Dorian Yates Training

Dorian Yates marched to the beat of a profoundly different drummer. Aptly nicknamed, "The Diesel," Yates was iconoclastic in the truest sense. During his formative teenage years he was swept up by the street turmoil of the English punk rock scene. Fueled by reggae, The Clash and the youthful nihilism and disenfranchisement of the era. He became "a troubled youth" and was actually introduced to weight training in reform school. He was the embodiment of the classical English Hard Man and grew up wild; the archetypical alpha male, cruising the tough streets of Birmingham. He and his street mates might engage in soccer hooliganism or become embroiled in dust-ups with rivals or civilians that didn't demonstrate proper deference. As Elton John wrote,

Somewhere along the way Dorian found physical and psychological solace in the intense solitude of intense weight training. He began redirecting his incoherent rage from the street to the gym. He discovered he possessed an uncanny ability to effortlessly impose rigid self-discipline. He became an Iron Monk. He immersed himself in the fringe sport of competitive bodybuilding and discovered he was genetically psychologically predisposed towards it. He melded and shaped his body with an ease that flabbergasted his gym peers. 

Isaac Stern once said of Mozart, "In a single nine month period at age fourteen he composed five violin sonatas: the maturity between the 1st and 5th represented thirty years of growth." Dorian Yates underwent a bodybuilding version of Mozart's musical metamorphosis. He rose from obscurity to world class in an amazingly short amount of time. In 1991 he took second place at the Mr. Olympia, bodybuilding's Superbowl. In 1992 Yates reign of utter and complete dominance commenced. Dorian won the Olympia title six successive years starting in 1992.

From the start he stood defiantly apart from the bodybuilding establishment in every aspect of his life, training and approach. The epicenter of the bodybuilding universe was, is, and forever shall be, Southern California. While the Southern California scene provides a terrific environment for those who want to center their entire existence on bodybuilding, that which makes it attractive also generates sameness in terms of the final finished physical products. Most of the top SoCal bodybuilders used the same nutritional and training methods and for this reason the top pros tended to look pretty much the same. As a result of this physical echo chamber there emerged a definable group with no major physical differences. This coterie of physique champions clustered together and became infected with inside-the-box group think. There was one glaring exception: the super symmetrical Flex Wheeler, He was awesome and formidable.

Dorian Yates was the antithesis of West Coast bodybuilding. He lived in dreary, overcast Birmingham, England ensconced in a dank dungeon. He trained and ate in a radically different way; completely counter to California bodybuilding. As a result he built a body unlike anyone else. 

The Quantum Leap Forward

When Dorian took second place to Lee Haney in 1991 he weighed 239 pounds. He made his bones by coming in large and in "ripped" condition. He likely carried a 4% body fat percentile, Yates' symmetry and shape, while good, was not great. What set him apart that night was excellent size and astounding muscular condition; the best in the competition. In 1992 Dorian captured his first Olympia title weighing 242 pounds. He was infinitesimally better than the previous year. He had the same great condition with a few added pounds of muscle and it was a nice win. 

The California professionals were uniformly unimpressed and began making disparaging remarks about the new Mr. Olympia, stating that his reign would last a single year and he should be grateful that he had won a single Sandow Statue. The following year, the intelligensia concluded, the competition would be held stateside, in Atlanta, not in some gawdforesaken dump like Helsinki, Finland where Dorian had won. Then the rightful reign of the West Coast men would commence.

Yates heard the smack talk back in Birmingham and used the disparaging remarks to generate a cold fury that fueled his training sessions. He went deep into the proverbial Iron Woodshed. When he emerged, he had transformed himself from a large, extremely well conditioned bodybuilder into a gargantuan, ripped-to-shreds mega-monster. He was huge, bigger than anyone when viewed from front, side or back. He was now the biggest and the most muscular bodybuilder in the world. The moment he strode onstage at the 1993 Mr. Olympia contest, all the other bodybuilders knew that the only battle was for 2nd and 3rd place.

Yates was striated and defined; every tiny muscle visible beneath what appeared to be translucent skin. He was now the biggest and the most fat-free bodybuilder in the world. Yates had added 20 pounds of pure muscle in twelve months, unheard of at these stratospheric levels where men are already at 99% of their genetic capacity. Dorian blew up to just under 300 pounds in the off-season while not allowing his body fat to rise above 10%, even at his heaviest bodyweight. He carved that massive mound of muscle into a 260pound piece of human marble.

At the professional leve, bodybuilders are already at the peak of their awesome genetic potential and improvement is measured in tiny steps. A bodybuilder might be able to lean out a bit, or perhaps over the course of a good year add 3 to 5 pounds of muscle. This would represent a significant bodyweight increase if muscular clarity and crispness were maintained. For an Olympia winner to add twenty pounds of lean mass while actually improving muscular delineation was unprecedented.

