British bodybuilding great Dorian Yates is known for his meticulous attention to detail, designing a winning Olympia prep between 1992 and 1997, but in a recent Instagram post, the man they call “The Shadow” has revealed that when it came to his abs, less meant more. Here’s how he trained his core to captivate those judges.
While you’d be forgiven for assuming that the man behind the “Blood & Guts” style of training must have spent countless hours on numerous machines to sculpt his concrete-like abs, the truth was far simpler. “I usually trained abs once per week and they were usually done as an extension at the end of shoulders & triceps,” explained the legend in an informative post for his 1.8 million followers. “This was because I felt that shoulders and triceps was probably the ‘easiest’ workout of the week (well, easier than the others),” wrote the six-time consecutive Mr. Olympia winner.
Dorian Yates’ Two-Move Ab Finisher
- Bodyweight Ab Crunches to failure: 2 Sets
- Reverse Bodyweight Ab Crunches to failure: 2 Sets
Workout Breakdown
“My abs routine was simple,” concluded Yates. “But these were done with a hard contraction and a big exhalation of the air at the peak of the contraction,” he qualified. “We would squeeze our abs so hard that they’d be on the verge of cramping, almost!”
For the uninitiated, the reverse crunch involves lifting your lower body rather than the upper body. While both types of crunch will work your six-pack muscles and the obliques on the side, the reverse variation has the added benefit of taxing the lower portion of the abs, too.
“The physique that inspired me when I was younger, especially abs wise, was Bruce Lee’s,” revealed Yates. “He had great abs. In my youth, I’d always be doing bodyweight exercises like sit-ups and pushups, with a poster of Bruce Lee watching over me! As far as I remember, I always had a visible set of abs. In my early bodybuilding days, I would train them with weights, but I noticed that they would grow fairly quick and would potentially look quite ‘blocky.’ So, I switched to contraction work with just my body weight. In my opinion, it wasn’t really that important to train my abs as they were always visible due to my low body fat year-round and my genetics did play a part here in helping me stay lean.”
The bodybuilding icon makes an important point here, because lowering your body fat level is a move that must be added to every successful ab routine. “Everyone has abs… it’s just a case of revealing them,” enthused the Mr Olympia mainstay.
To follow Dorian Yates on Instagram, click here.
