The Dorian Yates Secret: What Are Thin People Doing To Be That Thing?
A consensus has emerged within the bodybuilding world over the last twenty years regarding the exact ways and procedures necessary to become as lean as humanly possible while retaining muscle mass. Across the country and the world, bodybuilders are lifting weights, doing aerobics, and eating disciplined to melt away body fat. While they may question the content of the workout or the food selections, they may argue about which cardio mode is superior, what they don’t argue about is the overall procedures.
The blunt fact is that anyone with a manic discipline can achieve a radically lower body fat percentage: they need to lift weights like a labor camp detainee and do metabolism-boosting cardio with Big Ben regularity. They pre-plan every bite they eat. If he is in control of himself, the environment and life circumstances and can exercise the necessary discipline and denial, he too can achieve a super low body fat percentile. He requires that food, exercise, and rest be in perfect symmetrical proportion.
The procedures bodybuilders use to lose fat are absolutely the best and most effective if the stated goal is to reduce body fat and retain or actually add muscle. To win at bodybuilding above all else, you have to be skinny. If you’re not skinny, you’re doomed to nothing, and unless you have less than 10% body fat percentage (for a man), don’t even consider entering a local meet – you’d be blown into the weeds. In the world of bodybuilding everyone is supposed to be skinny otherwise they wouldn’t be there, winners are determined by symmetry and muscle mass.
So how do all these bodybuilders routinely attain body fat percentiles of 3-9%, a degree of fitness unattainable by all but the elite 25 years ago? It was a confluence of events. The fall of the Iron Curtain allowed all the bottled information about training to leak west: this was the beginning of the information revolution that culminated in the advent of the Internet. A quantum leap in leanness occurred when bodybuilders began to systematically include cardiovascular exercises in the training regimen. Cardio was supposed to ‘destroy muscle,’ but in fact, cardio not only burned extra calories but also improved endurance, allowing athletes to train harder, longer, and more often. Aerobic exercises resulted in a huge improvement across the board, as intense cardio burns calories and metabolism remains elevated hours afterward. Cardio timing tricks improved results.
Bodybuilders began to use weightlifter training tactics to grow. When bodybuilders started increasing calories to support intense training and the newly added cardio, a funny thing happened: They didn’t get fat. They got bigger. They became more muscular. Incongruously, they also grew thinner. They found that they could eat a lot of calories as long as the calories came from approved food sources. Calorie intake was distributed over several meals eaten at even time intervals throughout the day. Top professionals consumed 7,000 to 10,000 calories a day to maintain 270 to 320 pounds of “off-season” muscle mass. Dorian Yates told me that he would go from a 300 pound to a 260 pound contest by subtly reducing his calories from 6,000 to 3,500 per day. He tapered off gradually, taking 12 weeks to peak. If he went below 3,500 calories, his hard-earned muscle would evaporate. At 290, Dorian could walk his Doberman twins at top speed and achieve an age-related heart rate of 80%. He was famous for lifting barbell push-ups, but his food selections were surprisingly “normal.”
Typical daily meal schedule – pre-competition phase
3500 calories – 50% – 55% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 15% – 20% fat
7 am
Food 1,500 grams of oatmeal, 6 egg whites, 2 yolks, 2 slices of toasted wholemeal bread, banana
10 a.m.
Meal 2 mid-morning 40 grams of protein (powder mixed with water), 300 grams of potato
13:00
Food 3,200 grams of chicken breast, 100 grams of rice, 100 grams of mixed vegetables
16:00
Meal 4 40 grams of protein, banana
18:00
Meal 5 post-workout 70 grams carbohydrate powder, 30 grams protein powder
19:00
Meal 6,200 grams of extra lean beef, 300 grams of baked potato, 200 grams of broccoli
22:00
Meal 7 40 grams of protein powder, 50 grams of oatmeal
This is Dorian’s pre-competition trimmed diet (eating at its strictest), but this menu doesn’t seem inhumane. The key is the type of food, the time of ingestion and the mixture of the different foods. Everything within the diet is selected and prepared and placed for a specific reason.
For example; the first meal of the day is delayed until you complete your early morning cardio session. Glycogen, which comes out of the sleep/fast cycle, is depleted, at which point body fat is mobilized to fuel the aerobic session. Once the cardio session is complete, it replenishes depleted carbohydrate stores to reduce controlled catabolism. Throughout the day, at equal time intervals, eat. Every two or three hours he refuels in some way. Establishes and maintains a continuous anabolism. Meals are made up of a protein serving, a fiber carbohydrate serving, and a starchy carbohydrate serving. Fiber slows the insulin released by starchy carbohydrates; protein also does to a lesser degree.
Dorian kept his fat intake at a realistic level (for a professional bodybuilder) of 15-20% of total calories. He trained in the afternoon and as soon as he finished his brutal training session, he replenished his body with exactly what he needed in the form of a protein and carbohydrate shake. He wanted to retain as much of his incredible muscle mass as possible and not consume a single calorie more than necessary to do so! By staying in caloric balance and using the caloric cost of exercise to create a negative energy balance, fat was systematically burned to cover the caloric deficit. He would maintain this methodical regulation for 12 weeks straight, every day, without a single break. To reduce your body fat level to 2-3% on the day of competition, you would maintain a decent amount of calories in the face of a drastic increase in physical activity: more cardio, more lifting, longer sessions with weight designed to burn and give shape to final muscle detail: the bulk build phase ended months ago.
It is about melting the last vestiges of fat from the body without destroying the mass. Razor’s edge. There is no room for mistakes or momentary failures in discipline: in these levels, those who fail end up in 17th place. He eats food throughout the day: he still eats fruit, beef and potatoes. Hardly the gulag fare… this approach works – as attested by bodybuilders around the world who are getting body fat percentiles below 10% across the board using a template similar to that used by The Diesel.
If you have the circumstances and the discipline, a soft version of this hard approach could work wonders.