Dorian Yates Shoulders & Triceps Workout in 1992

For this blog post, we’re going back in time to May 27th 1992, near the start of his contest prep. We’re going back to the dungeon, the lair of the beast, the legendary venue where in just four months time, a new Mr. Olympia would be crowned.

At 10.30am The Shadow arrives down the narrow alleyway and parks in one of two spaces. Two meals down plus his pre-workout stack of a couple of shots of espresso with ephedrine, (back then there was no Blood & Guts pre-workout except the name!) Dorian was ready. His mind prepared, each aspect of the workout was visualised… down to the exact clothing he’d be wearing! The exact order of the exercises ready, the numbers to beat in his mind, the padlock that kept the portal to the Underworld secured was unlocked…

Down he descended with his training partner, the late Kenny Brown R.I.P with one thing on their minds.

The place was lit up, not a single weight out of place and not a cobweb disturbed either!

It was a proper, functional, hardcore bodybuilding gym; it was just what he needed - it reflected Dorian Yates!

It was the home of Blood & Guts, heavy-duty training.

Now just before we get into the workout itself, it’s important to note that this workout was four years before the famous Blood & Guts video that was released. The exercise selection was slightly different back then for reasons and of course, this was two years before the bicep injury too.

After completing an upper body warm up that includes some light dumbbell exercises such as dumbbell curls and side lateral raises to get the blood flowing, it was up to the dumbbell rack he went.

The bench was placed at almost a 90 degree angle to get maximum stress on the delts for the first exercise of the day, seated dumbbell shoulder press. Now this was a major change in exercise selection because towards the end of 1992, he’d switch to performing his pressing exercise on the smith machine, you’ll understand why in just a moment.

To get the muscles ready for the poundage to come, first up was a ‘light’ set of 70lb dumbbells for a whole 20 reps. As always in a smooth controlled motion where the dumbbells were brought up and slightly inwards to keep the stress on the shoulders and away from the triceps. Second set again was ‘light’ for Dorian with 100lb dumbbells in each hand for 10 reps. Now it’s important to note here as well is that these two warm up sets are taken absolutely nowhere near to muscular failure, the purpose they served was to get the mind and body prepared for the true set to failure.

A minute or so rest and it was time. That one chance to stimulate as much growth as possible, what did he use for this set? 150lb dumbbells.

He’d take one of these giants up to his shoulder and Kenny would pass him the other, then head behind the bench ready to give a spot.

A roar was yelled from the Olympia runner up and each rep served as a step closer and closer to being crowned Mr. Olympia! In the end six reps were achieved with an extra assisted rep.

It’s quite a shame that this exercise wasn’t performed during ‘96 where you would’ve witnessed him using 160lb dumbbells for this exercise. He swapped it for the smith machine later this year because it became too awkward and pretty dangerous to get those mammoth 160lb dumbbells into place before even beginning the exercise!

Next up, seated side lateral raises with dumbbells. He did these seated rather than standing because there’s no momentum being used and the stress is totally on the medial head. Since his delts were already warm and weren’t going to get any warmer, just one warm up set was required.

For Dorian this meant using 45lb dumbbells for this warm up…

He was unbelievably strong across the board. And truth be told, he could have gone heavier on exercises such as barbell rows, incline press, smith machine squats and so on, but it would’ve meant a sacrifice in form and control. For Dorian, this was not an option.

10 reps for his warm up to get the medial head ready for the brutality to come, it was onto his true set to failure. He picked up the 65lb dumbbells, took a deep breath and exploded up to shoulder height and down to his side, resisting the temptation to swing up at the bottom. Each rep was performed with complete control and as failure was reached at around 11 reps, Kenny would step in and assist by pressing his hands against Dorian’s ginormous forearms and pushing up to shoulder height. But the set wasn’t complete yet, he did a few more partial reps until the dumbbells were moving just a few inches! Now that is complete positive muscular failure!

Next up and the final exercise for the delts, another for the medial head to really focus on that cap and emphasise that all important v-taper, it was cable side raises.

Over to the cable crossover station he walked and for this exercise, no warm up set was required.

Now here he went to complete, three phase muscular failure.

He drove the cable up from the bottom to shoulder height and held it for a moment, followed by a slow negative. Using the cables here allows for constant tension on the muscle and this movement was perfect for going beyond failure too.

Nine reps were complete using 50lbs on the cable stack, that’s nine reps to positive portion failure with a couple of assisted reps, but the set was far from over.

Kenny stepped in and drove Dorian’s hand up to shoulder height where The Shadow held it for a moment to tax the static phase of the movement whilst resisting on the way down for another two reps to completely exhaust the negative phase. Utterly total muscular failure!

It’s impossible to do this on each exercise, it just taxes out your central nervous system as well as muscles, so you have to be smart with the exercises you do this on. For Dorian it was only ever on one or maximum two exercises where this extended portion was used.

That’s it, delts done in under 20 minutes, just 3 exercises, one pressing and two lateral raises!

A few minutes to rest and prepare the mind for the next muscle to target, the triceps. Now the triceps were already fairly warm from the first exercise of the workout being dumbbell shoulder press, so usually just one warm up set was required for triceps.

First up for triceps, Nautilus tricep extensions. This exercise was swapped out later this year for single arm cable pushdowns as he felt this isolated the triceps better and reduced strain on the elbow.

This was performed one arm at a time on this machine. He sat down and fired up the right arm first, full range of motion with a big squeeze at the peak contraction for nine reps followed by two forced reps with Kenny for some extra negative reps to completely exhaust the muscle. So one side complete, time to switch to the other!

Just one more triceps exercise was needed for this workout, cable pushdowns with the straight bar. Now these weren’t performed on the cable crossover station, but actually on the lat pulldown station. He found it to be much better, smoother and the resistance well, just felt better. Oh and one thing he always did when doing this exercise, was attach a 20kg plate to a weight belt around his waist to keep him grounded. Especially since he was doing 190lbs on the stack so rather than having to fight gravity and his personal battle with the exercise, it was in his favour to use this aid so he could solely focus on stimulating the hell out of his triceps.

Seven reps where he reached failure plus Kenny assisted with an extra two forced reps.

Five exercises for this workout and shoulders and triceps complete in under 40 minutes. But the workout wasn’t quite finished.

Since Dorian felt that shoulders and triceps didn’t take as much out of him as the other workouts, he decided to do abs at the end of this workout.

So a quick few minutes on abs which consisted of:

2x bodyweight crunches to failure

2x bodyweight reverse crunches to failure

These were done with a hard contraction and a big exhalation of air at the peak contraction. He'd squeeze his abs so hard that they’d be on the verge of cramping almost!

And that ladies and gentlemen is a high-intensity shoulders and triceps from 1992. Stay tuned, chest and biceps is next!

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