What Went Down Between Yates and Schwarzenegger?
There are many rivalries in the modern days that we can mention, but the past also has something to offer. Although friendly rivalries can spice up the competitions a bit, the events
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will always gain more hype when bad blood gets involved. One of these past rivalries of the bodybuilding world is somewhat curious. You might have not known, but former
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bodybuilding champions Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dorian Yates seem to have had their fallout in the past.
The interesting thing about it is that they competed in two different eras. So what was the bad blood between them?
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Schwarzeneggers Observations on Yates Skills
The world will listen to what Dorian Yates has to say, after all, he has been a key player in the sport. You may have heard this saying,
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“There are players who play the game, and then there are those who change the game.” The latter is often said about those who come and destroy the competition by changing how spectators look at the sport itself. That is exactly what this bodybuilder from England did when he
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introduced and inspired a new era of bodybuilding in the 90s. Dorian Yates, also known as the Shadow. He made his Olympia debut in 1991 and placed second to the long-standing legend Lee Haney that year before going on to become a legend himself. The next year, he shocked the world
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by growing a monstrous size with vascularity, leanness, and being shredded to the bone. He came out on top with a first-place win at the Olympia the following year in 1992. He literally single-handedly turned the sport of bodybuilding upside down on its head. This English monster
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then dominated the sport until 1997 winning 6 Mr. Olympia titles and 7 Grand Prix titles to himself. He never placed second in a show after his runner-up finishes in 1991, Mr. Olympia. He was nicknamed the Shadow for two reasons. One was that after every win, he would literally
disappear to work in the trenches and come out the next year and beat all his competitors again. Another reason was that he would always be the biggest man in the room!
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Yates, in his prime, was known for his hard work and more uniquely for his training style. He never used to follow the training protocols that the other seasoned bodybuilders used to follow.
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He was an advocate of the HIT or the high-intensity training protocol where he would often just do one set with maximal intensity taken very close to failure. His training is still popularly known as falling in the category of
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blood and guts training. It is also believed that Dorian Yates was the first bodybuilder to make the usage of growth hormone mainstream in the world of bodybuilding and had been constantly criticized by Arnold Schwarzenegger for starting an era of mass monsters where they traded aesthetics for size.