The shock waves first hit when the December 1993 issue of Flex Magazine appeared featuring photos of Yates weighing 271 pounds. He displayed definition nearly matching what he had exhibited in Helsinki weighing 239. He whittled down to 257 pounds for the Atlanta Olympia and pounded the competition into dust. The Diesel ran over the competition with such yawning ease that no further smack talk was heard from the West Coast elite. Another reign was underway. Lee Haney managed a record eight straight wins and Dorian Yates picked right up where Lee left off, racking up six straight Olympia wins.

Blood & Guts: Film Noir Extraordinaire

Film noir literally means "black film" in French and features themes that are uniformly negative. The feel is always dark and shadowy and purposefully filmed in black and white. Most noir stories feature main characters who find themselves embroiled in hopeless situations, fighting against forces that threaten them.

In 1999 Dorian Yates made the greatest bodybuilding training film of all time, appropriately named Blood & Guts. It was unintentional film noir at its best. Dorian and his savage training partner, the incendiary Leroy, video taped their exact workouts, exercise by exercise, set by set, rep by rep, for an entire week of training. Not a word of commentary or explanation from Dorian. No charts, no graphs, no product whoring, no nothing other than the indomitable Dorian powering through four workouts. The stark black and white photography is crisp and grim. The setting is Yates' infamous Temple Street Gym, a claustrophobic downstairs dungeon with damp walls, cracked plaster, ill lighting, musty old exercise machines and tons of free weights. 

Silent, stoic, stolid, grim and intense, Yates plowed through these brutal workouts. His workouts more resemble an Ed Coan power training session at Quads Gym in Chicago that a Southern California pump & preen session using pee-wee poundage. This is grim stuff; Yates pushes 425 for 6 reps in the incline press before Leroy steps in and provides an additional agonizing forced rep. Watch as Dorian does arm curls. Watch as Leroy provides barely enough impetus to keep the final reps moving. In another snippet, Dorian readies himself prior to pulling 400+ in the barbell row. He chides himself, saying out loud, "It's a big weight for a little woman!" With that he strides forward and pulverizes the poundage. Leroy, a former army drill sergeant, screams at the top of his lungs in indecipherable military profanity using a street-seasoned cockney accent that would scare the shit out of Tony Soprano.

"Let's get Nasty! C'mon Mr. Yates, the one who's in all the BLOODY MAG-A-ZINES! Pull and squeeze. DIG DEEP! LET'S GO! - MIGHTY PULL! AGAIN!! ALL YOU - NOW ANOTHER - PULL! ONE MORE! MIGHTY PULL! AGAIN!!!"

Spittle flies from Leroy's mouth as Yates inhales the exhortations and uses pent-up psychological fury to finish rep after ep. It is chilling, terrifying, painful and inspiring to watch ... see Dorian finish the 12th rep with 1265 pounds in the leg press, then cry out in pain as Leroy blows off Dorian's "Sissy talk!" He exhorts Dorian to do yet another. Watch as Yates throws caution to the wind. He let's out a war whoop, unlocks his quivering legs and in fact does do yet another rep, barely locking out even with Leroy's help.

My friend, muscle writer supreme, Julian Schmidt, major domo at Flex Magazine, told me that during the filming the camera crew told Dorian that they had inadvertently messed up filming a top set of a particular exercise. They asked that he stage a re-shoot; he told them without hesitation, "Well I suppose you'll just have to return next week when I do that exercise again because I don't stage anything!" And so they did. Dorian weighed 295 pounds in the film and was so gargantuan that he appeared inhuman. His technical execution was beyond reproach.

Blood & Guts is pure genius: why talk to death that which can be far better understood by watching? Why spend 20 minutes talking about how to do a proper 70 degree barbell row when everything can be made clear by watching the perfection master perform the 70 degree row? Why talk about workout pace, show it. Show full range-of-motion, show technical subtlety, show good spotting, show the meaning of true workout intensity, show the meaning of the teeth-grinding effort required to trigger muscle hypertrophy.

Everything can be communicated so much better by showing: demonstrate how the real deal looks when done by the very best in the world as they actually ply their trade. You could watch Blood & Guts with the sound turned off and come away knowing every important lesson there is to know about building gigantic muscles. You come to understand that in order to build muscle you must work hard enough to trigger muscle hypertrophy. Going through the motions builds nothing of any consequence. Check out the hour long Blood & Guts video below.

