Gallagher and Yates: two grizzled old pros plot their next move
Dorian Yates was the world's greatest bodybuilder for nearly a decade. In a world inhabited by preening peacocks and adulation junkies (a de rigueur syndrome amongst elite bodybuilders) Yates was the odd man out: introverted, thoughtful, analytical, observant - yet a genuine tough guy - Yates was in no need of adulation and could care less whether you approved of his physique. He was built like an Abrams battle tank, a bull mastiff competing against Volvos and greyhounds. Possessing a huge reservoir of physical and mental toughness, he combined his inherent traits of tenacity and grit with a fundamentalist approach towards training and nutrition. He effortlessly morphed from street punk into bodybuilding monk. I profiled him in my book, The Purposeful Primitive and his chapter title was called The Iron Monk. Dorian is the type of man that in another life could easily have become an SAS Operative, a Navy Seal, a Cage Fighter, perhaps a professional Brahma bull rider, a test pilot or Prize fighter. Yates was psychologically suited for the disciplined life of an elite soldier, fighter or professional athlete.
He ate with complete nutritional discipline, seemingly without effort. He injected sanity into his food choices and performed cardio exercise religiously, even though he was built all wrong for aerobic activity. His weight training was nothing short of revolutionary and his strength legendary - how about six strict reps in the barbell incline press with 435 pounds and two more forced reps on top of that? Or leg presses with 1300 for 14 reps, every single rep deep and controlled. He is more popular and well known today than when he ran the tables and captured the Mr. Olympia title six straight years.
The Diesel (his nickname) steamrolled his way through the competition throughout his competitive career: he became synonymous with utter and complete domination. Dorian won the biggest prizes with the biggest paydays repeatedly. He cemented his persona by doing it all with what seemed to be an air of yawning distain. He was the prototypical English Hard Man and the undisputed King in a Kingdom he really didn't care to rule. Mr. Yates was the complete opposite of the athletic attention freak. Yates was all about "the process." The process is the training and the eating: the gut-busting effort expended in the gym, the copious cardio and the ever disciplined eating.
Famously introduced to weight training while serving a stretch in reform school, Dorian's embryonic Birmingham roots were marinated in street fighting, pub socializing, soccer hooliganism and he was not above participating in the occasional street riot. Bob Marley provided the soundtrack for this uniquely Birmingham upbringing. He lived in squats and drank and fought and became enmeshed in a strange slice of working class, punk rock street culture. Overnight he found bodybuilding and effortlessly adopted all the disciplined bodybuilding elements into his life. Within a few years of commencing the strange sport, he was winning nationally; within five years he was winning internationally. Dorian trained in the dank solitude of his beloved Temple Gym. While Yates loved the training, he found the actual bodybuilding competitions somewhat bothersome. Competition was a necessary fact-of-life: money was made and the bodybuilding shows and seminars served as demarcations: a periodic issuance of a physical report card.
He was never too keen on being judged by others. Being the prototypical Alpha Male, a warrior-type, Yates used upcoming competitions to psyche himself upward, into further elevated levels. His training sessions were dramatic. He used the competitive smack talk of his competitors to further amplify his own efforts. He was the best in the world for a long, long time. Competing was something he needed to do in order to refill the financial coffers and continually expanded his fan base. Left to his own devices, The Diesel likely would have stay holed up in his dank gym, ever refining and improving, needing no one's approval, other than his own. He was the type of man that could be completely happy bodybuilding in total obscurity. One time a year Dorian would put on a set of posing trunks and stride onstage at the Mr. Olympia competition: he would lumber into that white hot spotlight and receive thunderous applause as he posed to music. It was a strange way to make a lucrative living.
Nowadays, Dorian Yates is a decade retired: at age 47 he is super fit, upbeat, and sharp as a box of razor blades. Dorian was, is and forever shall be, a Man, with a capitol M. He is obviously someone completely at ease within his own skin. In his competitive days he wore an ever-present glower and was surrounded by a fearsome posse; nowadays he has successfully morphed himself into a kinder/gentler version of Dorian Yates. He splits his time between various projects and enterprises: he travels to the United States nearly every month. He has launched his new DY line of uber-potent, over-the-counter nutritional supplements. These products promise to set the new standards insofar as supplemental potency and excellence. Anyone that knows Dorian knows that one thing he would never consider would be putting his name on a product that was not the finest, most potent and the most effective nutritional supplement available anywhere.
His reputation is based on his image: a strong persona, an uncompromising individual from a hard scrabble background: this man pulled him up by his own (Doc Marten) bootstraps to become the best bodybuilder in the world. He became famous and stayed at the tip-top of his athletic profession for a long, long time. He now orchestrates his mini-empire from different locations and jets around the world: he might be putting on seminars on any one of five continents; he might be meeting with advisors and investors; he might be engaged in a photo shoot for Muscular Development magazine - with whom he has an exclusive magazine contract - he might be putting in time at his website. He might be engaging with business types in the morning and having power lunches later that same day. Yet he always makes time in the evening to work, one-on-one, with some aspiring local bodybuilder.
