In bodybuilding, you’ll often hear a handful of bodybuilders being the greatest of their eras. However, six-time Mr. Olympia winner Dorian Yates is not only one of the finest of the mass monster era but also the one who pioneered this epochal era. With Lee Haney retiring, the Golden era of bodybuilding came to a close. While Yates had looked like the successor in Haney’s final year as champion, the English man became more than that.

After the eight-time Mr. Olympia retired, Dorian Yates ascended to the Olympia throne and intended to keep it. However, Yates had several challengers, including Kevin Levrone, Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, and Nasser El Sonbaty. The first Mr. Olympia from England soon realized that to keep the crown, he would have to stay ahead of the pack. Thus began The Shadow’s quest to become the biggest and most shredded bodybuilder on the stage. The bodybuilding legend took conditioning to such an extreme that everyone had to play catch-up.

Dorian Yates was literally shredded to the bone

In 1991, Dorian Yates had set himself apart from the eight-time Mr. Olympia’s other challengers with his sheer muscle mass. While they didn’t have a rematch in 1992, the English bodybuilding icon improved his size and conditioning in the following years. However, it wasn’t until 1993 that The Shadow transformed into a true mass monster, who was also shredded to the bone.

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In an interview with London Reel, the bodybuilding icon recounted an incident during a Mr. Olympia. Yates said that while walking on the wooden floor backstage, he felt a sharp pain under the balls of his feet. Fellow competitors enquired if his legs were cramping, not knowing where he was feeling the pain. Muscle cramps aren’t uncommon since bodybuilders dehydrate themselves before competition.

However, the bodybuilding champion said that his legs were fine. “I went to my anatomy book,” said Yates to figure out what might be wrong with his feet. “Under your heel and the ball of your feet, you have a pad of cushioning,“ said the bodybuilder. The layer of cushioning is made out of fat. However, Yates explained that he got so lean that the fat cushion thinned out and hurt his feet.

“I was walking on bones backstage,” confessed the bodybuilding legend. Incredibly, this wasn’t the only evidence of how shredded the English champion got to compete at the Olympia.

The scariest face in bodybuilding?

During the same interview, Yates said he got so lean before a bodybuilding contest that his “face scared everyone.” Coincidentally, the sunken-in face that a bodybuilder achieves right before a show is called the death face. Yates lived up to that moniker because people could literally see the outline of his skull on the day before the competition and onstage.

The bodybuilding icon said that you could see the “sinews“ in his face and make out his “jaw bone.” While his challengers were catching up to Dorian Yates in terms of conditioning, no one could achieve this level of conditioning yet. The bodybuilder also said “competitors today,” rarely achieve that look. In fact, he even shared how one can understand how shredded a bodybuilder is by just seeing their face.

“If a guy is a bit puffy… you know he is off,” said the six-time Mr. Olympia champion. In the bodybuilding community, fans often use the term ’90s conditioning’ to describe how bodybuilders today lack the bone-dry look. Dorian Yates is the reason that the term exists. However, the champion from Birmingham had good reason to get so muscular yet lean.

Why did the bodybuilding icon get so shredded?

Yates had a relatively larger waist at 34 inches compared to those who came before him. The bodybuilding legend also knew that aesthetics weren’t his strong suit. So he leaned into the advantages he had. Standing at 5’10, the former Mr. Olympia wasn’t the tallest bodybuilder on stage. However, he was the heaviest bodybuilder to ever step on stage in the early 90s.

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Yates would bulk to over 300 lbs during the off-season before cutting down a shredded 270 lbs onstage. While Ronnie Coleman would surpass Yates in the late 90s and 2000s, clocking in at 300 lbs on stage, the former champion was the reason Coleman even needed to get that big. While Coleman became bigger and arguably got even leaner, it was Yates who led bodybuilding in a new direction.

“Was Like a Walking Skull”: 6X Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates Admits How His Ripped to Bones Look During Olympia Days Was Scary for Most People