Doug Hepburn: an appreciation

According to Wikipedia, Doug Ivan Hepburn was born  on September 16, 1926 in Vancouver and died on November 22, 2000.  He set a Canadian record for weightlifting in 1950 and won gold medals at the 1953 world championships in Stockholm and the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.

He is well known for his pressing ability, above all else.

Introductory and background links

• Bob Whelan has a great introduction to Doug Hepburn and his life here, written by Osmo Kiiha.  According to Kiiha, “Doug Hepburn was born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, on September 16, 1926.  At birth he had two handicaps: a mild clubfoot condition in his right leg and an eye ailment known as “cross-eyed.”  As long as he can remember, Doug has always had a very intense desire to be strong.  At the age of sixteen, Doug met Mike Poppell, a bodybuilder whom he had come to admire.  Mike helped get Doug started on the road to weight training.  Doug spent countless hours on end doing repetition chin-ups, handstand presses, and dips between parallel bars. These undoubtedly had a great deal to do with developing his tremendous pressing power.”
• Lift Up has a fascinating comparison of Doug Hepburn and Paul Anderson here, by Dresdin Archibald.  This is truly a great piece of writing and analysis.  According to Archibald, “any discussion of Doug Hepburn automatically brings up the name of Paul Anderson as well.  This is due to the many similarities that they had as well as the fact that their careers overlapped for the most part.  Hepburn rose and fell somewhat sooner but they did compete together for several years.  Hepburn remains the only man to ever hand the Dixie Derrick a defeat.  Both were heroes to their countries.  Both were very colourful individuals. Both were very charismatic, with Anderson more fabled but Hepburn perhaps more mysterious.”
• IronManBodybuilding discusses why Doug’s strength was raw here.  This article is more about the development of steroids and the introduction of these drugs via the USSR into the USA than about Doug Hepburn but it’s an interesting read, none-the-less.
• OldtimeStrongman has its customary page here.  This is the best place to see all of the old photographs.  You won’t find much anywhere else that you can’t find here.  See pictures of Doug pressing a man doing a handstand on the bar, pictures of Doug squatting, pressing and holding weights at arm’s length.
• PDX Weightlifting has an interview with the great man here, transcribed from an interview done on Canadian radio by Robert Smith when Doug was 62 and running an equipment and health food business.  Doug talks about all kinds of things, from growing old, to how to eat to gain strength and how to develop explosive power.
• The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban has an interview with Doug by his friend Ray Beck called Hepburn speaks that was done in 1954 and describes his battles with the demanding public and his amateur status.

Workout routines and training tips from Hepburn’s admirers

• Mike Mahler has a review of Doug Hepburn’s A and B routines here.  This is a really great article that sets out very clearly how to approach the two routines, how long they are intended to be useful for and what they will achieve.  I am really excited about using these and seeing how they work for me.
• Muscle and Strength has an article about Doug’s powerbuilding routines here.  This is essentially the same as Hepburn’s A routine that is set out in Mike Mahler’s article above but it includes a balanced workout programme for the less experienced lifter.
• Charles Poliquin explains what he learned from Doug Hepburn here.  I don’t think I have ever read Charles being so genuinely complimentary about another human being as he is about Doug.  As Charles says, “as I also am a native Canadian, Hepburn has been one of my heroes.”  Charles notes that he has learned to (1) concentrate on two lifts a day, (2) perform a lot of sets for maximal strength, (3) excite the nervous system first, then do functional hypertrophy (i.e. do low rep sets before higher rep sets), (4) use split routines, and (5) take your time and be patient.  This is all great advice.
• The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban might reasonably be expected to come through with some great material on Doug and it does not disappoint.  In some Hepburn things, we can read a sample routine (based on Hepburn’s standard A routine) with various exercises shown, along with advice on diet for gaining strength and muscle and the importance of the right mental attitude.
• The Tight Tan Slacks continues with an article by Charles Smith on the phenomenon that was Doug Hepburn.  Doug spent a month living at Charles’ house and in discussions, Charles interrogated him about the press and basic body power.  Doug’s response was that “I found out that the only strength secret is… HARD WORK.  Fortunately for me, I stumbled blindly into the right path and used a series of exercises that strengthened my body in every way…  I soon found out that basic body power is one of the main reasons for a man’s pressing power.  The hips, thighs and lower back are just as important as the muscles of the shoulders and arms.  So far as I am concerned, I can quit working entirely on the press and concentrate solely on leg and back exercises, and my press will suffer but little.  By using squats and deadlifts I can maintain my pressing power.”  Absolutely fascinating.
• And Charles, having a captive Hepburn in the house, made the best use of this resource and talked to him about how to avoid staleness.  Hepburn had a number of recommendations, including ensuring appropriate rest and periodic layoffs, plenty of good quality protein in the diet and mental relaxation and other interests besides weightlifting.
• Still at The Tight Tan Slacks, Sean Katterle discusses Doug and his monstrous diet.  In Doug Hepburn’s raw strength, we discover that at the age of eighteen, Doug “was hired to work on a poultry farm.  His compensation was $3 a day and all the eggs he could eat… He set up the following mass building diet plan: for breakfast, lunch and dinner he ate 18 eggs and a bunch of bananas and he drank a half gallon of whole milk.  That’s 54 eggs and a gallon and a half of whole milk every 24 hours.  If you add up the nutritional values, you’ll find that every day he took in about 540g of protein at a bodyweight of 200 – 220 lbs., or about 2.25 to 2.7 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.”

Workout routines and training tips from Hepburn himself

• Strength Old School has published two-part series on the two hands curl by Doug Hepburn here (parts one and two).  This is a great article to read even if you aren’t so interested in the curl itself.  Doug explains that “to gain great power one must constantly handle heavy poundage . . .  poundages that are close to the limit of individual strength, repeated constantly with adequate rest periods in between.”
• Someone has scanned in a couple of old Doug Hepburn articles onto a strength forum called Krachtsporten here.  In the first, Doug explains how his use of the deadstop bench press helped his overhead work.  The second article by Doug discusses how he approached breaking world records through the intelligent use of heavy singles.
• Doug himself explains how to squat on The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban here.  Doug explains the importance of the lift: “if I were given the choice of two exercises and two only to develop the basic power and muscular bulk of the body I would, without hesitation, choose the Bench Press and Deep Knee Bend. One of the reasons for this choice is that I feel that the combination of these two movements will influence the greatest amount of muscle as compared with any other two exercises.”
• And, although not so renowned as a deadlifter, he explains the importance of the deadlift here, saying “whether you are training on the three Olympic lifts or your primary goal is the acquisition of outstanding body power and muscular size, the deadlift is an absolute “must” and should be included in the training routine.  No other exercise has such a direct influence on the lower back routine.”
• Doug explains how to front squat here.  Doug notes that “from the standpoint of bodybuilding and the perfection of the physique, the greatest benefit derived by front squatting is that the muscles of the thighs receive the greater portion of the strain while the hips and buttocks remain in a secondary role. In short, the thighs are enlarged and the hips remain the same size.”
• And Doug explains how pulling power contributes to the Olympic lifts here, noting that “when viewing the three Olympic lifts in their entirety it is generally concluded that pulling power is the vital essential. This assumption is further strengthened by the fact that it is more difficult to shoulder maximum poundage than to fix this same weight overhead.”

Doug Hepburn interview

If you’re still interested in experiencing more of Doug Hepburn, check out this interview on YouTube:

That’s all folks.