By Dorian Yates
Since your competitive days, your body has obviously changed. You don’t carry the same level of mass. I was wondering what your eating habits look like now? How much food do you consume now, compared to when you competed?
Yes, obviously my physique has changed since my competitive days. I am no longer interested in being 290 pounds, as my goals have changed. It makes me laugh when I see B.S. written on the boards about me, Flex, Kevin Levrone, and other former champions and how much we have shrunk since we retired. The tone often seems to be almost mocking, as if we have fallen from greatness or something.
I used to hear the same about Arnold when I started out in bodybuilding. It had only been a few short years since he had won his seventh and final Mr. Olympia, and he was well on his way to becoming one of the biggest action film stars of all time. Why would Arnold want to be huge when he was making movies? The streamlined but still impressive physique he displayed in the ’80s and ’90s was far more in line with an action film star who had to look somewhat athletic whilst running around fighting bad guys and monsters and typically saving the world.
Why would I want to walk around still looking like Mr. Olympia when I have other goals now with my health, my business and my family? I am very happy now to be around 250 pounds and in pretty lean shape. I am more comfortable at this weight, and hey, I like to wear designer clothes too! Good luck with that when you’re 300 pounds, mate.
My diet now is very similar to when I competed; I just eat much less since I have less mass to support and I’m not trying to grow anymore. My girlfriend makes fun of me for continuing to eat so clean, but it’s what I am used to. I eat eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, chicken with rice and veggies twice a day, and a protein shake (Tempro from my brand, Dorian Yates Nutrition). I must admit that I eat more than my fair share of chocolate, though! I’ve always had a bit of weakness for it.
Did you ever worry about your health while being the top bodybuilder in the world? What did your pre- and post-workout meals consist of? How does training feel now, compared to when you were competing? Harder? Easier? Less or more important?
Did I worry about my health? I assume, although you didn’t say it outright, that you mean did I worry about the effects of taking steroids and GH. No, I didn’t worry about it. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t concerned. I just tried to educate myself as much as possible and had regular health checks. What would be the point in worrying? Worrying accomplishes nothing at all. Being careful and taking precautions is smart, but as Axl Rose sang in the song Mr. Brownstone, “Worryin’s a waste of my time.”
Pre-workout, I would have a protein shake about one hour before heading to the gym along with a cup of coffee. Post-workout, I would take 50 grams of glucose with 25 grams of whey. One hour later, I would eat a balanced meal of something like chicken breast and brown rice.
Training now is much more relaxed, more cardio and lighter weights in general, with some exercises such as pressing movements totally eliminated due to shoulder damage caused by years of heavy training. Talk to some former champions and you will find that few managed to leave the sport unscathed by injury. My goal now is to stay in fairly lean shape. I don’t need to be 300 pounds anymore, and I don’t need to be 3 percent body fat. I accomplished what I set out to in bodybuilding, and I’m happy to have done it and moved on.
I admire you for reasons other than being Mr. O six times; I admire your attitude about life above all. When I’m in my private garage gym and it’s 35° in there and I’m struggling to continue with a workout, I hear your voice growling at me to “C’mon, push it!” It’s the same hardcore attitude that Branch has and that’s what I admire about you.
Thanks, mate. I always saw training as a physical, mental and spiritual challenge. You really can’t separate those three elements to it. To push yourself like that you’ve got to see it like that. If you do it more for your ego, fame or glory, you’re not gonna be able to go there. And you sure won’t rise to the very top and stay there, either. That’s why I didn’t sweat about some of my competitors posing out in the Venice sun with their pimped-out cars and fitness model girlfriends. Their hearts were never really in the game, and that’s how I beat them all, even when they had better genetics.
OK Dorian, what were your best bench press numbers, whether incline or flat, and best squat and deadlift numbers?
Well, I never attempted singles as I wasn’t powerlifting, but I can give you examples of some poundages I used for 6-8 reps in my workouts. I did decline presses with 515 pounds, incline barbell with 440, bent rows with 440 also, leg pressed 1,500, and seated dumbbell presses with 160s.
I didn’t do either free weight squat or bench past my first few years of training, as I found I got better results from other movements. Powerlifters have no choice. They have to do bench presses and squats, but bodybuilders always have options. I always did deadlifts at the end of my back workout, so I never needed to go any heavier than 500 pounds.
I know you never needed a nutritional coach to help you with your diet— but do you think you may have benefited by having someone there to tell you to slow down and ease up on the weights and intensity close to your contests? Could that have made it possible for you to win a couple more Sandow trophies, maybe even set a record of nine or 10 wins?
I have said that my biggest mistake was in not really knowing when to back off. In retrospect, I would advise backing off on the intensity the last 6-8 weeks before a competition due to restricted calories, lack of sleep, general fatigue, etc. A shift toward maintenance-type training makes sense at this point, as you’re not going to grow any new muscle tissue anyway.
