Dorian Yates

“It took me nine years to get to the level of being Mr. Olympia, and it's pretty much a 24-hour-a-day job every day of the year, really, if you want to compete on that level.”

“Back when I was competing in the Olympia I think you saw a lot of guys who were in really good shape.”

“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 never started bodybuilding because I thought I'm not big enough, I'm not strong enough.”

“My sole goal when getting ready for a contest was not building a lot of size, although when I was coming up pure muscle size was still very important. I was always really concerned about coming in very sharp conditioning wise.”

“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.”

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

“Yes, it is not all about training hard. If you do too many sets and too much volume overall, your body is just going to be spending all its time trying to recover and not overcompensating because it doesn't have enough resources for that.”

“I am more interested in health, quality of life, longevity and how training and nutrition affects that as you get older.”

“I wanted to set a new standard for competitive bodybuilding.”

“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.”

“Before, I could lift 600lbs in squats and all incredible stuff in the gym, but if I walked a couple of miles I'd probably get out of breath.”

“Exercise and fitness will always be part of my life but it does not have to be lifting huge weights; I like yoga, cycling, walking swimming, anything.”

“I remember when I was a kid rugby players were some big guys that drunk a lot of beer but now they have proper training programs and diets and all that. And the pioneers of all that is bodybuilding.”

“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.”

“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 don't have ambitions to be a movie star or multi-millionaire.”

“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.”

“There are two drawbacks to steroids, one is the potential problems with your health and the second one is it is very easy for people to dismiss everything you have put into it by saying, 'yeah but he takes steroids.'”

“I mean, does anyone seriously think there are no drugs in Olympic sports just because they do some kind of testing? They are highly competitive sports with highly competitive people and just with competitive business people do whatever they can do to get ahead.”