The 6x Mr. Olympia Champion Dorian Yates is often remembered as the pioneer of the Mass Monster era. However, even the Mass Monster also encountered a phase of growth plateau in his bodybuilding journey. Eventually, it was veteran bodybuilder Mike Mentzer that came to the rescue and helped him to further escalate the graph of his growth. 

In the recent revelation, Yates shed some light on the contribution of the bodybuilding legend from the 70s in breaking through a growth plateau and taking his training to the next level. 

Yates’s frequency was the resistance

The 6x Mr. Olympia Champion Dorian Yates recently took to social media to share a throwback picture of himself standing alongside veteran bodybuilder Mike Mentzer. In the post, Yates revealed how he followed a training routine that involved performing two working sets to failure for each exercise. While this approach yielded results initially, with time its effects started getting diminished and he ended up hitting a plateau. “I hit a plateau and my system was unable to fully recover.”, Yates wrote. 

The mass monster further revealed that things started to improve after he met Mike Mentzer in LA. Mentzer observed his training pattern and advised him to cut back on the number of sets as its frequency was too high. Yates wrote that he listened to Mentzer’s advice and made a modification to his workout routine. 

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The mass Monster decided to reduce his training volume and focus on a single all-out set for each exercise. This adjustment proved to be a turning point in his training. By maximizing the intensity of that one set, Yates was able to elicit a greater growth response from his muscles. “We had a few workouts together and his advice was spot on, I did indeed experience further growth”, he wrote in the caption. However, the changes helped him to realize other aspects as well. 

Mentzer’s valuable advice changed everything for Dorian Yates

In the post, Yates explained that reducing the number of sets played with his psychology as then he had only one opportunity to put significant stress on his muscles.  This eventually helped him to push his limit further rather than just stopping at the failures. “We went to failure and often beyond, heavy-duty, and finished with rest pauses or assisted reps or extra negatives or sometimes.. a combination of all three!”,  Yates explained. 

The new approach proved to be the game changer for him as he went on to dominate the Mr. Olympia stage for six consecutive years after that. From 1992 to 1997, Yates came out victorious at the grandest stage of all. The legendary bodybuilder often advocates this process of overloading and de-loading from time to time and considers it as the secret of his success.  

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