In our second CSWLC podcast we speak to Matt Vine, Head Coach of Pegasus Weight Lifting Club in Maidstone.
As well as having been on the national team for many years and competing at the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea, Matt is a huge role model to us personally.
Matt has offered our club an invaluable amount of support since we opened. We really admire Matt's approach to technique focused coaching, if you have been to our club competitions you will also have seen him and his fantastic team of lifters competing! Matt is always eager to share his stories and knowledge from his career in weightlifting, so we prepared a few questions to cover in the video below!
Watch our interview with Matt Vine here:
A Tribute to GB Coach John Lear
Shortly after recording our interview with Matt, the weightlifting world was sadly informed of the passing of John Lear. As a close friend of John's, Matt shared a few words with us in tribute to John Lear's work in weightlifting.
"The amount of weightlifting expertise and life experience John Lear had gained through being national weightlifting coach for 40 years was incomparable.
P.J. Lear coached the British team at 8 Olympic Games, the England team at 10 Commonwealth Games and the National Senior, Junior and Ladies teams at literally hundreds of international weightlifting championships and competitions all over the world.
John also completed two 12 month overseas coaching assignments , coaching the national teams of South Korea and Iran very successfully.
In the field of weightlifting he was a renowned author, lecturer, historian and an advisor to many other national sporting governing bodies.
He served on many advisory committees for the British Olympic association, where his wealth of major games knowledge was gained from practical experience.
On a personal level I felt very fortunate to have had John Lear as a close friend. And goodness me, he was one hell of a good laugh."
- Matt Vine
We would like to thank everyone who has read this and watched our interview with Matt. Keep an eye out for more interviews to come!
We would also like to thank our friend Matt Bargiel for his work editing the video!
- Team CSWLC
A great interview with a very humble weightlifter who was one of the best lifters GB had in the 1980s and 1990s! What an enormous amount of experience: Seoul 1988 Olympic Games, Athens 1989 World Championships, 1990 NZ Commonwealth Games and many other European and EEC internationals. We are very lucky to have such an experienced coach working in Kent and some great ideas for the future: League competitions, School Competitions, SE England open and championship competitions. Fascinating insights into other International Coaches like the Bulgarians (1 rep lifts vs. all the assistant exercises). I like the story of the lifter who could snatch balance 200 kg. I wonder what Mark Groombridge could actually snatch from the floor?! A grea…