About

I have been doing this a long time, mostly on myself.

I am Lindsay Pickton. Almost nobody calls me that, so let us say Linz. I am a qualified personal trainer working in and around Kingston upon Thames, and I have been training consistently since 1983.

Forty years, in phases

I was born in the summer of 1969 and started working out in 1983, which puts consistent training at well over forty years now. Not forty years of the same thing. Forty years of phases, some of which I would recommend and some of which I would not.

There were the gym years, and a lot of them, in a lot of different gyms, with some genuinely inspirational training partners. There were spells as a dedicated swimmer, then a cyclist, then a runner. I still run a little, though the version of me who thought a fast time was the point has quietly retired.

Since 2012 I have focussed on and studied bodyweight exercise, which is to say callisthenics. It can be done indoors and out, it costs nothing, and it scales from someone who has not exercised in twenty years all the way up to things I still cannot do. That last part matters more than it sounds. A method you can grow into for decades is worth more than one you outgrow in a year.

The other thing forty years buys you is a fairly clear view of what does not work. I have tried most of the shortcuts. I have been injured by a few of them.

The half people do not expect

Thirty years of teaching adults

I have worked in education for over thirty years, and for twenty five of those I have been coaching and mentoring adults. That is not a footnote to the training, it is half of what you are actually buying.

Teaching an adult is a specific skill. Adults arrive with history: a bad experience at school, an injury they are quietly worried about, a belief that they are not a sporty person and never were. None of that responds well to being shouted at. It responds to being taken seriously, given something achievable, and then being shown, honestly, that it worked.

So when we train, I am not counting your reps at you. I am teaching you to feel the difference between a movement that is doing its job and one that is not, because that is the thing you keep.

Linz and a client training on a path beside the Thames at Kingston, early morning, river behind them.

The awkward bit

My goal is to make myself unnecessary

It is a strange thing for a personal trainer to put on his own website, and I have thought about it, and I am leaving it there.

The personal training industry has an obvious incentive to keep you coming. Twice a week, indefinitely, and if you stop you go backwards. I understand the business logic and I do not want to work that way. What I want is for you to walk out of a handful of sessions with a workout you understand, form you can trust, and enough knowledge to change the programme yourself when your life changes. Knowledge really is power, and once you have it, it cannot be taken away.

In practice most people need fewer sessions over time rather than more, which is exactly the point. I am then there when you want me: when you hit a plateau, and we all do, when you are struggling to come back after an illness, or when you want to take things somewhere new.

Where I work

Kingston upon Thames and thereabouts

I train people in Kingston upon Thames and the surrounding area: Surbiton, New Malden, Teddington, Richmond, Wimbledon, Esher and Thames Ditton among them. Outdoors in the parks and along the river, at home with equipment or without any, or in your own gym if you already have a membership worth using.

If you are slightly outside that, ask anyway. It is usually fine.

Close view of a client's hands gripping parallel bars, wrists stacked over the bar.

Have a conversation with me before you decide anything

The first consultation is free and there is nothing to sign at the end of it.

Book a free consultation