A LEGENDARY bodybuilder who started sport in jail has revealed the simple method he used to win six Mr Olympia titles.
Dorian Yates, 60, became a bodybuilding icon after he dedicated himself to the sport while in prison.
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The nineties weightlifting pro once dominated the bodybuilding arena and secured six Mr Olympia titles for himself – and claims one simple trick helped him get there.
In an interview with Escape Fitness, Yates said all you needed to reach his level of success was a pen and paper.
The Birmingham native revealed that throughout his bodybuilding journey, he wrote down his goals on a piece of paper, and then signed it.
Yates said it was a practice he recommends to everyone after he rose to fame in the industry.
“From 1983 to 1997 I logged down, every exercise… and then I would write down short-term goals, which usually were a month, long-term goals were 12 months,” said the former Mr Olympia in the interview.
He also explained that keeping a written track of how much he could lift during “key exercises like bench squat and deadlift” pushed him to victory.
The bodybuilding legend would then make a habit of signing a new list of his lifting goals every month.
Yates emphasised another key point to goal writing – which is to set “reasonable goals”.
“If you’re gonna put something ridiculous, that you can’t achieve, it’s not gonna help you it’s just going to demotivate you,” he said.
The English champion urged followers of this simple trick to pace themselves responsibly, to get the most out of the method.
But despite the status that Yates now holds in the bodybuilding world, he said it’s essential to achieve the “little goals”.
The weightlifting legend also revealed that the long career in the extreme sport was incredibly taxing on his body.
“I trained all out for about six to eight weeks and then I would get symptoms of over-training…I don’t believe I did the down cycle properly and gave my body enough rest that it required over the years,” he said in an interview.
The result of this “over-training” he believes resulted in most of the injuries he suffers from now.
“Most of the injuries didn’t occur in that moment, but they are an accumulation of scar tissue and little things that are going on for a long time, inflammation and so on, that was not addressed and given enough rest.”
These series of injuries eventually forced him to quit the pro circuit in 1997.
Nevertheless, Yates still hits the gym hard and uploads motivational videos to his Instagram.
In a social media post, Yates shared a picture of his shredded body from the past and wrote a long message to his fans.
It read: “One thing I can guarantee, he does not train as hard as me, he does not dedicate himself as much as me.
“It’s not possible, I couldn’t give a single ounce more to what I was doing and I knew that I left it all in the gym… that made me feel pretty powerful.”
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