Official Doug Hepburn Thread

[Spartigus]

[BendtheBar]

Doug Hepburn bench press routine.

The Doug Hepburn Bench Press Success Formula | Breaking Muscle

I remembered my chat with Hepburn and him telling me he could still do a 350 pound bench at the age of 57 and at much lighter bodyweight. That inspired me to look up the half-forgotten Hepburn bench routine I saw in Starr's book. The routine as outlined by Starr was simple. Ramp up with about five sets of warm-ups, then hit five singles at about 90-92% of 1RM. Then do 5x5 across back-up sets at about 75%. 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. You get some high intensity singles but also some fives for volume and some hypertrophy mixed in.

Many years ago I was able to ask Doug Hepburn himself if this was indeed his routine, since time has a way of distorting and altering details when ideas are passed from person to person many times. Hepburn just answered "Yeah, that's about it, more or less." He equivocated since he said that he seldom did the exact same rep and set regime twice, but the 5x1, 5x5 was close enough. The singles get the muscles used to a single high intensity effort, and that effort will not have a second rep that you can bounce up to fool yourself as to your real strength level. Starr recommended doing this only once a week but I have been doing twice or more with no fatigue. Sometimes I have had to miss workouts due to other obligations so I may be inadvertently getting needed rest that way. I do seem to do better after such a rest.

[moeheep]

Needless to say, I will be working this in my routine!!

[BendtheBar]

Originally Posted by moeheep

Needless to say, I will be working this in my routine!!

Not too much different from what many of us do here....work towards the big single(s), then do drop sets.