Top 35 Dorian Yates Quotes

So I had to change my mental outlook from, ‘wow, this is Lee Haney, the icon we are all trying to aspire to,’ to, ‘this is the guy I am trying to beat.’ I thought, ‘I can’t be in awe of this guy because, if that is your attitude then you’re not going to have much chance of winning.’

I was always criticized through my whole career because I wasn’t doing the whole smiling thing on stage. But I didn’t feel like doing that, I felt like I was there for competition and it was tough and I wasn’t there to smile.

I never started bodybuilding because I thought I’m not big enough, I’m not strong enough.

I didn’t have my dad there and I had another mate who didn’t have his father, and you kind of form your own little family and that’s what gangs are, that’s why you have so many gangs now because there are so many kids without fathers that they seek their own male bonding.

When I was a teenager, you were either a punk, a skinhead or a mod, or you weren’t on the scene. Me and my mates were skinheads.

I didn’t start out planning to be Mr. Olympia I just wanted to be the best that I could be, but my goals changed as I went along. I wanted to be the British champion, and then I wanted to be a pro, then Mr. Olympia.

You are hungry all the time for the last two months before a competition. Every survival thing on your body is telling you that you must eat.

I had only been training for a year and half when I did the World Games. Then the next year I did the British championship as a heavyweight and won that.

I don’t really care what other people think.

I would like to get some points across about my sport and hopefully people can understand it a bit more and appreciate what goes into it, instead of being monkey in a cage.

Most bodybuilders are somewhat extravert so they probably enjoy that whole thing of people looking at them all the time and being on stage. I was an introvert and not really interested in that, I was doing it for myself.

I kind of stumbled into this. I used to do karate and then I started reading muscle magazines. Eventually, I began training and competing.

A lot of people think growth hormone is going to increase the size of your internal organs which bloats the waistline. So I went and had a battery of tests where they actually measure all of your internal organs and mine were all normal.

Your schedule really gets thrown off when you are traveling. And a schedule is very important when you’re training.

I trained for size in the off-season, but when it came time to get ready for a contest it was all about coming in shredded. The glutes must be striated, with the lower back shredded, no water anywhere, no loose skin. Like you are covered in cling-film.

I find when I meet people in person it’s different because everyone wants a bit of advice on how to lose a bit of weight. Everybody wants to be in shape and likes to talk to someone who has been there and done it, so I find it is always positive.

Everyone gets the impression that bodybuilders are narcissistic, and we look at ourselves in mirrors all the time. But that side of the sport doesn’t appeal to me.

Whey protein is taken very quickly into the bloodstream and there is a lot of waste, so it is not ideal on its own in most cases.

I started messing around in my teen years but didn’t really begin training properly until the age of 21. I did a lot of reading prior to that – Mike Mentzer, Arthur Jones and all other notable bodybuilding authors – and just came up with a routine that worked for me.

It is fortunate that I am quite a secure person and my training flew in the face of what everybody else was doing as they were all just copying what the American bodybuilders did, as reported in the magazines. But it didn’t take long before people were listening to me: it happens when you are Mr. Olympia.

People told me it was impossible to beat the Americans at their own game; there was a lot of politics involved and outsiders didn’t stand a chance. But if you’re good enough, nothing else matters – I’m living proof of it!

I don’t have ambitions to be a movie star or multi-millionaire.

I would always advise if you were to have several egg whites, include a couple of yolks in there because there are some amino acids in the yolks that are slightly lacking in the whites.

I was not going to be distracted by anything – a fight with my wife, a bump in the car, whatever it may be. I refused to let anything interfere with my workouts.

If you are in business and you can do something to get ahead of your rival business, you are going to do it.

As long as I’m in good physical shape, that’s a passion for me, to be physically fit. That’s the main thing now, the look is secondary. But I think I look OK, not too bad for a 55 year old.

Protein is crucial to supplying muscle tissue with the building blocks it needs for its growth.

I never see bodybuilding on the sports page and it is not considered to be a sport because of the drug question, because of steroids, let’s be honest.

I purposely kept covered up because I didn’t like people looking at me.

Every single workout counted when I trained, I didn’t miss any meals and made sure I got my sleep.

I’ve no wish to run into a contest and make a fool of myself, leaving my career in a cul-de-sac. I want to be a success in the sport of bodybuilding.

I think what’s perhaps lacking in Indian body builders is advanced knowledge of the sport. You’d be surprised to know that even the average European isn’t really that aware about it either.

My first Mr. Olympia was 1991 and that was in Florida against the great Lee Haney, who became Mr. Olympia in 1984, and I started training properly in 1983.

I wanted to set a new standard for competitive bodybuilding.

As an early teen, soccer is the number one thing that you do – and I wasn’t very good at that.