Dorian Yates – One Set Is Enough For Maximum Growth

Nickname The Shadow

Born 19 April 1962 (age 61)
Solihull, Warwickshire, England
Height 5 ft 10 in (178 cm)[1]
Weight 260 lb (118 kg) (contest)
290 lb (132 kg) (off-season)[1]

Pro-debut Night Of Champions1990
Best win Mr. Olympia1992–1997

Active 1984–1997
Dorian Andrew Mientjez Yates (born 19 April 1962) is an English retired professional bodybuilder. He won the Mr. Olympia title six consecutive times from 1992 to 1997 and has the fifth-highest number of Mr. Olympia wins in history, ranking behind Ronnie Coleman (8), Lee Haney (8), Arnold Schwarzenegger (7), and Phil Heath (7). He is widely considered to be one of the top pro bodybuilders in history, and was well known for his high intensity training, top-level conditioning, and his wide, thick back.

Early life
Dorian Andrew Mientjez Yates was born on 19 April 1962, in Solihull, then in Warwickshire, England. He grew up on a farm in Hurley, rural Warwickshire. Yates’s father died of a heart attack when he was 13. He, his mother and his sister then moved to Walmley in Sutton Coldfield. As a professional bodybuilder, Yates lived in the Ladywood and Castle Vale areas of Birmingham.

When Yates was 18, he and his friends were arrested while crossing Birmingham to get to a party. Each of them received 6 months at Whatton Youth Detention Centre, where Yates would take up weight training.

Career
Yates started working out in 1983 at Martin’s Gym, the original bodybuilding gym located in Temple Row, Birmingham. During this time he won the 1984 Mr. Birmingham as a novice and in 1986 became the British Champion at Heavyweight for the first time.

His professional record consists of 15 major contest wins and two second-place finishes; from 1992 to his retirement in 1997 he won every single contest he entered. His career ended in large part due to chronic acute injuries, including torn biceps and triceps, the latter just three weeks prior to his final contest, the 1997 Mr. Olympia, which he won in spite of the injury; his win generated controversy among fellow athletes, critics, and amateurs, who thought the runner-up Nasser El Sonbaty deserved to win.[citation needed] He is one of only four men to retire as Mr. Olympia and the last to do so.

Yates was a proponent of Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer’s high-intensity training (HIT) style of bodybuilding, which poses that maximum muscle stimulation can be reached through short and intense workout sessions instead of long and slow ones.[6][7] He said, “If you feel you can attempt a second set, then you couldn’t have been pulling out all the stops during the first set.”[8] Examples of his biggest lifts include 435-pound underhand barbell rows for 6-8 reps, 425-incline presses for 6-10 reps, and 595-pound barbell shrugs for 10-12 reps.[9] He earned the nickname “The Shadow” coined by Peter McGough for his tendency to unexpectedly appear at major bodybuilding contests and steal the win, having neither confirmed nor denied whether he would compete beforehand, and for spending most of his time between contests avoiding the public eye.

Yates is considered to be the first of the “mass monsters” in bodybuilding. He combined his enormous muscle mass along with peak conditioning, quoted as being “granite hardness”. He believes that his injuries are due to his habit of maintaining an extreme level of training intensity all year long, even when approaching contests, while being on a severely restricted “cutting” diet which weakens the body overall.[10] Regarding the use of PEDs, he referenced the documentary Super Size Me and stated that eating three McDonald’s meals a day is more harmful for the metabolism than his 12 years of regular steroid use.

Post-competition career

Inside Temple Gym at Birmingham
In 1987, Yates purchased Temple Gym, located on Temple Street in Birmingham. In 2006, he franchised four additional Temple Gym locations, three of which are in the UK. As of 2020, only the original Birmingham gym is still in operation. The Birmingham gym has now relocated from Temple Street to the city’s jewellery quarter.

Yates formed the California-based company Heavy Duty Inc. in 1994 with Mike Mentzer and Ray Mentzer. The company marketed athletic apparel and bodybuilding-related books.

Yates founded a third company, DY Nutrition, which specializes in pre-workout formulas and has released several training DVDs.

Personal life

Yates now lives in Spain. He is married to Brazilian fitness model Glauce “Gal” Ferreira, who won the IFBB South American Bodyfitness event and was also the 2007 IFBB World Bodyfitness Champion. They had met at the 2008 Arnold Classic, and live in Marbella. Yates’s son from his ex-wife Deb, Lewis, has also taken up bodybuilding and works closely with his father.

Yates has described yoga and meditation as a life altering experience. He does yoga on a daily basis.

