Cheltenham weightlifting club
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Cwlc is an informal club, keeping the name and spirit of cheltenham's longest running free-weights club alive.
Cwlc has provided basic weight-training facilities for amateur sport since 1954, with our primary focus now centred on BODYBUILDING & powerlifting.
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A BRIEF CLUB HISTORY
CWLC was founded by Dave Whitehead and Paul Bowles in 1954, primarily as a weight training and bodybuilding club, and was originally located under the stand at the old Athletic Ground. Here the club stayed for two years before moving to a church basement at North Place and within a year to behind the old Irving Hotel on Bath Road.
In 1961 the club moved to the Montpellier Pavillion and during this period National Flyweight Powerlifting
Champion Pete Jackson joined the membership, having moved to the area from London. In 1967 Pete started competitive lifting in Cheltenham.
In 1971 CWLC moved to the Old Bakery behind the Central Library and in 1987 to the Whaddon Boys Club.
Due to a planned refurbishment of the centre the club then moved to Westfield's Youth Centre and via several interim homes before seeing in the new millenium back at the Whaddon Community Centre.
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In 2006 CWLC were forced to leave Whaddon Community Centre once more and the membership moved to the Lansdown Industrial Estate and on to the Alstone Industrial Estate ten years later.
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Since the 1980's Cheltenham Weightlifting Club has been run by Richard Parker, cousin of early member Roger Newman, and in 2003 Matthew Parker joined the list of family members to be involved with CWLC.
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CWLC now runs informally on a 1-1 private training basis from the 'Strength Shack' in Prestbury. The 'club' is focused on weight lifting in the traditional sense of free weights resistance training, and Powerlifting, rather than Olympic Weightlifting.​