Dorian Yates won six Mr. Olympia titles training in a basement gym in Birmingham with a temperamental shower and mushrooms growing out of the wall. In this clip from his 2018 London Real interview, he tells Brian Rose how he got into the zone for those famously intense workouts, where that intensity came from, and why his old gym had an atmosphere that could never be recreated.
▶ Watch the full episode: Dorian Yates – Evolution Of The Shadow
Training in a bubble
Yates says that even now, when he trains someone, people notice he goes into the same zone. It is just him, his training partner and the weights. He creates a bubble so complete that people he knows can walk in without catching his eye.
Back in his competitive days, the gym opened at midday, so he would train late in the morning and be finished before most members arrived. He had the place to himself.
Tunnel vision before he arrived
The focus started at home. Before driving to the gym, he would sit somewhere quiet, go through his training journals and set a clear target. If he had done a weight for seven reps last week, today’s goal was eight. He visualised the exercises, the order, even the clothes he would wear. “Tunnel vision,” as he puts it.
He would also ask himself how much it mattered: was the goal more important than the temporary discomfort or fear of getting under a heavy weight? The answer was always yes. Walking into a gym with no goal and wandering around, he says, will not get you very far.
Controlled aggression
The most revealing part of the clip is where he talks about the energy behind his training. It was almost like violence, he says, and he now thinks he was drawing on anger from his childhood. Rather than letting it spill out onto other people, he channelled it into his sets. Between sets he would pace like an animal, but quietly: “It was inside like a fire.”
The result, he says, was that he came home calm. Looking back, he describes it as a kind of alchemy: taking deep, often hidden negative emotions and turning them into something useful. At the time, he just called it focus and energy.
Temple Gym
Yates then describes the gym itself. Down a narrow staircase, it felt like descending into hell, and many people were too intimidated to go in. There was no reception committee, just a grunt from the man behind the counter, a table and chairs, a changing room with a shower that worked sometimes, and a toilet with no seat.
And that, he says, was the point. It was a working gym, not a cosmetic one. Coming from a working-class background, having worked in a slaughterhouse and on construction sites, he and his training partners were used to getting dirty. “It’s about work. It’s about sweat,” he says. After years of hardcore training, he believes the place carried that energy, and people could feel it as soon as they walked in.
The original gym has since closed and moved to a new location. Yates admits it was a shame, but says problems with the building and the landlord told him it was time to move on. Nothing lasts forever, he reflects.
What to take from it
Strip away the bodybuilding and his method is simple: decide on a specific goal before you start, protect your focus, and find a healthy outlet for difficult emotions.
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 at his Temple Gym in Birmingham and became famous for short, very intense HIT workouts. Since retiring he has turned to yoga, meditation and plant medicine.
This clip comes from Evolution Of The Shadow, his 2018 London Real episode. London Real also made a feature film about his life, Inside The Shadow, which you can watch free.
See everything Dorian Yates has done with London Real on his guest page: Dorian Yates on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Dorian Yates – How He Got Into The Zone: Tunnel Vision And Controlled Aggression
0:00 Dorian Yates: People comment that if I’m training somebody in the gym now, I’m in the same zone. I’m with them. It’s me and you in the gym, Brian. F*ck this sh*t, there’s nothing else here. There’s me and you and the weights. Let’s do it. And I create this bubble around me, and people can walk into a gym who know me, and they can’t even catch my eye. I don’t even know they’re there until after, when they’re like: hey man. I’m in a bubble.
0:21 Dorian Yates: So I created a bubble. And there were not a lot of people in the gym when I was there. It was my own gym. It might seem funny now, when gyms are open from five or six in the morning, or even 24 hours, but we used to open at midday, 12 o’clock till eight in the evening. That was kind of average. So I used to go and train at 10.30, 11 o’clock in the morning, so by the time people were coming in at 12 o’clock, I was pretty much wrapped up. I had the gym to myself.
0:47 Dorian Yates: And I’d be totally focused before I got there. Tunnel vision. I’d already visualised what I was going to do: which exercise, which order, which clothes I was going to wear. Visualise myself on the bench. Look at my training journal. Last week I did X amount for seven reps, so that’s today’s goal: beat that, get eight reps. So I had a goal very firm in my mind when I was going there, which is important. Go in the gym with no goal and just wander around, and you’re not going to get very far.