My Day with Dorian

In 1996 I was the lead correspondent at the Chicago Olympia for Muscle & Fitness Magazine. I sat in the front row and would write the competition coverage and additionally interview the winner the next day to write a body part training article. I watched with glee as Dorian crushed the competition yet again. I wrote the feature lead on the competition in about 20 minutes and was really excited about the next day. I would be with a guy I really admired and was doing the body part feature article on what I considered his greatest physical attribute, his back. This was gonna be great.

After being put up in a penthouse suite; after seeing the prejudging and the Olympia finals from the front row; after having walked backstage into an atmosphere so strained and tense you could cut it with a knife; I would get to meet with the champ Sunday morning. I would be with Dorian for a lengthy photo shoot; interview him, write up a back training article and catch a plane home later that day. I made a lot of dough that weekend for the privilege of grilling one of my idols on what I wanted to know about most: how in the hell did you build a back like that? Dorian's back training photo shot began at 10am and went on for hours. It was obviously draining but important: the two articles would be multi-page magazine feature pieces.

I was fortunate enough to see him in tiptop shape that morning, up close and personal, he actually looked better than he did the previous night. After winning the Olympia the previous night, he could not party. If he had eaten or drank anything, he would lose his perfect condition and ruin the back-to-back photo sessions scheduled for the next morning. As soon as he was finished with the back body part photo shoot Dorian had to roll right into another body part photo shoot with a different photographer. I actually felt sorry for him. 

Need I explain the severity of the shit-storm that ensued? It was horrific. On that particular day, a back training session the day after the Olympia, he said, "One plate per side - that's it!" End of conversation.

I arrived early and he invited me to sit with im as the camera crew set up. He munched on a dry bagel and looked drawn and very tired. It had to be torturous to win the Olympia and not even be able to drink a beer or have a good meal afterwards. We would talk between exercise shots about his training. Leroy and Steve Weinberger were there to assist. Yates was very short and obstinate towards the photographers, but exceedingly nice to me. They were trying to get him to lift gargantuan poundage to make the photos look more dramatic and he was having none of it. A lone 45 pound plate on each side of the barbell or machine was all he would allow. The photographers were being pressured by headquarters to use massive weights and were tearing their hair out in frustration. Dorian also insisted on wearing the elbow warmers that he always wore for every single workout.

He told me he weighed 261 and standing 5'10" with an incredible tan, his skin appeared transparent. Ever time he lifted his arm to take a bit of bagel, muscle and sinew shot across his forearm, upper arm and deltoids in waves. When he chewed, all the muscles of his face were visible and rolled in syncopation with every bite. His lower back and glutes were so stripped of fat that with every step cross striations appeared. He was at once, the most muscular and most defined human I had ever seen, before or since. He liked the two article I had written about him in the past year. One article discussed the similarities between his training and that of Ed Coan. The other article talked about how he was whipping West Coast ass. He found the Coan article "fascinating stuff." He later gave my book on Ed Coan a great endorsement. My article on Dorian's back attack "wrote itself." I finished it on the plan ride home.

His body on that day was pure perfection. To see this great champion up and close and personal after a steamroller win was fabulous. Yates was known for his single-minded dedication and would famously duck out of social events early say, "I hate to part good company, but tomorrow is leg day and I need to go home and rest."

During his reign Dorian was the antithesis of a glad-handing ego maniac craving attention. Quite the contrary: he was a an of few words and at competitive events was ominous and unapproachable. One year I was at the Olympia and as I sat eating lunch with Julian Schmidt, The Diesel and is posse strode through the restaurant. They stopped for no one: they were on the move. The eatery, crammed with elite bodybuilders, came to a complete halt for "The Man" and his Praetorians. No back slapping or greetings were offered or given. He avoided eye contact with everyone. He happened to glance in our direction and sw the two of us. He stopped and his crew pulled up. "Jul-eye-an ... Martee." He said. He gave the two of us the slightest of nods and faintest of smiles then wheeled around and his muscle armada continued onward. One boneheaded bodybuilding pro card holder yelled over at us, "DAMN! I have been saying hello to that big bitch for five years and he's never so much as smiled or acknowledged I existed! Who in the hell are you guys!"

It was a scene as I imagined it might have been in feudal Japan when a Shogun Samurai chieftain passed through a village. He had far more detractors and enemies than friends within the cloistered world of bodybuilding. Many bodybuilders are narcissists, adulation junkies that crave attention and applause. Not the iconoclastic Yates. For Dorian Yates the process was the reward. Competition was the requisite report card. In a sea of sameness, he stood out like a unicorn amongst a herd of sheep.

Check out the links below for profiles on other remarkable men I have met in my almost 60 years of training. Each have influenced me in different ways over the course of my strength career.

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