Title
'We made things, you know, we built it ourselves basically': Glyn Hibbert on the founding of Folkestone Sport Centre's first weightlifting gym
Subject
Glyn Hibbert
Description
An excerpt of an oral history recording with Glyn Hibbert, in which Glyn describes his introduction to weightlifting in Cheriton in the 1960s, and the establishing of a weightlifting gym and club at Folkestone Sports Centre in the 1970s. (Transcript attached.)
Creator
Glyn Hibbert; Michael Romyn
Source
Glyn Hibbert Oral History Recording
Publisher
Kent's Sporting Memories
Date
Interview recorded on 8 August, 2019
Rights
Kent's Sporting Memories
Relation
Glyn Hibbert Oral History Recording
Format
MP3/Microsoft Word Document
Language
English
Type
Audio Recording and Written Transcript
Identifier
Glyn Hibbert
Transcription
Kent’s Sporting Memories Oral History Transcript (Excerpt)
Interviewee: Glyn Hibbert
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 8 August, 2019
Location: Glyn Hibbert’s home in Hawkinge, Kent.
Recording Time: 27:25 – 30:59
Glyn Hibbert: After we got married, I had a couple of friends, Sammy and a few others, and they had a little weight lifting club, and it was based in Cheriton, it was in between Ashley Avenue and Somerset Road, and basically it was in some little office, a little sort of industrial complex down there, very basic in those days. And there were some car repair shops and above one of them there was a gymnasium, real old, just old iron weights and things like this, none of the machines and things you have nowadays, and I started to attend the gym down there. So I started doing a bit of weight training and things like this down there. It wasn’t the best place in the world to weight train because if they were spraying cars in the shop below during the day breathing was a bit difficult during the evening up in there. I attended the gym there for a couple of years, I suppose, sort of, two or three years, I really enjoyed it. And then Folkestone Sports Centre of course was opening, and so what we did was move the gym to Folkestone Sports Centre, and so downstairs to one side we opened a really big weightlifting gym. But it was, it wasn’t like the gym upstairs nowadays – it was iron weights, it was big old things, we had, we made things, you know, we built it ourselves basically in those days. Derrick was one of the managers – we weren’t given anything, we had some of the guys work, they were welders, so they would make our squat racks for us, they would weld various things together and our pull ups, and we built the whole thing basically ourselves. And then weights and things we’d go out and beg or borrow or acquire from various areas – we’d brought some with us. We sort of started the club up in that kind of way, with weights, and yeah, it was really good. We had a big club, so much so that we actually decided to have a committee and things like this and somewhere along the line I ended up as the chairman.
Michael Romyn: Do you remember how many people were involved?
GH: Oh, there would have been fifty people at least during the week. There were two sections – we had a bodybuilding section and we had what we call a powerlifting section, so we didn’t do Olympic lifting although we did train a very good Olympic lifter, Mark Jennings, there, up to British schoolboys. But we were mainly, powerlifting consists of three lifts. There’s the squat where the bar goes over the shoulders and you squat down and stand up again, the bench press were the bar is taken at arm’s length and press, and the dead lift, and the dead lift was really a bar down on the floor, filled with weights, and all you had to do was pick it up and stand up. But of course when you put two or three hundred kilos on it, it made it a little bit harder in those days to do that kind of thing, you know. And because I enjoyed the club so much – part of the reason for it becoming a club was because we wanted, some of the lads in there wanted to compete. They wanted to compete a) in bodybuilding, which some of them did successfully, and b) we wanted to compete in powerlifting. And the British weightlifting association required you to have a qualified coach and things like this, so that was why I ended up going on the course and becoming a coach.
--Ends--
Interviewee: Glyn Hibbert
Interviewer: Michael Romyn
Date: 8 August, 2019
Location: Glyn Hibbert’s home in Hawkinge, Kent.
Recording Time: 27:25 – 30:59
Glyn Hibbert: After we got married, I had a couple of friends, Sammy and a few others, and they had a little weight lifting club, and it was based in Cheriton, it was in between Ashley Avenue and Somerset Road, and basically it was in some little office, a little sort of industrial complex down there, very basic in those days. And there were some car repair shops and above one of them there was a gymnasium, real old, just old iron weights and things like this, none of the machines and things you have nowadays, and I started to attend the gym down there. So I started doing a bit of weight training and things like this down there. It wasn’t the best place in the world to weight train because if they were spraying cars in the shop below during the day breathing was a bit difficult during the evening up in there. I attended the gym there for a couple of years, I suppose, sort of, two or three years, I really enjoyed it. And then Folkestone Sports Centre of course was opening, and so what we did was move the gym to Folkestone Sports Centre, and so downstairs to one side we opened a really big weightlifting gym. But it was, it wasn’t like the gym upstairs nowadays – it was iron weights, it was big old things, we had, we made things, you know, we built it ourselves basically in those days. Derrick was one of the managers – we weren’t given anything, we had some of the guys work, they were welders, so they would make our squat racks for us, they would weld various things together and our pull ups, and we built the whole thing basically ourselves. And then weights and things we’d go out and beg or borrow or acquire from various areas – we’d brought some with us. We sort of started the club up in that kind of way, with weights, and yeah, it was really good. We had a big club, so much so that we actually decided to have a committee and things like this and somewhere along the line I ended up as the chairman.
Michael Romyn: Do you remember how many people were involved?
GH: Oh, there would have been fifty people at least during the week. There were two sections – we had a bodybuilding section and we had what we call a powerlifting section, so we didn’t do Olympic lifting although we did train a very good Olympic lifter, Mark Jennings, there, up to British schoolboys. But we were mainly, powerlifting consists of three lifts. There’s the squat where the bar goes over the shoulders and you squat down and stand up again, the bench press were the bar is taken at arm’s length and press, and the dead lift, and the dead lift was really a bar down on the floor, filled with weights, and all you had to do was pick it up and stand up. But of course when you put two or three hundred kilos on it, it made it a little bit harder in those days to do that kind of thing, you know. And because I enjoyed the club so much – part of the reason for it becoming a club was because we wanted, some of the lads in there wanted to compete. They wanted to compete a) in bodybuilding, which some of them did successfully, and b) we wanted to compete in powerlifting. And the British weightlifting association required you to have a qualified coach and things like this, so that was why I ended up going on the course and becoming a coach.
--Ends--