Doug Hepburn was born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, on September 16, 1926. He began to specialize in the three Olympic lifts, although most of is efforts were steered toward the Olympic press. He never reached his ultimate strength. It was interesting to note that he relied on bench pressing to keep up his pressing power for the Olympic press. I always regretted the loss of that lift from competition so I decided that I would indulge my sense of nostalgia on a lift I still could do. It was received around the latter part of October 1950, in which he listed his strength feats and complained that no one believed him. Let’s follow how Doug trained for the 1953 World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden: He worked out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Poliquin talked about it in an old Q and A. Seems to me the Bulgarians know something about this too. He crucifixed a pair of 85-pound dumbbells for three seconds. Doug Hepburn’s training program is already quite taxing on the central nervous system, and many trainees will find this split too difficult to recover from. Heavy, yes, but not grinders. Joe Weider gave Charlie Smith, an employee, the responsibility of checking this out.

Doug Hepburn has become synonymous with brute force and sheer simplicity. He was the first natural lifter to bench press 500 pounds, and he could squat 600 pounds for reps at the age of 54. The back-up sets should be a wee bit lighter than what you would do 5x5 without the singles or else it may get to be too much.

The diagnosis was simple. Hepburn Method Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet. Charlie recalls his impression of Doug Hepburn when he saw him for the first time, among the last of the passengers coming through the gate: “So broad was he, so massive, so striking in appearance, that everyone around stopped, stood, and stared. Doug enjoys listening to semi-classical music, displays a surprising memory for tunes and words, has a true relative pitch, loves to sing, and shows genuine creative ability in thinking up original melodies. He is a fine example of a “sound mind in a sound body.” A gullible person once asked Doug, “What’s it like to be all brawn and no brains?” Doug replied, “I don’t know; what’s it like to be neither?”. Hepburn just answered "Yeah, that's about it, more or less." At birth he had two handicaps: a mild clubfoot condition in his right leg and an eye ailment known as “cross-eyed.”. Doug also accomplished a press behind neck with 305, a right-hand military press of 165, and a one-hand snatch with 180. It's a fantastic read and highly recommended. August 05, 2019, Copyright © 2020, Strength Oldschool. * Doug Hepburn has a book out called 'Strongman: The Doug Hepburn Story' by Tom Thurston. Below there are essentially 2 programs, each with a power phase and a pump phase. He won a weightlifting gold medal at the 1953 World Championships. August 31, 2019, Should this Website use Disqus or Facebook Comments System? The quality of this near six decade old, black and white film is not that good, but the quality of such a lift still is. The third month he would lower the reps to eight sets of two reps for the above exercises. Now fast forward to the last year when I decided to junk the machines get back to some real lifting like I did in my youth. Doug made a very interesting statement that summed up his way of training: “If a man’s temperament is suited to it, I believe he will make better progress in weightlifting by training for strength primarily and style secondary than if he puts great emphasis on learning form.”, Training for the 1953 World Championships. He also felt Marvin Eder was one of the strongest men in the world, especially since he never weighed much ofer 200 pounds. He arrived there on Saturday, January 6, 1951.

His very carriage spelled POWER.”. I’m about to move right now, so it’s packed up. The Doug Hepburn Method. Mike helped get Doug started on the road to weight training. Strength Oldschool, This outstanding example of rugged physical power was the greatest heavyweight strong man to appear in Canada since the days of Louis Cyr and Horace Barre. He only benched to demonstrate he could. However, he declared, “I would rather sacrifice sleep than food, for as long as I can eat, I can get stronger.” Doug’s regular sleeping hours were from 2 AM to 1 PM; he kept late hours. His official lifts at the World Championships, which he won, were 371-1/4 press, 297-1/2 snatch, and 363-3/4 clean and jerk. The routine as outlined by Starr was simple. Doug ate four or five “average size” meals daily and drank lots of liquids, which included tomato and other vegetable juices and lots of milk. On Saturday, September 30, 1950, lifting under official conditions, Doug pressed 330, snatched 255, and clean and jerked 317-1/2.

My Golgi tendon organs were not getting the stimulus needed to enable their muscles to adjust to the heavier weights. What I was soon to discover was how fast and easy that lift looked when shown at normal speed. This is reflected in his programs, which focus entirely on compound strength movements and do not explicitly recommend any direct accessory work. During one of these training sessions Doug also worked up to a 320-pound squat snatch. But, Doug wasn’t just strong. It has also been one of Doug’s dreams to visit York, Pennsylvania, “famous strength and health center of the world.” Thanks to his uncle, George Town, who generously financed him, Doug’s dream came true. Hepburn’s next stop was York, Pennsylvania.

