Many people think that fitness and bodybuilding is something new that has only just become popular in recent years, but it's not. Fitness and bodybuilding have been well developed since the 1980s, only now it's one of the most talked about beginnings in fitness history.
There is no denying that ronnie kuhlman has an unassailable place in the eyes of most bodybuilders, and he seems to be regarded as the 'grandfather' of bodybuilding. However, in a time when bodybuilding was truly a "Big deal", ronnie kuhlman was a junior and few people understand that ronnie's rise to prominence was largely due to his age. When it comes to the old guard of the fitness world, dorian yates is the one to name, having been a part of the bodybuilding era in the quest for bigger muscles.
In hindsight, dorian yates may not be as famous in the fitness world as a fitness internet sensation, but he was also a figure like ronnie kuhlman in the era that he belonged to. Standing at 178 cm tall and weighing 232 pounds, dorian yates won the olympia bodybuilding competition six times in a row from 1992 to 1997, retiring in 1998 due to injury. Ronnie kuhlman was a close second, creating the kuhlman era that lasted 8 years.
Although ronnie kuhlman's rise to prominence was only six years removed from dorian yates, it was two completely different eras for the fitness world as a whole. During the time period when dorian yates was winning back-to-back titles, bodybuilding was just entering the era of the 230lb behemoth, but it was irrelevant to most people. By the cullman era, thanks to the rapid growth of the internet, ronnie cullman's training videos went viral and instantly put the fitness industry on the map, and for a while, the fitness scene and ronnie cullman seemed to be equated. So now many people's knowledge of the veteran gym-goer stops at ronnie, and the name grand master of the fitness world is derived from this.
Dorian yates, who chose to retire in 1998, undoubtedly missed out on the golden age of fitness, but his achievements were enough to sustain him in life and spirit for years to come. Most notable here is dorian yates' particular approach to training, where he spread out his training days to avoid training every day, but he worked his target muscles to the point of exhaustion in every session. During his workouts, dorian yates rarely uses multiple movements and reps; single set exhaustion is his specialty, and for each movement he makes the muscles contract to the extreme and then stops reading the seconds until it becomes unbearable.
Dorian yates' muscles are not what they used to be, and the loss of muscle mass after retirement is something that every professional bodybuilder will eventually face. Now 57 years old, he still doesn't give up on his fitness training and although he can't get back to his olympian figure, he can still vaguely see what he was like back then, and compared to most people of his age, dorian yates has done a great job.
As a veteran of the fitness world, dorian yates was kind of a proud figure in an era when the quest for big muscles was just beginning, and i wonder if he looks back with some regret. Then again, even though he didn't achieve the same impact as ronnie, his achievements are still better than most professional bodybuilders.