Now this must be quite special because home crowd Hometown how does that feel well I’m kind of getting used to it now but it’s a little bit crazy to think uh I started bodybuilding in uh I did my first competition 1985 so I’m sure me

And the guys at The Little Gym I was training at Temple gym at that point were never dreaming we’ have an expo like this in Birmingham made like probably had 10 gyms in bming at that time maximum so uh yeah it’s amazing to be here in uh in the hometown where all

Started for me so thanks for everybody for uh giving up this Saturday morning come and listen to me I wanted to slim down just because uh I wanted to do different activities and being you know 18 19 Stone was not um what I needed at

That point in time so I actually at some point was not trained with weight I was just doing yoga and Bates and cycling and different things now I i’ kind of gone back to doing a bit more weight so I combine all those things together

Um because of my age I need to be healthy and uh functional to have a good quality of life so that’s where my training is geared now it’s not geared to hey I want to build maximum muscle mass it’s gear to I want to be healthy I

Want to have a certain level of strength and mobility and flexibility all the things uh you know that give you a good quality of life really that’s what I’m training for now so it’s a to a different VA and let’s talk a bit about your training so back in the day back in

Your Heyday not only were you admired obviously because of your physique but you weren’t afraid to try something different the the way in which you trained was unmatched at that time but it was something slightly different to what everybody else was doing could you talk us through that yeah well um

Fortunately I have a inbred ability to um take information from various sources and then decide what’s going to work for me so um kind of an independent thinker and even before I started bodybuilding I was reading about training I was reading about nutrition getting as much information as I could

Which wasn’t so easy then because now you can click a Buton on the internet and you can find pretty much anything you want uh then we had to wait for the magazines or buy books or I went to the library to get books on nutrition to see how much protein and

Carbs and fats are in these foods and do my own calculations and all this stuff uh so it’s a bit more effort required then um but yeah I was I would try this uh training the high intensity training that I was reading about and I would keep notes and

Then I would train more frequently and I would keep notes or I train less and so by doing this by analyzing everything I could actually see what was working what wasn’t working and uh go with that feedback rather than what I read in the magazine or a guy in the gym that was

Older and more experienced and bigger than me listening to him just because he was bigger I was able to make my own mind up so uh I was using high-intensity training which was really first pioneered by a guy called Arthur Jones that built the naxus machines and he’s

Really the first guy to say hey what is it what is it that triggers muscle brok and it’s the intensity of exercise not the duration not the frequency but the intensity and then this needs to be combined with that stress of intensity recovering which obviously is time and

Nutrition and and rest and everything like that and uh I’m still very convinced it’s the most efficient way to train unfortunately now there’s multiple scientific studies that are saying exactly the same same thing uh there was a meta study so you know a lot of studies together what’s the minimum amount of

Effective exercise to trigger muscle growth and the conclusion was one set of an exercise once a week to failure I’m like I’m glad the scientists caught up with me because I’ve been saying it for 40 years yeah absolutely fascinating and you you really clearly come across like

Somebody he was before your time in terms of Mind strength and not just body strength yet your focus today is on helping people be healthy in their body how could you use your experien and your your natural strengths internally to help people today from a mindset perspective um well just that I think

That uh I can give you you know I can give you a physical routine to do at the gym I can give you a diet and everything but uh whatever you’re doing the mind is always the glue that’s going to hold it together um so it’s important that you

Know why are you doing what you’re doing um why are you going to the gym why are you putting this effort in um if you don’t know then you’re not really going to push yourself to the zone that because it’s uncomfortable but I’m going there

For a short period of time it’s going to be over in half an hour I’m going to push there I’m going to push because that’s going to give me the results that I want so it’s just having the right frame of mind and the the right approach

And I think when people come to train with me yeah they learn about training but if I have an hour together with somebody in the gym or 45 minutes or whatever it is I show them what they can do everybody that comes to train with me thinks they finished when they’ve done

Eight or nine reps I’m like no you haven’t do another one do another one and they always get get a bit more and then I say to them you did that you lifted that weight I’m dorin so I’m a picture in your mind whoever you think I

Am just cuz I’m shouting at you that helped you to lift that weight but I didn’t do it for you you did it I just triggered something in your mind that made you do that so now you know that you can do it you know that next time so yeah

That’s that’s pretty much the approach getting ready in my my preparation for the Mr Olympia in 1997 which was the last one I did and during my preparation I started to think this is starting to feel like Groundhog Day I feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over again and it’s

Starting to feel like a job I’m starting to feel like it’s not fascinating anymore the passion is not there as it used to be so maybe this is going to be my last one I don’t know so the the question was already there and uh then later on the

Injury came and made the decision for me so I didn’t have anything to say about it but I was starting to think that it was time for me to do something else it was just a a vague feeling of like I should be doing something else now this

Is coming to an end somehow so the thought was already there before the actual injured uh made this decision for meical characteristics that that help you in your sport and so on so you’re all gifted up there so what can separate the guy from first and second and third

It’s it’s all up there that’s that’s the key how did you develop your mindset was it something that you always had was it something that you developed as you were training I think it’s something I already already had and uh I kind of

Left home when I was 16 so I was out on my own on the street and uh you know you’re either going to get smart and you know look after yourself or you’re going to fall down there’s nobody there to catch me so that was there from uh from

An early age I think and uh I was just very determined to do this thing that I would felt I could be good at in order to change my life and change you know uh the projection of my life the people around me um I was grew up on a housing

