THE GOLDEN AGE PROGRAMME FOR SIZE AND STRENGTH: PT.2

This is the second part of my exclusive Golden Age Programme. Here we'll learn all about the development of the 5x5 and how and why I've put together this particular version of it

Welcome back to the Golden Age Programme for Size and Strength! This five-part programme will give you everything you need, as far as I’m concerned, to build a tremendously solid base of size and strength in the Golden Age manner. You don’t have to have one or the other: you can have both.

This is part two of five, the History and Development of the 5x5. I’ll be releasing a new part each week for paying subscribers. Let’s get stuck in.

Link to last week’s introduction

The History and Development of the 5x5

A very early picture of Reg Park doing “deep-knee bends”, as squats were often called in the 1940s and 1950s

It wasn’t until the 1950s that 5x5 training really became established as a method for bodybuilders to follow as well as weightlifters. Reg Park picked it up in North America at some point in the early 1950s, when it was being used in gyms there where both weightlifters and bodybuilders trained.

Reg Park trained in a completely different style for at least the first five years of his career as a bodybuilder, which began in 1946, in Leeds, with a local bodybuilder called Dave Cohen. They trained together in the front room of Cohen’s mother’s house, with an absolute minimum of equipment. In a totally undecorated room, without carpet, they used a barbell, dumbbells and an old sack instead of a bench. Despite Reg’s later reputation for massive strength, he began by pressing and curling just 40lb.

Reg’s setup would remain extremely primitive for some time. He installed a rudimentary rack-and-pulley system in his own garden and trained there, before moving up the road to a rented garage, without electricity or heating. He then went on to train for his first major title, Mr Britain, at the Viking Gym in London, as modern a gym as was available in the UK at the time. He was there for a month before the competition, training twice a day, six days a week. Reg was able to add on nearly 30lb of mass, using exercises like high-rep (i.e. 20 rep) squats, which were already a well established method for packing on mass fast. He won the title of Mr Britain with ease.

After failing to win the Mr Universe in 1950, placing second to Steve Reeves, Reg travelled to America to train with the best bodybuilders and weightlifters in the world. It was almost certainly at this point that he encountered the 5x5 for the first time. He probably learned it from Doug Hepburn at Ed Yarick’s gym, in California, which he visited as part of his tour of the east and west coasts. Steve Reeves had trained at this gym too, as well as a number of Mr Americas, but it was primarily a weightlifting gym.