Barbell Club in Perivale: £20 Drop-In With an Olympian Coach

Ealing Weightlifting Club charges £20 for a coached drop-in and £10 for an unsupervised one, but neither is open to someone who has never snatched. The club, which used to be called Stars for the Future, trains at Perivale Park Athletics Track on Stockdove Way, Perivale, UB6 8TJ, beside the Everyone Active gym in the same complex. Its head coach, Kazem Panjavi, lifted at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and founded the club in 2011, according to its homepage.

This is not a railway-arch warehouse or a shopping-mall gym. The club sits within the council's athletics complex, which Ealing Council describes as a floodlit 400m track with a pavilion, changing facilities, a gym and a netball court. The weightlifting room itself is small. When the club hosted its Autumn Open competition on 19 September 2026, it ran two sessions at once because of the space, and its write-up mentions waiting for the council to approve a facility extension.

Getting there takes a little planning. Ealing Council lists South Greenford as the nearest rail station and bus routes 95, 297, E7 and E2 for the track, which you reach from Argyle Road via Stockdove Way. There is limited car parking on site seven days a week. Lifters coming from central London usually take the Central line to Perivale or Greenford and walk or bus the rest, so allow extra time on your first visit.

Kazem Panjavi is the club manager and head coach. The club's About page describes him as a former Olympian and Great Britain national coach with more than 30 years of experience, and his own page lists British Weightlifting coach level 3 and a spell from 2019 to 2022 as chief coach of the Odisha Weightlifting Centre of Excellence in India. He has also written books on competition, the newest titled Six Attempts: Six White Lights.

The club's own scoreboard is bold: more than 25 British champions, more than 50 national medallists and more than 200 youth national records. Those numbers come from the club itself, but its calendar backs up the competitive culture. In 2026 it sent six lifters to the Crystal Palace Spring Open on 30 May and staged its own Autumn Open in September. Sessions are delivered by coaches qualified with British Weightlifting, and group coaching means one coach watching the whole room.

The 2026 membership page gives the current coaching slots: Tuesday and Thursday from 19:00 to 20:50, and Saturday from 11:00 to 13:00. Every session needs pre-booking and takes a maximum of eight athletes. Open gym times are not printed on the site. The club asks members to check Gymcatch, its booking platform, for available sessions. Older timetable pages from 2023 are still online with different times, so go by the 2026 page and the live booking calendar.

The difference between session types matters. Coached sessions are group sessions rather than one-on-one training, with coaches overseeing everyone on the floor. Open sessions let members follow their own programme or the club's, without direct coaching but with safety supervision. Youth lifters have their own sessions and plan, and the adult memberships state that youth are not included, so parents should book the separate youth option.

Drop-ins come in two forms. Without coaching it is £10, or £60 for an eight-session package on the drop-in table. With coaching it is £20, or £120 for a package. Separate seven-session packs, valid for eight weeks, cost £120 coached and £60 non-coached, with a 12-hour cancellation policy. The monthly options are Bronze at £75 for one coaching and one open session a week, Silver at £100 and Gold at £120 for unlimited coaching, with a three-month minimum.

Youth training is £10 a session, paid in cash at the door, or £45 a month. For anyone new to the sport, the route in is clear. Lifters with limited experience must complete a £50 induction of two sessions, the first on the snatch and the second on the clean and jerk. Complete beginners must finish the full five-session Beginner Course, priced at £150, before they can join group training.

The current Beginner Course runs across three weekends in October 2026: Saturday 17, Sunday 18, Saturday 24, Sunday 25 and Saturday 31, with morning starts. The five sessions move from introduction and fundamentals to snatch progressions, clean progressions, jerks and combinations, and finish with putting it all together using video analysis. If you miss this round, message the club about the next one rather than trying to talk your way into a coached drop-in.

The house rules are printed on the site and enforced. In your first sessions the club lends weightlifting shoes. Clean chalk off the bar after use and keep the dust inside the chalk box rather than on the floor. Put weights and bars back where they belong, and keep mobile phones away unless it is club business.

Competitive members also have an etiquette of their own: anyone planning to enter a meet must tell the head coach at least a month in advance. An honest note for visitors: if you only want to squat and bench, skip this club and use a regular gym. Ealing is built around the snatch and the clean and jerk, and the small room is best used by people chasing those two lifts.

The track sits inside Perivale Park, part of the Brent River Park, where Costons Brook skirts Perivale Meadows before joining the River Brent. The Ruislip Road riverside walk is the easiest cool-down. Pear Tree Park, a 49-acre council park opened in July 2024 on a former nine-hole golf course, connects to Perivale Park and stays open 24 hours. For a longer outing, Horsenden Hill is the borough's largest nature conservation area.

Address: Ealing Weightlifting Club, Perivale Park Athletics Track, Stockdove Way, Perivale, UB6 8TJ. Coaching: Tuesday and Thursday 19:00 to 20:50, Saturday 11:00 to 13:00, booked ahead, eight athletes maximum. Prices: drop-in £10 without coaching, £20 with coaching, induction £50 for two sessions, Beginner Course £150. Transport: South Greenford rail, buses 95, 297, E7 and E2. For more west London lifting spots, ask Karpo in the Karpo APP.