Incongruously, the Birmingham Hard Man spends a week per month in New Jersey. Dorian resides in an upscale suburb of western New York City. Dorian and I have known each other for over a decade, dating back to his reign as Mr. Olympia and my days as a Boss Body-part editor and Olympia feature writer for Muscle & Fitness magazine. At that time M&F was the largest selling fitness mag in the world. I did several articles on Yates and got to know him professionally. He was kind enough to give me a great review on my Ed Coan book. Dorian liked The Purposeful Primitive at lot, calling it, "As good a book on the art and science of physical development as any that I have ever read - anywhere, ever!" High Praise from Caesar.
When Dorian began frequenting Jersey, it seemed only natural that I jump in my jeep and head there from neighboring Pennsylvania. He graciously invited me up one weekend to kick around some business ideas and to observe one of his seminars: we met and caught up and decided to work together on some future projects. On the day of the seminar, we were walking out of diner when the photo of he and I was taken. My wife saw it and said, "Wow - you two guys look like a couple of grizzled cowboys - you guys look like you should be riding horses and fighting rustlers on the TV western saga, Lonesome Dove." I guess that makes me Robert Duval and Dorian is Tommy Lee Jones.
His seminar was low-key and all business. The seminar started off with the briefest of introductions. He immediately threw open the floor for questions. As he put it, "Rather than bore you with a bunch of theories and ideas on what may or may not apply to you and your particular situation, let's straightaway get to some individualized questions: ask me about your specific problems. I can be of maximum benefit to you by answering as many questions as possible." He touched on issues of technique, how to break out of a stagnant period, nutrition, supplementation, workout construction, set and rep strategies and every manner and type of training situation. Yates uses the visual 'learn the lift by looking' approach when discussing technique: Why verbally describe a proper incline bench press or how best to correctly perform stiff-leg deadlifts when you can learn far more by watching as Dorian demonstrates perfect, proper technique. He discussed rep speed, tempo, range-of-motion, position and breathing, he peppered his visual demonstrations with concise verbal instruction.
Dorian gave me an unintentional lesson in nutrition the morning of the seminar. We agreed to meet for brunch at a small pizza joint next to the seminar site. I arrived early, went in and sized up the fare: pizza, calzones, hot dogs, fries and submarine sandwiches dominated the menu. I thought, "When in Rome..." so I ordered two slices of white (no tomato sauce) pizza, loaded with fresh garlic and covered with fontina cheese. Delicious. Dorian walked in and when the waiter/owner came over to take his order, Dorian started talking with the guy in the nicest, clearest way...
"I was wondering if we (Dorian was with his smoking hot South American girlfriend) might be able to order some grilled chicken breast?" There was none on the menu.
Why yes we can scare up some skinless white meat chicken and grill it up.
"Could you grill that in as little olive oil as possible?"
Why of course we could, you nice English-accented giant person.
"Might we also have some pass-ta? Perhaps with some homemade marinara sauce - could you make some sauce from scratch? I bet you make excellent sauce."
Why yes we do kind sir, we call it 'gravy' in Jersey and it is delicious.
"And perhaps you might also be able to provide us with two large garden salads?"
Oh certainly Mr. Cosmos! Of course!
By simply asking in a nice way (the accent helps) Dorian obtained a healthy meal in a roadside dive. I'm ingesting 100 grams of the worst type of saturated fat and Dorian has managed to eat a perfect diet meal, by appealing to the owner's culinary pride and ability.
"The guy on the right is 5-10 and 230 - so how big is that other dude?"
Grill Man, all 6-4 and 350 pounds of him, makes a rare appearance.
Grill Man visited this past August. He is a man-mountain underground strength legend and rarely leaves his Arizona desert abode. A Pennsylvania native by birth, Grill had come home to visit his parents on their 50th wedding anniversary. They live (and Grill grew up) in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where most of my Mennonite farmer friends live. He slipped away from the family festivities one morning and headed over to my place for a visit. We decided to kick things off by taking a road trip to round up some grub. Our first order of business was beef: we cruised the picturesque countryside in search of stores and shacks and farms that would sell us the seasonally appropriate produce and the corn-fed Black Angus beef we both craved.
