Dorian Yates is among the greatest bodybuilders of all time, and not just for winning the Mr. Olympia title six times. Yates revolutionized the sport in the 1990s when he achieved never-before-seen muscularity and conditioning. Similarly, his successor Ronnie Coleman also pushed the sport of bodybuilding to new levels by leveling the all-time record of winning the most number of Mr. Olympia titles with Lee Haney. However, The Shadow, The King, and Total-Lee Awesome had something that can’t be achieved no matter how hard a bodybuilder works in the gym.
Earlier, the six-time Mr. Olympia uploaded an image on Instagram with King Ronnie Coleman. According to Yates, the photo is a decade old, which means it must have been captured in 2013. By 2013, the bodybuilding legends had retired. However, Yates made an interesting observation that could answer why they dominated the competition during their respective eras.
Two bodybuilding legends inside one frame
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In the photo that The Shadow uploaded, the former Mr. Olympia winners stood beside one another. Coleman and Yates have raised their arms. However, only Yates is showing the “thumbs-up” gesture. While The King is wearing shorts, Yates is wearing denim. The former champion revealed his fascinating observation in the caption.
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“You can notice that we are similar in height being around 5ft 11,” Yates wrote in the caption. However, he also pointed out the similarity between their skeletal structures. “The 8x Mr. O, Lee Haney was also the same height too!” wrote the English bodybuilder. Besides the height and bone structure, the six-time Mr. Olympia also described the aspects of the ideal bodybuilding structure.
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“The ideal structure for bodybuilding includes having longer legs and a shorter torso with wide clavicles. Something all three of us had in common,” wrote the retired champion. While Yates didn’t mention it, the fans know that all three legends also changed the course of bodybuilding history.
The man who wrote broke Arnold Schwarzenegger’s record
In his caption, The Shadow spoke about Lee Haney. While they might share anatomical similarities, Lee Haney had a different approach to bodybuilding. Unlike Dorian Yates, who ushered in the mass monster era, Haney focused more on a balanced physique. While Yates weighed nearly 300 lbs during the off-season and Coleman weighed the same on-stage, the weighing scale showed Haney to be approximately 45 lbs lighter than the other two.
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From 1984 to 1991, Dorian Yates’s predecessor brought incredible conditioning, symmetry, and proportions. Besides muscle mass, Haney also focused on posing—an aspect of bodybuilding that took a back seat with the advent of the mass monsters. Haney broke Arnold Schwarzenegger’s record in 1991, and Ronnie Coleman equaled Haney’s record in 2005.
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What did you think about Dorian Yates’s observation? Let us know in the comments.