Learn the Training Methods and Workout Programs of the Silver Age Bodybuilders
What follows is, in many ways, nothing more than an extension of some of the subjects I have been discussing in recent articles, such as Part 3 of my ongoing Tailoring Your Workouts series, and my other essays on The Old-School Way, Effective Full-Body Training, and How to Train Through the Soreness.
Enter Old-School
Old-school bodybuilders knew how to build muscle. In many ways, I think the training methods and workout programs they utilized were a lot better than the routines of the modern bodybuilder. I also realize that modern bodybuilders—many of whom have larger, sometimes much larger, muscles than their old-school counterparts—might scoff at such an idea. After all, hasn’t training evolved in the last few decades? Don’t modern bodybuilders know more about the “science” of hypertrophy than bodybuilders whose heyday was more than 50 years ago? To which I reply, hey, not so fast. The old-school bodybuilder might have forgotten more about muscle-building than some of us will ever know!
I think bodybuilding supplements have, without a doubt, improved. There’s a valid argument to be made that nutritional knowledge has improved, though that too could be debatable. We also know more about recovery methods, and are now able to recuperate “better” than the bodybuilders of the previous century. But I also think that a lot of the “improvements” just come from an increase in drug use, to be completely honest. Anabolic steroids are readily available in almost all American gyms. Pro bodybuilders use astronomically more anabolics than old-school bodybuilders, even “later” ones from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I also believe that many of the “Silver Age” bodybuilders, from the ‘40s through the ‘60s, whose methods we will mainly pull upon here, were completely natural. (Yes, I’m aware that there are plenty of cynics around these days that would deny that, and there were definitely steroid-users during the Silver Age, but many of them, even some champions, were natural. Perhaps I’m a bit naive, you might argue, but even if the Silver Age bodybuilders did all use anabolics, it was with very small dosages compared to today.) If that’s the case, then it could be that we have forgotten or lost more muscle-building methods than we have discovered or improved upon.
I have long argued that if steroids—and other anabolic performance-enhancement drugs—had never come into existence, modern bodybuilders would have continued to train like Silver Age bodybuilders. They would also have larger, “better” muscles than current naturals with the improvement in supplementation and recuperative measures. Routines would still consist of a lot of full-body workouts, and advanced bodybuilders would use heavy, high-volume 2-way split programs. Almost universally, bodybuilders would start with full-body workouts, utilize them for years until they built up the work capacity to then switch over to high-volume split routines.
There’s no reason, however, that the modern bodybuilder can’t train like his old-school forefathers. What follows is one such approach you might take. Here, I will demonstrate how to progressively increase, and cycle, your workload using full-body workouts in the same manner that the Silver Age bodybuilder did, then show what 2-way split workouts might look like once one has built up his work capacity to an exceptional degree.
What follows is solely for building hypertrophy, although it will also build strength, as the old-school bodybuilder did believe in being as strong as he looked. That’s one of the keys for natural bodybuilding. If you can build up your strength, and your workload, on big lifts in the 6 to 10-rep range, you will grow larger, more “shapely” muscles.
We will start with a “basic” program, move on toward a more “intermediate” routine—though it might be all a bodybuilder needs even once “advanced”—and then end with a 2-way split routine for the truly advanced lifter.
The “Basic” Old-School Muscle Builder
This program only uses 6 exercises. If you choose different movements, just make sure they are same but different. Training 3 days a week, do the following:
Front squats
Incline barbell bench presses
Chins (or lat pulldowns)
Stiff-legged deadlifts
Military presses
Barbell curls
Week 1: After warmups, do 2 sets of 6 reps on each movement. Use a weight that is approximately 90% of your 8-rep max on all lifts. This week should feel relatively easy, and that’s the point. You will slowly build up your workload throughout the program, over the coming months, and you can’t do that if you start with weights that are too heavy.
Week 2: 2 sets of 7 reps, same weight as week 1.
Week 3: 2 sets of 8 reps, same weight as 1st 2 weeks.
Week 4: Reduce weight by 10 to 20 pounds and do 1 set of 6 reps on all of your lifts. This is your 1st active recovery week.
