 85kg class (2011 & 2012) with many years of coaching expertise.
Sauro will be coaching sessions at the gym on Monday, Wednesday & Friday evenings (see our Opening Times page). Olympic weightlifters are, as always, also welcome to train at the gym any time Sauro is not there.
Please join us in welcoming Sauro & wishing him the best of luck at BGWLC!
We are currently working with Tower Hamlets council to ensure our club is seen as fair and inclusive in the community. This is part of our effort to secure grant funding for the gym.
We are conducting a survey of our members & gym attendees, and invite you to fill out our survey online:
All information is anonymous and confidential, and you do not need to answer any questions you are not comfortable with.
There will also be paper copies available at the gym from tomorrow (Friday 29th May), if you would prefer to fill out the survey that way.
Thank you!
Modern Physiotherapists are increasingly interested in what they can do to help more athletic populations recover – not just regaining basic mobility, but returning to fully active lifestyles and even to competition. One part of that process is the prescription of exercise, and a growing number of Physios are interested in the role that heavy weight training can play.
Of course, in order to prescribe effectively they first need to have practical experience of their own.
One Physio with an active interest in lifting is Fredy Markovits, of Homerton Hospital in Hackney. Fredy has been training with us at Bethnal Green for some time and since his department has acquired some good basic barbell kit, Fredy has been teaching the core Power lifts to other members of staff.
Last Wednesday, a group of coaches and lifters from BGWLC responded to Fredy’s invitation and spent an evening coaching the Physio team.
We were made very welcome by the 20 Physios in attendance. They were an enthusiastic and attentive group with a real range of experience. We organised them into groups and worked on squat and deadlift. We saw some excellent efforts and all of the Phsyios had an excellent training mindset. Inevitably, the deadlift session got a bit competitive…
Of course, working with such large groups meant it was impossible to give each trainee as much individual attention as the coaches would have liked. However, in the time we had, we were able to give some useful direction and see marked improvements in technique. It probably helped that as Physios, the technical aspects of lifting were already well understood and we were able to focus on the practicalities of getting under the bar.
There were also some excellent questions after the practical session – one or two of which made us think pretty hard!
As coaches, we felt we got a lot from it – it was interesting to work with so many novices in close succession and we were able to see a real range of approaches to the lifts.
We were also pleased that a number of those taking part expressed an interest in visiting the club – we hope to see them down at Bethnal Green some time soon!
All in all, an enjoyable experience we’d be happy to repeat.
Thanks to Fredy for organising this and to Martin, Alan, Diego and Neal for giving up their evenings to coach.
