Great podcast, I’m a big fan of Dorian; I feel like a very very very poor-man’s version of him – My Dad died when I was 6, I got in to bodybuilding as a youngster, then I went all spiritual as an off-spin of MMA and yoga.
Dorian Yates & Bodybuilding
They discuss how Dorian saw his body as a sculpture and he kept himself covered up all the time, in contrast to today’s topless social media ‘fitness experts’.
Dorian stopped taking steroids (and insulin and HGH) cold turkey and he had depression after he stopped bodybuilding – but he also got divorced and a close friend died in that time too, so any 1 of 3 things (or 2, or all 3) could have caused his mental health problems.
To be honest, Dorian doesn’t appear to be a huge fan of bodybuilders since he retired! He took the sport to the next level with his Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty style training.
The basic idea of heavy duty training is that intensity is key to muscular development, not duration. Instead of doing 3 sets per exercise, warm up extensively and just do 1 to failure. Fail on the positive and negative (eccentric contraction). On Chest Press machine for example, fail first so that you can’t push the bar up anymore, then with help from a spotter, fail so that you can’t control lowering the weight either. Just be very careful when doing this! High intensity, can mean higher likelihood of injury.
Dorian Yates & DMT
Joe & Dorian discuss DMT and also the separate use of ayahuasca.
For those who don’t know – you can smoke DMT, it’s a chemical found naturally in the brain that is thought to cause near-death-experiences. Smoking it takes you ‘away with the fairies’ for around 20 minutes and many people say that it causes a powerful experience that makes them kinder and more spiritual.
Ayahuasca is a ceremonial ‘brew’ made from various plants and vines found in South America. It has similar effects to DMT but lasts for hours and people tend to find it more effective in terms of a spiritual transformation as they can actually remember what happens in their trip.
DMT users say it feels like being catapulted into a different universe and they often seen weird people and creatues (sounds mad I know) whilst ‘the mother’ Ayahuasca often causes reptilian images and more varied visuals. There’s actually a BBC 3 documentary about ayahuasca called Getting High for God which actually shows it in quite a positive light.
Neither DMT or Ayahuasca are to be taken lightly; you should be supervised by experienced users if you are going to venture down ‘the rabbit hole’. And DMT is illegal in the UK.
Interestingly, research on another ‘psychedelic’ magic mushrooms, or psilocybin mushrooms, has also shown amazing promise as a treatment for depression.
Dorian Yates & Cannabis
Dorian is a big advocate of cannabis. He says he knows friends who have cured cancer by using cannabis oil and a plant based diet.
Joe & Dorian discuss the many uses of hemp, including hempcrete and Henry Ford’s use of it to build a prototype car that ran on hemp ethanol.