If you can hold on to all your lean mass, you’re doing pretty well. Both of my serious injuries (biceps tear in 1994, triceps tendon in ’97) happened in the last six weeks before the Mr. O. However, when super drive and focus gets you from a back-alley gym in a British factory town to winning the biggest prize in pro bodybuilding, it’s a little hard to tone it down!
I only knew one way to train, and that was giving it everything I had, every time. That’s what felt right to me. As for winning nine or 10 Mr. Olympia titles, who knows if I could have or not? Ronnie looked so good the first three times he won the show that it would be arrogant of me to say I would have been able to beat him at any or all of those Olympias. Maybe I could have, maybe not. We’ll never know and it’s something I will let the types who argue about whether Superman could defeat the Incredible Hulk debate in their generous spare time.
What can be done today to improve the calves? I’ve noticed many pro bodybuilders are competing with lagging calves and I think this is a shame. Even Dexter Jackson won a Mr. Olympia title with small calves, and I think something should be done to improve such a crucial area. One of the reasons your physique was so impressive and complete was because you had huge, thick massive legs AND calves! What’s your take on this?
I don’t think I have any secret calf training routine or techniques to share with today’s pros, I am sorry to say. To be honest, calves were one of the easiest parts for me to develop, as I have naturally long muscle bellies. You can see that they insert down near my bloody heels!
But I do agree that it seems you can get away with poor development in the calves in competition more than say, weak arms. The calves are down so low on the physique that you tend not to really notice them so much, whereas something like the arms feature prominently in almost every pose, front, side, or back. I relied on two exercises for calves: standing calf raises done as heavy as possible to failure for 10-12 reps, and seated raises for 6-8 reps.
All my reps were absolute full-range. I would rise up high on my toes for a full contraction, and let my heels lower down for a full stretch. I worked up to around 1,500 pounds on standing raises most of the time. I haven’t trained calves at all now for over seven years and they are still better than most of the current pros, so genetics do play a big role. I am sure some of these guys you see with poor calf development do train them hard, but if they have high insertions there just isn’t much muscle to work with in the first place.
Do you feel you sacrificed mass for condition for the majority of your Mr. Olympia titles? In some shots of you several weeks out from the O, you looked fantastic! It appears to me that you were a good deal larger at that point than you ever were at the actual events.
Although I was known as the first of the so-called mass monsters, my intention was never to come into the contest as big as possible. I wanted to present a package that was as big as possible with super-lean and hard condition. I wanted to show that a big bodybuilder could come in with condition just as shredded as a lightweight.
A lot of bodybuilders can build impressive size, but to get truly shredded takes knowledge and cast-iron willpower! I saw this as a challenge, and after all, that’s what attracted me to the sport in the first place. I could have come into the contest heavier and fuller like the competitors do these days, but I think I would have lacked some of the impressive detail and the ‘grainy’ look I was known for.
I actually preferred the look of my physique as it was 3-4 weeks out with more fullness, but at the contest under harsh lighting, I think a physique that is slightly flat will show more details and hardness. If you are reasonably lean, take a look at your pecs cold and then pumped. When pumped full of blood during a chest workout, the pecs will be bigger, but lack some of the detail. When you pose them at home with no pump at all, you are able to see more striations and splits in the muscle. I hope this answers your question.
I am 26, 5’8″, and have grown from 120 to just over 200 pounds in the four years I’ve been training. Right now, I can bench press 330 x 10, deadlift 405 x 12, and squat 450 x 9 with excellent form. I know genetics are the limiting factor in bodybuilding. So in your experience, can someone like me possibly get to a muscular bodyweight of 240 and handle 405 in the bench press?
First off, congratulations on the excellent gains you have made! Eighty pounds of muscle in four years is an amazing achievement, so give yourself a pat on the back and stop worrying so much about genetics. The response you get from training is a case of diminishing returns. The longer you do it, the less you get out of it; and of course the body’s ability to change isn’t infinite. I am sure you will continue to progress in the years to come, but it will slow down at some point. Can you get to 240 pounds and bench 405? I don’t know mate, that’s up to you to find out!
Techniques like rest-pause, negatives, and forced reps are not very practical while performing squats and leg presses. What techniques do you recommend for squats and leg presses to boost the intensity?
I would go to failure and have a spotter on either side of the leg press to assist in the last rep if needed. Check out Chris Cormier on YouTube training legs with me recently (under Dorian Yates Blood and Guts 2009) for an idea of how to make leg training brutally intense. I may be old and retired, but I can still kick anyone’s ass in the gym when I need to!
source:www.musculardevelopment.com
