Serving as the bridge between Lee Haney’s dominance of the 1980s and Ronnie Coleman’s reign during the 2000s, six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates is often singled out as the man who helped usher in the “mass monster” era of bodybuilding. But for all the size he possessed, Yates still maintained the type of elite conditioning everyone expected from an Olympia winner.
In that way, Yates was an iconoclast — he created his own path within the sport using a unique training system that was eventually nicknamed “Blood and Guts.” This workout philosophy focused on using heavy weights to failure on just one or two working sets, with the intensity dialed up as far as it could go.
While testing his one-rep max strength wasn’t a goal during his career, his raw power was still on the upper end of elite bodybuilders. And to examine how strong Yates really was, it’s important to dig deeper into this trademark training style.
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Blood and Guts and Bodybuilding
When Yates first began training, he was in the gym three times a week and employed a two-way split. Acting as his own coach, he used a variety of sets and systems, including one in which he trained every body part twice during a nine-day cycle. His early years were ones of experimentation.
A prime example of this is Yates’ relationship with the back squat. Inspired by Tom Platz’s legendary leg workouts, Yates initially used the squat as a staple in his own routine, eventually hitting 380 pounds for 10 reps by 1985 when he was around 23 years old. (He was squatting 465 for 10 reps just three years later.)
During this period, Yates began to utilize the high-intensity principles which he became synonymous with. Inspired by Arthur Jones and later by Mike Mentzer, Yates’ training switched to one or two warm-up sets per exercise before two all-out sets to failure. After his first Olympia win in 1992, he switched to one all-out set to failure. Below, Yates explains the evolution of his training practices
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This shift is important to note when discussing Yates’ strength. He continued to squat, bench, and deadlift, but he employed all-out sets that were taken to “total failure,” which, in Yates’ words, meant he “no longer had the strength to raise or lower the weight.”
Here’s what a typical leg workout looked like at the start of his pro career, according to his book, A Portrait of Dorian Yates. Though his style didn’t often call for sets of 15, he wrote that his thighs responded well to the high rep counts here:
- Leg Extension: 3 x 12-15
- Barbell Squat: 2 x 12-15
- Leg Press: 2 x 12-15
- Leg Curl: 2 x 8-12
- Standing Calf Raise: 2 x 8-10
The first set for each exercise was a warm-up, followed by one to two all-out sets of the exercise. Each set finished when Yates went to failure, but he often used one or two forced reps with a training partner present. (So, for example, a set of 12 could include two forced reps at the end.) Due to the relatively low volume of his routines, Yates said he would only spend around 50 minutes in the gym four times per week.
Yates’ Philosophy on Strength
While Yates lifted some impressive weight in his career, he wasn’t concerned with growing his one-rep max numbers for bragging rights. His goal was to move heavy weights with the proper technique and intensity to stimulate growth.
“People think [my training style] is heavy, high intensity and it is all about the heaviest possible weight,” Yates said in an interview with Bodybuilding.com. “Well yes, if you watch my DVD I’m using what could be considered heavy weights, but they are used in a controlled manner. I could use more weight if I wanted to, but I would get less out of it.”
His strength standards, while still impressive, have to be contextualized with reference to his training philosophy. The risk/reward of heavy lifting or powerlifting training had little appeal to Yates.
That being said, his videos, books, and magazine articles paint a picture of a bodybuilder with immense power and, even more importantly, work rate using heavy loads.
Building an Iconic Back
Yates is perhaps best remembered for his back workouts, with bodybuilding magazines throughout the ’90s being lined with photos of him hitting plate-filled barbell rows. He could rep out those rows at 405 pounds until he tore his left biceps on the exercise in 1994, forcing him to drop to 375 pounds for as many reps as possible afterward.
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Targeting the traps, Yates performed 650-pound barbell shrugs; for lats, he used the Hammer Strength pulldown machine with 285 pounds until the point of absolute failure. He had also worked up to 215-pound dumbbell rows for 12 reps, but he stopped doing the exercise once he realized that “any increase would be impractical, clumsy and ultimately dangerous,” according to his book.
For that reason, Yates switched to a rowing machine where he loaded 245 pounds on either side to perform one “all-out set.”
Finally, for deadlifts, Yates worked up to reps with 405 pounds, although he did his pulls slightly elevated and not from the floor to ensure that he focused more of his attention on the lower back.
Leg Day Prowess
When it came to training his legs, Yates was always deliberate. Leg extensions, with sets ranging from 130 pounds to 270 pounds, pre-exhausted the quads before leg presses and hack squats pushed him to failure. While he relied on the barbell squat in his early days, he moved to machine-only workouts to isolate the muscles better as his career advanced.
On the leg press, Yates worked up to all-out sets of 10 to 12 using 1,265 pounds at a 45-degree angle. After that, he typically moved to the hack squat, where he hit 660 pounds for eight to 10 reps. To put that into context, that was 660 pounds taken to failure, having already pre-exhausted his quads on leg extensions and pushing to failure on the leg press.
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Yates trained hamstrings using a combination of lying leg curls (up to 180 pounds), stiff-legged deadlifts (up to 350 pounds), and single-leg curls (up to 50 pounds on each leg). Finally, when it came to training calves, Yates did standing calf raises with 1,300 pounds for reps.
Pushing Power
Finally, for his chest, Yates preferred to use the incline and decline bench press over the flat bench as he felt that using different angles provided much greater stimulation to the pecs. All-out sets on incline bench topped out at 425 pounds for eight reps, while his decline press reached 500 pounds.
These numbers paint a clear picture of Yates’ strength but also his motivation when training. In his own books and workout DVDs, as well as later interviews, he continually stressed his interest in building muscle over strength. The number on the bar mattered only in pursuing his bodybuilding goals.
How Does Yates Stack Up?
How, then, can we compare Yates’ strength with other bodybuilders? We could compare Yates to Casey Viator, who was a poster child for high-intensity training. Viator’s workouts in the early 1970s included 20 reps with 350 pounds on the bench press, 505-pound squats for 14 reps, and 400-pound deadlifts for 30 reps.
What about his contemporaries? Kevin Levrone could press 500 pounds behind his neck and hack squat 700 pounds. Meanwhile, Shawn Ray’s training videos showed him leg pressing 1,000 pounds for reps and performing a grueling leg routine that mimicked Yates in that he pre-exhausted his quads before squatting over 300 pounds.
In terms of other Olympia champs, Ronnie Coleman famously squatted and deadlifted 800 pounds in training, while Arnold Schwarzenegger deadlifted 617 pounds as a young powerlifter. This is to say nothing about Franco Columbu or Lou Ferrigno, both of whom were contestants in the inaugural World’s Strongest Man competition in 1977.
“The Shadow” in Perspective
Perhaps fittingly, it is impossible to compare “The Shadow” to other bodybuilders. Yates trained unlike anyone else, even when compared to those who influenced him, like Viator or Mentzer. Yes, he used heavy weights, but he didn’t want to prove that bodybuilders were as strong as powerlifters, nor did he want to push his one-rep max strength like Coleman.
Yates was strong, but he was also focused on one thing above all else — building muscle and winning Olympias. On that front, few were as successful.
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