We hit all my secret roadside vegetable stands, the farms that sold produce picked that day. We stopped by my butcher shop and had John the Butcher cut us some fabulous rib steaks, he sliced off our steaks from a giant standing rib roast, aged for 28 day aged, pure perfection. We got back to my house, off-loaded the provisions and headed back outside to take a high speed power-walk around the farm. We lumbered around the mountainous terrain for several hours, hiking fast on the flat sections alongside the winding trout stream that cuts though the gulley between two mini-mountains. We headed up a series of steep, treacherous, narrow pathways and switchbacks, some sixty feet off the ground and 18 inches wide. I was petrified that Grill's shoulders were going scrape the right wall so hard that he would flip himself over the ledge. Perhaps he would do a triple-lindy and land on his feet before he hit the boulder field.
Grill walked "The Billy Goat Trail" with great care: he had to twist sideways and he needed to keep his size 15 feet completely to the right. If he spaced out he would slip and fall a long way down before hitting a pile of boulders. "No 911 out here Grill." I kept repeating to him as we successfully ascended the goat trail. Eventually it emptied out onto the high mountain cornfield. He had broken a profuse sweat; this was due to the presence of moisture in the air. GrillMan lives on a moonscape back in the Arizona desert. Grill is also very private: it is rumored that he lives in an adobe mud hut on the outskirts of rural Phoenix. Supposedly he and fellow muscle mystic, Donatello "Nacho" Del Grande, fell in with a clique of Navaho Shaman. Is Grill knee-deep in an ancient, aboriginal, peyote/sweat lodge religious culture? I have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty. Anyway, that's the rumor. Grill doesn't travel far and he doesn't travel often. I gave folks a brief glimpse of Grill World in the chapter entitled, "Spawning Season" in my episodic iron odyssey, The Purposeful Primitive.
Grill is a 6-four, 350-pound Man Mountain. Grill, like Dorian, is 47 years old. Both struck me as excellent (yet opposite) role models for men pushing 50. Big Grill is a strongman and is still rolling hard and still pursing all-time best lifts. Dorian is done with all that. Grill stays competitive because he has the drive. The terrific thing about pure strength sports is that they don't rely on foot speed, agility or quickness. Strength proficiency can be attained, maintained, retained and even improved upon, late into life. Men can progress in lifting and bodybuilding at a relatively advanced age. Frank Zane captured Mr. Olympia titles starting at age 45.
On our "pre-meal walk" we walked our legs off and headed home, ending up in my country kitchen, making lunch. The idea was to fuel up after our cardio and before deadlifts. I grilled the GrillMan a two pound hunk of marble-laden Black Angus rib-steak: pure bovine perfection. I sautéed a pile of local produce: peeled carrots, red onions, garlic, leeks and fresh spinach leaves...I topped these sautéed vegetables with a layer of rich local goat cheese and baked this vegetable/cheese concoction in the oven until a crisp, cheesy crust appeared. Grill emitted telltale groans of culinary ecstasy as he ate everything in sight. He indicated that the steak was perfect, the vegetables potent, and the whole meal properly prepared and appreciated.
The heat in my garage gym was 90-degrees. The August humidity and the two hour power walk were affecting the GrillMan: here is a man whose normal living conditions approximates that of living in the heat generated by a giant hairdryer. Today he felt as if he was lifting in a steam room. He hit low rep deadlift sets, ad infinitum. We discussed technique after every set. We talked training tactics; for example, "Does not improved technical execution result in improved performance?" Why yes it does. "Thus, would not improved deadlift technique manifest itself as an increase in poundage and/or additional reps?" Certainly. "Would not extra poundage and/or additional reps convert into increased muscle hypertrophy leading ultimately to increased available power for deadlifting?" Oh course.
Grill has an analytical mind: he is a man on a mission and quizzed me mercilessly. What about benefits and drawbacks of new and different hand, foot and torso positions? How best does one deal with the conflict of performing both heavy squats and deadlifts in the same training week? On and on it went. Grill is all about obtaining an 800 pound deadlift. He wanted me to check out of his deadlift technique: he was seeking some technical pointers that might help him in some small way on his way to that official 800 pound pull. Our mutual deadlift consensus was that his technique was rock solid and he was technically proficient - however, due to certain structural realities and ingrained habits (insofar as his start position) we decided to devise an auxiliary exercise, one designed to maximally tax his "hip hinge."
The giant Grill could "finish" any deadlift. His weak zone was from the floor to his knees. He is so big he must commence his pull with his back nearly parallel to the floor. In order to increase his "hinge opening power" we devised a crazed "assistance exercise." Grill would perform a classical deadlift with a (relatively) light weight. He would deadlift the light weight while simultaneously having a "no hands" safety squat bar perched on his neck. By having resistance in his hands, the deadlift, and by having additional resistance on his neck, the safety squat bar, his hinge would be maximally overloaded. Theoretically this sophisticated weirdness would 'convert' into more power available for the initial hinge-opening phase. This crazy exercise should create new strength in a weak zone and (eventually) convert into newfound power that would allow Grill to pull 800.
