IWF Masters Silver for YSJ Alumnus – Alumni Stories, Bryn Jones

York St John Alumnus, Bryn Jones, recently made his way over to Heinsheim, in Germany, to compete in the 2016 World Masters Weightlifting Championships.

Masters Weightlifting is the Olympic sport of weightlifting for persons 35 years old or older. Weightlifting is the ultimate sport of strength and power and should not be confused with power lifting, bodybuilding, or general weight training. Weightlifting consists of two events; the snatch and the clean-and-jerk.

Competing in the men’s 55 age group, and under 85kg body weight category, Bryn successfully lifted 92kg in the snatch, and 120kg in the clean and jerk to win silver medal behind Geoffroy Guillaumet of France.

Bryn on the podium after winning his silver medal, 3rd from left.

“I’ve always been interested in weight training and set up a health and fitness club when I was at St Johns-  we had very limited kit but we raised money and added to it, we had great fun and it was well supported by men and women which was great. I got into Olympic weightlifting later (just the name of the sport), because doing team sports was difficult because I worked weekends. I qualified as a British Weight Lifting Instructor and so then started.”

“I was inspired to compete in the Masters because I taught myself and didn’t start till late, I never really developed as I would have liked. When I’d virtually stopped I started getting coaching from a good old mate, who is also an excellent coach, he took me back to square one and we started again. I was 50! However, he made a massive difference and my lifting has gone from strength to strength since then.”

“I was very pleased [with the Silver Medal]. I had to take 3.5 months off because of work commitments and also some health issues so I only had about 10 weeks to prepare, which was not enough at that standard. I didn’t get back to where I was last year in terms of how much weight I could lift, but it was enough to sneak silver. In terms of what comes next for me, I’m going to keep training when I can, and as long as I feel fit my aim is to win the Europeans next August in Sweden (I got a silver in 2015) and improve on my British Masters records, then maybe call it a day, but I’ve said that before!

Congratulations on your silver medal Bryn! We’ll be wishing you all the best for Sweden next year.

Many thanks for sharing this with us.