Recently, six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates took to his Instagram handle to reshare a moment from a conversation he had with Joe Rogan nearly eight years ago at 'Joe Rogan Experience #989.'

Speaking to Joe Rogan, Yates explained that bodybuilding is quite different from other sports. Using his own experience as an example, he added, “So maybe it took me 10 years to get to be 260 pounds ripped, but now that information is in my DNA—it’s there.”

He further added, “So I could theoretically not train for 10 years, lose all that muscle, and probably get that back in six to twelve months."

Yates emphasized that even he is not quite sure how muscle memory embeds itself in DNA, but he, along with others in the industry, knows it happens for a good reason.

Yates referred to Arnold’s comeback to bodybuilding after stepping away from the sport following his fifth title to focus on acting.

"I mean, Arnold did it in, like, 1974. I think Arnold was going to retire, but then he got the Pumping Iron movie that everyone’s familiar with. So the 1975 Mr. Olympia—which Pumping Iron revolves around—he basically made a comeback for that, just for the movie."

However, Dorian Yates mandates limited training

The six-time Mr. Olympia believes that proper training is like medicine, and that too heavy a dosage can be harmful to health.

“Too much exercise is not healthy. Look at exercise as a medicine…what’s the effective dose before getting all these side effects?” said Yates.

Overtraining does exist; however, as per science, there’s no threshold for how many hours one should train. Yates believes, “You can achieve the same as you get from doing 45 minutes to an hour…with three 20-second all-out sprints.”

Now 63, the former Mr. Olympia is enjoying his life after dominating the bodybuilding era before Ronnie Coleman. Well, what are your thoughts on him? State your opinion in the comments below.

Written by

Suryakant Das

Edited by

Siddharth Shirwadkar