Weeks 5-6: 3 sets of 6-8 reps. Now, add weight to what you were doing in week 3. After a month of training, you are ready for some heavier training. For each movement, simply stop each set a rep or two reps shy of muscular failure. Anytime you are able to get 3 sets of 8 reps on a movement without reaching failure, add weight at the next session to that lift.
Weeks 7-8: 4 sets of 6-8 reps.
Week 9: Reduce your weight back to what you used in week 4 and do another active recovery week.
Weeks 10-12: 5 sets of 6-8 reps. Once again, stop each set a rep or two shy of muscular failure on all of your exercises.
Week 13: Do another active recovery week, the same as weeks 4 and 9.
You can repeat this workout as many times as you want. In fact, you could train for a couple of years using this method, and really you wouldn’t need to do anything other than swap exercises and change set/rep schemes. You might want to do some weeks of 3-5 reps and other weeks of 8-12 rep sets.
The Silver Age bodybuilder would have followed something very similar to the above, and he would have done it for a year, maybe even 2 years, before eventually going to something more voluminous. Next, we will look at what this more “advanced” full-body routine might look like.
The Intermediate-to-Advanced Full-Body Builder
This is another 3 days per week regimen. Do NOT try the following program until you are ready for it. It’s very similar, however, to the kind of program most of your Silver Age bodybuilders used. Here it is:
Front squats
Hack squats (do these with a barbell if you want to be truly old-school)
Incline barbell bench presses
Flat dumbbell bench presses
Wide-grip chins or pulldowns
Bent-over barbell rows
Stiff-legged deadlifts
Lying leg curls
Military presses
Behind-the-neck presses
Barbell curls
Skull crushers
Standing calf raises (barbell or dumbbell)
Week 1: 3 sets of 6-8 reps on each exercise. Once again, stop each set 1 or 2 reps shy of complete muscular failure. You must leave a little something “in the tank” at the end of each set in order to make this program, or anything like it, work.
Week 2: 4 sets of 6-8 reps
Week 3: 5 sets of 6-8 reps
Week 4: Active recovery week; do 1 set of 6 reps on each movement, with a weight lighter than week 1. If you want, you can also omit the 2nd exercise for a muscle group when there is one.
Week 5: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 6: 4 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 7: 5 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 8: Active recovery: 1x10, using weights lighter than the Week 5 weights.
Week 9: 5 sets of 3-5 reps. Again, stop each set a rep or two shy of muscular failure.
Week 10: 6 sets of 3-5 reps
Week 11: 7 sets of 3-5 reps
Week 12: Active recovery: 1x5, using weights lighter than Week 9.
As with the 1st program, the old-school ‘builder would have stuck with a program such as this one for a couple of years before moving on to something more voluminous. Sometimes, he would then go to a split program, but it also wasn’t uncommon to add another exercise for each muscle group and continue to train full-body, 3 days a week.
Split Training
At some point, however, many of the Silver Era bodybuilders did use split programs. Almost universally, this was because of just how long their full-body routines became once they could handle a large workload. Of course, not all bodybuilders did it. In my last essay, I showed Reg Park’s program that he used to win the ‘51 Mr. Universe, and it was a 3-days-per-week, full-body program. Park did use a split program at other times, however. But then there’s Clancy Ross—considered at one time to be the greatest bodybuilder alive—who never used a split program. Ross used a program very similar to the “intermediate” one above, but with another 4 or 5 exercises added on to it. Steve Reeves was another Silver Age legend who never did split workouts. He trained his entire body 3 days a week, using 3 exercises for each muscle group for 3 sets per movement—in other words, 9 sets per muscle group.
When the Silver Age bodybuilder did use a split program, he often didn’t do any more training than what Reeves was doing. Once many of them reached the point that they were utilizing a routine similar to Reeves’s program, they simply split the program in half and still trained each muscle group 3 days per week. So, don’t think of a split program as necessarily an excuse to do more work. Instead of being at the gym 2 hours a session, 3 days a week, you would now go to the gym 6 days a week for 1 hour at each session. Either way, it’s still 6 hours of training weekly and it’s the exact same volume, intensity, and frequency.