Estate in UK I had no education I was in a jail when I was 18 so I had all that that was you know the people around me I was like I didn’t want part of that future wanted to do something else and I

Got this thing that I was good at so I’m going to take it and run with it you know it’s crazy how many people have similar stories oh they’re like no that’s it that’s enough cuz every set by the warm-up sets you got a warm up you

Know to be safe and everything but the set the real sets I call them we’re going to go to Absolute failure and even Beyond with Force reps with assistance reps maybe extra negative reps which is um something most people neglect when they lift weights they think you know

I’ve lifted it all right boom let it go down I’ve lifted it but they’re they’re neglecting the lowering part of the weight the negative so I get people to really slow that down so you’re taxing that part as well and even at the end of the sit on some exercises with machines

Where it’s practical so you you know you can’t curl any more physically on the positive on the contraction but your strength on the lowering is greater so if you did curls and you failed I could lift the weight to the top for you and you could lower it down for probably

Another three reps so if you just gone to failure here you wouldn’t have exhausted the the negative part of the rep so my thing is exhaust everything it’s totally you can’t lift you can’t lower it you can’t lift it it’s total failure if you do that once and an

Exercise then time to move on do another exercise how did you develop your protocol just trial and error trial and error and more about the insecurity of the guys competing like why don’t you learn yourself and listen to your body and I used to make notes you know every

Week I’d write down my diet I’d write down every single workout that I ever did from from 1984 to 1997 I have in a training log you should sell that I print it maybe yeah print it put in a book it’s all these little exercise

Books you know and like you can see the first one when I’m like 21 years old it’s a bit childish with the comments and but it’s like you know I felt today this was a shitty workout never let this happen again you know all this stuff I’m talking to myself so

I got all this and it’s to go back and look at it sometimes and it’s weird because I can go back to 1988 and I can look at my work and I look at that workout and I was like I was in this gym and I was training with

This guy and I can’t even remember like I was like what I was wearing and I can go back in time and remember that workout just from those notes yeah like every workout as soon as I’ve got home and I finished I was like he bench press

I did this and every month I would make notes and I’d say okay this is what I’m doing now these are my goals for the next four weeks you know whatever like little goals like I’m going to put £5 on my bench press but if you do that every

Month then and at the end of the month you got end of the year you got £60 right so uh I did all these things like you know uh mental rehearsal um visualiz all this stuff I did it I just I kind of learned it nobody nobody taught me so um that was

One of the things goal setting write and writing it down on a piece of paper just and you can do this with anything your business whatever you’re writing it down on a piece of paper you’re making a commitment it’s there on a piece of paper every day you can look at that

And it just gives you a stronger mental vision and instead of saying right I’m going to win this contest in 18 months time yeah that’s cool you’re going to win that contest but how are you going to get there it’s like saying I’m going to sail to Australia yeah it’s a good

Idea that’s cool but how are you going to get there if you got a plan if you got a map like you’re going to go with no map you’re just going to get lost you know so alcohol sign it you put it there on your table don’t

You said that man You’ said it you’ve said it You’ made the commitment you put on a paper so you’re going to you’re going to let yourself down you’re going to be a you’re going to be weak and you’re going to break that you made that commitment man right you know it’s

There on a piece of paper so uh that’s that’s strong you know he studied it and he was like what is it that causes muscle growth what is it and um he found it was the intensity of exercise and then there was another bodybuilder Mike menu who went to compete in the Mr

Olympia won the Mr Universe he took those principles and he used them um so I read all this stuff and it was very logical you know it made sense and then I tried it out in the gym and it worked in the gym and if I

Trained more often or if I did more in the gym my progress would slow down or it would stop as soon as I cut back and I made the workout shorter and more intense um my progress went so it was for me it was pretty early on I learned

How to train properly and that’s why I was competing I competed in a world championship after 18 months training which is pretty much unheard of that is pretty much unheard of now when you say shorter more intense workouts how did you regulate that like that is that’s a

Huge issue with martial artist is overtraining they want to do more work than everybody else they want to work harder than everybody else and they want up breaking their body down and showing up for the fight exhausted overtraining is a big thing yeah and if you you see

The the process for muscle growth is you go in the gym and you put stress on the muscle if you put stress that it’s not used to then it’s going to react you’re going to get growth but you need to recover from that first you don’t go to

The gym and grow and then recover later that’s that’s not the way it works you go if you you know you give some your body some stress it’s not used to you’ll get a reaction but before you get the reaction you have to recover so if you’re not

Allowing enough time to recover you just I use this analogy at seminars I do it’s very simplistic but it gets a point across if you get a bit of sandpaper and you rub it across the palm of your hand and it’s kind of bloody if you leave it

And let it heal up what’s going to happen the Skin’s going to develop back a little bit stronger a little bit thicker than before cuz he wants to protect against that stress so that’s the proc but if you go and you make your hand bloody and before it’s healed up

Again you go and rub it again what’s happening you’re not really getting anywhere you’re just going to have a bloody hand you’re not