Dorian Yates built one of the most feared physiques in bodybuilding history. Even he had a breaking point with dumbbells.

The six-time Mr. Olympia opened up in a recent Instagram post about a practical problem that came with getting that strong. And that was simply getting the weights into position for shoulder presses.

“As I grew stronger and stronger, it became awkward and quite dangerous to actually just get those 160lb dumbbells into place; it wasn’t practical,” stated Yates in the caption.

At that point, the exercise stopped being about muscle and started being about risk.

Yates had already experimented with behind-the-neck barbell presses back in the mid-1980s. But eventually he landed on a different solution entirely: switching to a Smith machine press performed in front of the head.

“I had done behind the neck press with a barbell back in the mid 1980s, so I switched my pressing exercise to the Smith machine, but in front and not behind,” said Yates in the caption of his Instagram video. “It felt great; there was no issue with setting up, and plus it allowed me to do extra intensity techniques such as rest pause, which we used often.”

The change solved multiple problems at once. There was no more wrestling the weight into position, and the fixed bar path let him push closer to true failure with far more control. 

It also opened the door to one of his favorite intensity techniques: rest-pause sets, something nearly impossible to do safely with 160-pound dumbbells but simple on a machine where the bar could be racked mid-set.

Dorian Yates’ take on rest-pause training

Dorian Yates doesn't just use rest-pause training. He built his legend on it.

The six-time Mr. Olympia has long relied on the technique as one of his go-to training principles for pushing muscles past their natural point of failure, especially when a training partner isn't around to help.

The method is simple in structure but brutal in execution. As per a Muscle and Fitness article by Yates himself, he gave an example of the military press. The premise is simple. He pushed the Smith machine military presses to failure, typically around the eighth rep. Instead of ending the set there, he stays seated and rests for 10 seconds to recoup just enough strength.

From there, he presses out one more rep, rests another 10 seconds, and grinds out a final rep before finishing.

"Rest-pause is a terrific strength builder, especially if you don't have a reliable training partner to help you with forced reps," Yates said.

The technique became a hallmark of his training style, later showing up prominently in his 1996 Blood & Guts workout footage on the Smith machine, where the fixed bar path made it safer to rack and pause mid-set.

For Yates, rest-pause has always been about squeezing extra intensity out of a set once straight reps run out, without needing a spotter to make it happen.

Do you think Yates made the right call switching to machines at that strength level? Let us know in the comments.

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Written by

Zaid Quraishi

Edited by

Zaid Quraishi