Six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates has never pretended his physique was built on chicken and rice alone. In this short London Real clip, he talks openly about steroids: why bodybuilders get hooked on them, what happened to his body when he stopped, and why he has been on testosterone replacement ever since.
It’s a rare first-hand account from the top of the sport, and it’s worth hearing before anyone, at any level, decides to “step on that merry-go-round”.
▶ Watch the full episode: Dorian Yates – Return Of The Shadow
The psychology comes first
Yates starts with the mind, not the body. A lot of people come to bodybuilding out of insecurity, he says. They want to feel bigger, stronger and more powerful, and steroids let them take that further. The danger is what happens when your identity depends on it: if your whole sense of self is built on how big you are, you will never want to stop.
He is honest that coming off is hard. You can’t hold that level of development without the hormones, and he describes both “a physical crash” and “a mental crash” afterwards. His advice is simple: think about all of that before you start.
What happened when he stopped
When Yates retired from competition in 1997, his approach was, as he puts it, black and white: he just stopped. He admits that was “not the wisest decision.”
His natural testosterone was very low. He and his wife at the time were thinking about another child, and his sperm count was close to zero. It took around 18 months to two years before their daughter was conceived. Even then, at 36 or 37, his testosterone never came back into the normal range. Steroid use had suppressed his body’s own production, so he chose to start testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).
His view on testosterone and ageing
Yates still takes it, and argues that for many middle-aged men, keeping testosterone in a normal range is better for long-term health. He mentions research linking low testosterone to heart disease and other conditions of ageing, and a UK doctor promoting male hormone replacement.
This is Yates sharing his own experience and opinion, not medical advice. TRT is a prescription treatment with its own risks, and the evidence on its wider benefits is still debated. If you are worried about your hormone levels, the starting point is a blood test and a conversation with your doctor.
From subculture to the high school gym
Brian Rose closes by asking whether steroids are now too easy to get, for teenagers and casual gym-goers as well as bodybuilders. Yates remembers how closed that world was when he started: asking around his gym, he got the brush-off from guys who said they didn’t take anything. It was, he says, “like an inner circle” you had to break into. The contrast with today’s easy access is the point.
Who is Dorian Yates?
Dorian Yates won the Mr. Olympia title six years in a row, from 1992 to 1997, and is one of the most successful British bodybuilders of all time. Known as “The Shadow”, he trained out of his Temple Gym in Birmingham and became famous for short, brutally intense HIT workouts. Since retiring he has turned to yoga, meditation and plant medicine, and is a regular London Real guest.
This clip comes from his second London Real interview, Return Of The Shadow. London Real also made a feature film about his life, which you can watch free: Dorian Yates – Inside The Shadow (full movie).
See every Dorian Yates episode on his guest page: Dorian Yates on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Dorian Yates – Steroids, Testosterone & Ageing: What Happened When He Stopped
0:00 Dorian Yates: If I had not continued with my professional bodybuilding career at that critical point, I wouldn’t have taken steroids. And there’s a psychological side to it, a psychological addiction to steroids perhaps. There may be more than psychological, maybe it’s slightly physical as well.
0:20 Dorian Yates: A lot of people get into this sport because of insecurity. They don’t feel good, and they want to build up, to feel stronger and more powerful, and steroids allow you to take that to the next level. So if your whole sense of self is built on how big and muscular you are, you’re never going to want to stop taking them, because you’re going to lose that.
0:49 Dorian Yates: You can’t keep that level of development when you stop taking those hormones. You will come down to a degree, and there’s going to be a crash: a physical crash and a mental crash. Before you step on that merry-go-round, you need to think about those things.
1:05 Brian Rose: Did you stop right away in ’97, or did you scale back?
1:10 Dorian Yates: My typical approach is black and white, so I pretty much just stopped, which was not the wisest decision. My testosterone levels were very low. I was still married at the time and we were thinking about trying for another child, and my sperm levels were nearly non-existent. After 18 months to two years my daughter was conceived, so things were coming back to normal.
1:40 Dorian Yates: But I was 36 or 37, and my testosterone did not come back into the normal healthy range. It was suppressed, somewhat under. So at that point I decided to take testosterone replacement. If I hadn’t taken steroids, maybe I wouldn’t have had to take it, or maybe it would have been later. So there were some long-term implications: it shut down my own production.
2:04 Brian Rose: Do you still take it?
2:06 Dorian Yates: Yes. For most people, as they get middle-aged, it’s actually better for your health to keep it in that range than to have it low. That’s what they’re finding now: people with low testosterone have more heart disease and more ageing-related diseases, diabetes, arthritis, these kinds of things.
2:25 Dorian Yates: One of the doctors promoting male hormone replacement is from Birmingham. He said he had patients on multiple medications for diabetes, arthritis and different things, and he put them on testosterone replacement and basically got them off all the other medications. So maybe it’s a cheap way for the NHS to avoid all those other medications and the problems that come with ageing-related diseases.
2:55 Brian Rose: Do you think steroids are too easily accessible now, for the high school football player or the girl who wants to get in shape for the beach? There’s too much of it out there. When you started, only bodybuilders took steroids.
3:10 Dorian Yates: Yes, it was like a subculture. It was only in that world, and people outside hadn’t really heard that much about it. I remember when I first started training, I asked a couple of guys in the gym, and they were a bit like, “I don’t know, no, we don’t take them.” It was like an inner circle you had to penetrate to really find out.