All of that is not to say that the Silver Age bodybuilder didn’t eventually do more work on a split program. He certainly did. But it’s no more than he would have done if he would have stuck with 3 days per week of training and not split up his workouts. He often went to a split program knowing he needed more work on his muscles, and he didn’t want to be in the gym for 4 hours using a full-body regimen at that point. So, eventually, it wasn’t uncommon for an advanced Silver Age bodybuilder to use a program similar to the one below.
The Advanced 2-Way Split Builder
Don’t even think about using a program like this until you’ve built up the work capacity to handle it. At the same time, however, you are capable of eventually doing a program such as this as long as you take your time to build up to it. Don’t doubt that, either.
Monday - Wednesday - Friday
Back squats
Front squats
Hack squats
Incline dumbbell bench presses
Incline flyes
Flat barbell bench presses
Military presses
Behind-the-neck presses
Standing side lateral raises
Ab work
Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday
Stiff-legged deadlifts
Wide-grip chins
Close, reverse-grip lat pulldowns
One-arm dumbbell rows
Skull crushers
Rope extensions
Reverse-grip triceps extensions
Barbell curls
Standing alternate dumbbell curls
Incline dumbbell curls
Calf work
Do the following each week. You will notice that it’s very similar to our last full-body program above, which makes sense, because the old-school bodybuilder would have seen this split program as nothing more than the natural extension of what he was previously doing.
Week 1: 3 sets of 6-8 reps on each exercise. Once again, stop each set 1 or 2 reps shy of complete muscular failure. In order to handle this volume, an “everything moderate” approach must be taken with regards to training intensity. Silver Age bodybuilders, in the words of Lee Haney a couple decades after them, would “stimulate, not annihilate.”
Week 2: 4 sets of 6-8 reps
Week 3: 5 sets of 6-8 reps
Week 4: Active recovery week; do 1 set of 6 reps on each movement, with a weight lighter than week 1. If you want, you can also just do 1 exercise for each muscle group, so at the first workout, for example, you might just do front squats for your quads, and eliminate the back and hack squats.
Week 5: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 6: 4 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 7: 5 sets of 10-12 reps
Week 8: Active recovery: 1x10, using weights lighter than the Week 5 weights.
Week 9: 5 sets of 3-5 reps. Again, stop each set a rep or two shy of muscular failure.
Week 10: 6 sets of 3-5 reps
Week 11: 7 sets of 3-5 reps
Week 12: Active recovery: 1x5, using weights lighter than Week 9.
Closing Thoughts
Keep in mind that, no matter what program the old-school bodybuilder utilized, he would have always eaten well and gotten plenty of growth-producing sleep and rest. For an old-school bodybuilder that epitomized their outlook on the importance of “rest and recovery,” I recommend reading my article on the full-body training of the Golden Age bodybuilder Paul Grant.
For many readers, the old-school bodybuilders, and especially those of the so-called Silver Age, seem like distant memories. Perhaps we consider them a curiosity that we like to study for nothing more than information or even entertainment. But what we really need to do is learn from them and then apply what we learn to our workouts. Honor the old-school bodybuilders by using their methods. That is the only way. If bodybuilders in most gyms these days did that, heck, it might just start a muscle-building revolution. Old-school bodybuilders would no longer be historical curiosities but once more would become living, breathing teachers of hypertrophy.
Most of my recent articles have been on similar themes, especially with regards to old-school training. I will probably shift gears in my next few essays and posts towards some different subjects, at least for the time being. If anyone has a subject that they want covered, then let me know. Also, if you have already sent me an idea, and I have yet to write an article on it, then please reach out to me again about it. Sometimes, with all of the messages and emails I receive, I simply lose track or may forget about it entirely.
As always, if there are any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below. You can also send me an email if you would like a more personal, or just private, communication. I typically get around to answering my emails within a couple of days, depending on my work.
If you enjoy reading this article, or my blog in general, then please consider purchasing one of my books. Click on the link for details on all of my books, including my latest on the true old-school legend, Bill Starr. I’m in the process of editing my next book, which is on the very subject of this article, old-school bodybuilders and their various programs. Be on the lookout for it soon!
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