Doug Hepburn -- Gerry Baxter (1953)

 

Here, Doug is supporting a 210-lb. barbell

plus a 130-lb. man doing a handstand on it. 

A few nights ago I had a very unpleasant experience. 

I'm a fairly big guy myself, 210 lbs, 48" chest, 17.5" arm and the rest in proportion, and I was made to feel about the size of the local bantamweight champ of the ping-pong club must feel when he stands beside somebody my size. 

In short, I met Doug Hepburn! 

Apart from the rest of this huge guy, the first thing you notice is his arm. I've been around a lot and I've seen some big arms during my travels, an 18 inch arm is normal so far as I'm concerned, but for the first twenty minutes of my first meeting with Doug I just couldn't take my eyes off the 21" hunks of muscle that hang down off his shoulders. 

I've heard it said that taking into consideration his waistline, he must have about a 19" arm and the rest is fat, but whoever wrote or said that had never had his hands on those arms. They're iron hard and all muscle, apart from the bone that is, and I'd hate to try and find that. 

Doug himself is a genial, easygoing fellow, full of fun, always laughing, always giving a word of encouragement to the other guy, until he starts a training session, gone then is the funny man, the joker, and in his place a man full of determination with time for nothing but absolute concentration on the job at hand.

This change that you can notice in Doug as soon as he starts training is, in my opinion, the thing that has made him the great strength athlete that he is. 

He believes implicitly in the correct psychological attitude to training and the determination and concentration that he exhibits whilst working out are far beyond that which I have seen exhibited by any other lifter. Whilst watching, you are no longer aware of the tremendous size of the man but become aware of the sheer brute power that he possesses. This power is evident in every movement he makes an is almost frightening to see. 

Everyone I have talked to here in Vancouver who knows Doug and has seen him train says the same thing. They have all felt the same awe at seeing such huge poundages handled with such ease, not scientifically, but simply virtue of this colossal power he has. Doug himself is aware that he has not fully used this power as yet. When he does, and he will some day, certain world records are going to soar to unbelievable poundages. 

Why hasn't he done so already? 

Here's part of the answer: Doug's main problem is, and always has been, in gaining recognition for what he does. Only now are people beginning to believe that the poundages he was reporting years ago are really true. It takes years of concentrated work with no time left over for any other interest to achieve what Doug has achieved, and when you've done it, and the world doesn't seem to care anyway, well, it's disheartening to say the least. 

Note: If you don't quite understand why the officials kept snubbing Doug's lifts for so long, a quick breakdown of Vancouver, East vs. West side, will help. Westsiders are moneyed, closed off, look down on Eastsiders, and are generally lifeless bores content to never take risks to learn, choosing instead the tepid Westside approach to life and "financial security" before any other considerations. Milkless cash cows mooing and pooping all over about the "right way" to live, yawn. Fuck Westsiders. Eastsiders enjoy a slightly more edgy life, enjoy trying things out and taking part in the game, trying to achieve things that may not have any financial rewards whatsoever but are exceptionally rewarding. Fuck Westside cowards. They bore the life outta me, always have and always will. Doug Hepburn was proud Eastsider material and across the country and the continent the "better than" a-holes snubbed him for years. 

For the last few months Doug has been taking a prolonged layoff. When you train as hard as he does it's very easy to get stale mentally though not indulging in any outside interests whatsoever and so, bearing the old proverb, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," in mind, Doug has himself a rest now and then.

He loves nothing more than a good game of snooker, he and I have already had several battle royals over the green cloth, and he can play a mouth organ like nobody's business. Two wonderfully relaxing hobbies. When in a more serious mood you're apt to find him in some serious literature of one kind or another.

It is less than two weeks since Doug terminated one of these long rest periods and I was very interested to find out what sort of shape it left him in so I went in to watch his first workout. 

Unbelievably, his power had hardly deteriorated at all and he got right to work handling poundages the same as those he used in his last workout, several months before. For the first time, of course, he didn't work out for quite so long as usual, about an hour which is no time at all for him. He tells me that during a really heavy workout it is quite usual for him to spend about two hours doing squats alone. 

Note: An hour spent squatting Hepburn-style. One hour = 60 minutes. Allow 5 minutes for each set (including a good rest between each). 60/5 = 12. That's not much at all really. 12 work sets. 8 x 2-3 and 5 x 3-5 is 13 sets. It's not the same type of setup as your usual approach. A slow burn progression. You're looking at several hours four times a week with this approach providing you actually follow it properly and don't fuck around "modernizing" the damn thing or pussifying it all into yet another same-old layout that suits the pattern you seem to keep following for year after year after year. 

During the summer months Doug has an ideal job. He is employed as a life guard on one of Vancouver's many lovely beaches. Apart from beating the girls off with a large stick he keeps especially for that purpose the only exercise he gets is the occasional rare save he makes, and what he does with the weights. 

I forgot. He also gets quite a bit of exercise carrying the large bag of groceries to work with him in the morning. It's said that the local store would go out of business if it weren't for Doug. 

He gets through six quarts of milk a day regularly, pounds and pounds of fruit, and at lunch time can be seen tripping gaily down the beach from the butchery with two or more pounds of raw steak hanging from one hand to be duly cooked up on the hot plate which the City Council provided especially for that purpose.

From knowing Reg Park personally, and having studied other great physiques such as Clancy Ross, Eiferman, Reeves and the others on the American scene at close quarters, i know that the photographs of them which you see in the mags never succeed in doing them justice. This is very true of Doug Hepburn. Until you have actually been in his company, seem him turn around carelessly to talk to someone and noted the huge sweep of his back and the great "bunch" of triceps at the back of his arm you'll never really know how big he is.

So far as his bad leg is concerned, you never notice it until you start to look at it. Doug himself has so completely mastered this great handicap that it has ceased to have much importance at all. True, it mars the symmetry of his otherwise tremendous legs, but since he is essentially a strong man with no aspirations to a body-builder's perfection of from it doesn't seem to matter. 

Note: Try cleaning or snatching with a leg like that. Doug was very limited in what the bad leg allowed him in the way of technique. It doesn't seem to matter? 

Since Doug is now in full training again I'd just like to mention what his immediate plans are. Doug himself would like to go on record as saying he plans, note I say "plans" and not "hopes" to put the world's press record up to at least 380 lbs.

Up until now, the world's clean and press record has been limited by the weight that Doug could clean into the shoulder. He could always press anything he could pull in. I'll be getting into trouble with Doug for disclosing his training secrets if I say much more but I'll risk it and just say that Doug is now concentrating on the Clean almost to the exclusion of anything else. With a guy like that, once he makes his mind up it's only a question of time before something goes pop so watch out! 

If you asked Doug how he became the "world's strongest man" the answer would probably boil down to "singleness of purpose." A man who believes, as Doug does, that every world record was made to be broken, and also believes that if he can break it himself he is accomplishing something really great and worthwhile, cannot fail. He is willing to subordinate everything else to that one aim and that is the secret, so far as he is concerned. 

Note: Doug's methods are all slow burn approaches. Adding a rep at a time, gradually, never burning out, staying the course. Here's the poundage progress chart from his earlier booklet "Hepburn's Law" --

 

Slow and steady, stay the course. 

https://pdfcoffee.com/hepburns-law-pdf-free.html

The strongest man is not only strong physically but mentally too. Doug knows, there are a lot of good times to forsake, a lot of dates you could make if you didn't have to go down to the gym and train instead, but so far as Doug is concerned, it's worth it. 

Enjoy Your Lifting!