1:22 Dorian Yates: And then I had this energy that was almost like violence. Probably I used a lot of anger that I had in me from my childhood and so on, I don’t know. But instead of it going all over the f*cking place, in people’s faces, creating problems for me and everybody else, it was all internalised, and then it went into those sets, into those weights. So in between sets you’d see me almost pacing up and down like an animal. But it was controlled aggression. I didn’t make a lot of noise. It was inside, like a fire, and I just put all that into the workout. So I was pretty calm by the time I got home. I didn’t want to rip anyone’s head off or anything. It was all out in the gym. That was helpful for me.
2:20 Dorian Yates: The anger thing is something that I’m probably more conscious of now than I was then. Then I just called it focus and energy. But I was using probably some negative emotions, though not negative for me. They could have been, but I was getting them out, so now they’re not negative anymore. It becomes like an alchemy. You’re changing those negative things, the traumas, things you’re not happy with, which most of the time are very deep anyway. They’re not on the surface where you can recognise them. They’re deep down, and you’re pulling them out.
2:51 Dorian Yates: So yeah, before I drove to the gym, I used to sit down in a quiet space in my house and go through my journals: see what I’d done, what the goals were. How important is this to you? Is it more important than the temporary discomfort or fear you might have of getting under this weight or whatever? Yes, absolutely. So I’d firm up in my mind exactly what I was going to do when I went to the gym. I’d get there, I’d see my training partner: what’s up? Let’s go. [unclear] Oh, how’s the wife? What happened last night? Did you see this on TV? No, no, [unclear].
3:29 Dorian Yates: After the workout, yeah, we used to do that: bullsh*t, hang around with the guys. You know how it is in the gym. It was a very male, macho environment, especially then. There were just a couple of brave girls who used to come down the gym because they wanted to train properly. And they wouldn’t have f*cking Lycra on with their ass hanging out and everything like now, which is nice to look at, but you don’t need the distraction. So there’d be a few girls there sometimes, but mainly it was just guys, and it was a very macho place.
3:58 Dorian Yates: People were scared to come down there, because you had to go down these narrow stairs, like descending into hell or something, and they’d just hear these noises and the weights. A lot of people wouldn’t even go there. They’re like: no, I can’t go there. It was a bit of an illusion, because once you got there it’d be all right. But it was a pretty scary place, and not very friendly, because I didn’t give a sh*t about the gym making money. This is my place where I train. If you want to come and train here and pay your fees, you’re very welcome to. But don’t expect a reception committee or anything like that. You might get a grunt from the guy behind the counter, and that’s it.
4:35 Dorian Yates: And the gym had an amazing atmosphere because of all that. People used to walk down there and feel like: f*ck, let’s train, man. I mean, was there anything else to do there? There was a table with a couple of chairs where you could have your protein or something, and a little counter. The rest was just a changing room with a shower that worked sometimes, and a toilet with no seat on. And we actually had mushrooms growing out of the wall and everything. But it was great. We loved it like that. We didn’t want a nice place to go to. It’s about work. It’s about sweat. It’s not nice, it’s not shiny, it’s not cosmetic. It’s work, man.
5:15 Dorian Yates: I came from a working-class background. I worked in a slaughterhouse, I worked on construction sites. You get dirty. It’s work, man. So we were used to that stuff. So yeah, it was a very special place. Unfortunately it’s no longer there. The building’s there, but the gym’s not there; it’s relocated to another location. But people used to come down there, and I’m like: yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve f*cking done that, man. I’ve embedded this place with ten years of super hardcore training. So people felt that.
5:49 Dorian Yates: And they used to say that if you go away from the gym for a few weeks, the energy level starts dropping down, and then when you come back again, it’s like: boom. So it was a very special place for me. And even a lot of people to this day are like: man, that was just a special place and a special period of time. Somehow it was inevitable that it had to close, because you can’t preserve that. There’s a certain time and atmosphere, and nothing lasts forever. You’re trying to preserve something that doesn’t really exist so much anymore. So it was a shame that I had to let it go. But there were a lot of problems with the place, the building and the landlord and everything. In the end, everything was telling me: this is just time to move on from this.
