Dorian Yates

Dorian Yates was born 19 April 1962 in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, England. He is an English professional bodybuilder. He won the Mr. Olympia title six consecutive times from 1992 to 1997. He is widely considered one of the top athletes in modern bodybuilding history. He was raised in Hurley, in rural Staffordshire. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Birmingham. He started working out in 1983. Yates' professional record consists of 15 major contest wins and two second-place finishes. Yates' career ended in large part due to chronic acute injuries, including torn biceps and triceps, the latter just three weeks prior to his final contest, the 1997 Mr. Olympia contest, which he won in spite of the injury. Yates espoused a style of training known as HIT "High Intensity Training", which states that maximum muscle stimulation can be reached through short, high-intensity workout sessions rather than long duration workouts. The training style was originally popularized by Mike Mentzer. Yates earned the nickname of "The Shadow" for his tendency to unexpectedly appear at major bodybuilding contests and win, despite having remained out of the public eye for long periods beforehand. He was reported to have turned down several large supplement endorsement contracts and avoided interviews and other television publicity in order to maintain privacy. In 1987, Yates purchased Temple Gym, located on Temple Street in Birmingham. In 2006, he franchised four additional Temple Gym locations, three of which are in the UK. Yates formed the California-based company Heavy Duty Incorporated in 1994 with Mike Mentzer and Ray Mentzer. The company marketed athletic apparel and bodybuilding-related books. In 1998, Yates partnered with Kerry Kayes to form the bodybuilding supplement company CNP Professional, which marketed a Dorian Yates Approved product line in the United States. He left the company in 2006 to form his own company, Dorian Yates Ultimate Formulas, which offers a line of protein and weight-gain supplements. He started a second company in 2010, EU Peptides, which sells pep-tide hormones and other pro-hormone supplements. In 2011, he founded a third company, DY Nutrition, which specializes in preworkout formulas and has released several training DVDs. He left EU Peptides in 2012. In recent years, he has conducted several seminar tours internationally to discuss nutrition and his experiences in bodybuilding. He offers training videos and written commentary on his official website. In 2015 he produced the documentary All I Know is Pain.