Doug spent the holidays in New York City, making new, lifelong friends. Doug left the York gang on January 14, 1951, for his long journey back home. I saw it first on the Jumbotron at the 2003 Worlds, also held in Vancouver. Starr recommended doing this only once a week but I have been doing twice or more with no fatigue. The 330-pound press was weighed out to 327-1/2 pounds, which was a new Canadian and British Empire record. Winning gold medals at the 1953 World Weightlifting Championships, the 1954 British Empire Games and a series of other contests, Hepburn is perhaps best known for his incredible power. Doug felt the fundamental reason his records in the Olympic lifts were inferior to his power lifts was because of insufficient emphasis on the technique involved in cleaning and snatching, lack of condition due to the latter, overabundance of nonessential bodyweight, and a related lack of flexibility/speed of reflex and coordination. He went on to say that he eats large quantities of protein supplement because it is easier to assimilate than other foods. I’ve read an article about him in MILO. The split & frequency would probably be the same as any other one. But I’ll be unpacked soon and will skim through my old issues for you. At the time, he weighed 285 pounds. Image size was obvious. He won a weightlifting gold medal at the 1953 World Championships. In his early career, Doug devoted himself exclusively to bodybuilding, even entering a physique contest. Pound for Pound, Doug felt that Tommy Kono as the best lifter in the world, and the most efficient was Norbert Schemansky. Powered By Shopify, RIP Bodybuilding Legend Franco Columbu - Passes away at 78 Years Old. During his competitive days, Doug attempted to get a minimum of 9 hours of sleep each night. Doug split cleaned the weight, then set himself, got the clap, and pushed the weight straight up, no back-bend, no monkey business at the start. I personally think his 300 pounds were well distributed and that he was more symmetrical than most men. At the age of seventeen, Doug underwent an operation that corrected his eye condition. The ‘patient lifter’ method Poliquin outlined in that arm article is like that. Shout out to Timbo, how’s lifting going, pal? Get updates and special offers delivered directly to your inbox. Militaries and inclines were recommended for variety so I decided on three pressing days a week: overhead, flat, and high inclined. Hey all. And he was extremely strong. This routine was rotated around for three months. Doug split cleaned the weight, then set himself, got the clap, and pushed the weight straight up, no back-bend, no monkey business at the start. He almost never benched, seeing as how is was useless for him. Doug was old school strong. However, as mentioned previously, he did drink large quantities of milk and thought nothing of having six or eight eggs at a meal. Another was that it was shown to an audience who knew the quality of the lift they were watching, since they were all long-time lifting people who remember the press. Doug feels sometimes that he had to force-feed himself in order to maintain the needed bodyweight. Before the British Empire Games he took large doses of vitamin and mineral pills. But what was most impressive was the speed of execution.
He trained four to five times a week, spending 40 minutes or so with each workout. Several things made that witnessing even more impressive. Doug Hepburn had built himself to world championship standards but remained largely unknown until Charles A. Smith, the prolific weight lifting writer for Weider mags, took a hand in the proceedings. The routine has been especially good on the flat ones, since those were where I was furthest away from my max, absolute poundage-wise. So don't ignore the heavy singles. This appearance was deceiving, however, because on closer examination the only place Doug could be called fat was around the waist. The Hepburn way was to keep the weight fixed & increase the number of reps. Doug Hepburn has become synonymous with brute force and sheer simplicity. Olympic Weightlifting, Strength and Conditioning. During one training session Doug pulled 405 pounds in the clean so high that it came down with such force, it knocked him on his back. Not asking if it works, but I was curious as to what the split and frequency was. He was also as big as a tank.

He did single reps with each of the following poundages: 360, 400, 430, 460, 490, 510, 510, 510, 510, 510, 510.

I got very good at doing fives, especially if I was able to sneak in a stretch reflex as I lowered the bar for the next rep. The emphasis of most of his training during the early 1950s was on the powerlifts such as curls, presses, squats, and deadlifts. Surprisingly, his squats were not affected by this condition. Each workout, you’d add one more single until you hit eight reps. Another variant attributed to him starts out with 8×2 (eight doubles) – just like the singles, these should not be maximal sets. In the squat, he would do 8 sets of 3 to 6 reps. Doug drank milk during his workouts, with no apparent ill effects. Doug also succeeded in lifting the famous 235-pound thick-handled Cyr dumbbell off the ground with his right hand.