Bodybuilding icon Dorian Yates is taking a look at two of the most common training intensifiers. On April 23, 2026, he revealed why he rarely used dropsets and supersets throughout his career, yet still found success at the highest level.
“Dropsets and supersets…I often get asked my opinion on the above and if I ever did them. The answer is yes I did do both of them, but not that often to be honest.”
During Yates‘ Men’s Open tenure, he leveraged high-intensity training to build muscle. He adopted this training philosophy from legends Arthur Jones (the Nautilus machine founder) and Mike Mentzer. Above all else, they focused on achieving failure instead of pursuing a fixed number of reps or sets.
For many, training plateaus can be incredibly hard to break through. One way to get the job done is with a dropset, where a lifter continues a set after reaching fatigue, typically with lighter weight. Supersets, meanwhile, are defined as performing two exercises back-to-back with no rest in between. However, Yates admits these were never essential to his progress as a bodybuilder.
Dorian Yates Discusses Whether Dropsets and Supersets Are Necessary
In the post, Yates shared that he only used a pre-exhaust superset on back day:
“I didn’t feel the need to consistently perform them. As I showed you before from my earlier back workout from 1988, where I did perform a superset of pullovers, straight into a set of chins, both to failure.
This would be a pre-exhaust superset where its lat isolation with the pullovers and then bringing the biceps in with chins in that case. I do remember actually doing this same pre-exhaust superset with Mike Mentzer for back and biceps – but we did pullovers followed by underhand pulldowns.”
Instead of focusing on intensifiers, he aimed to stimulate the target muscle and go all-out with one hard set.
“But like I said, I didn’t do them consistently, my game was to fully focus on the target muscle and give it everything in that one set. If you know in the back of your mind that you’ve got another exercise to follow straight after, it might be off putting to give this first exercise truly everything.”
Dropsets occasionally found their way into Yates’ routine, but only during shoulder training.
“With dropsets, I did them occasionally but only really ever on dumbbell lateral raises as far aside can remember. I got 6-7 reps where I reach failure, the would drop by 20% and squeeze another few reps, usually up to 3-4 reps as it was still heavy.”
For his famous ‘Blood and Guts’ workouts, Yates didn’t use either method to build muscle.
“I didn’t do any of these methods when we filmed Blood & Guts, I stopped doing both completely by then I believe.
I don’t really do them with clients either, the main mission is to go to failure, to true failure and unless we want to go past that for some reason, I don’t prescribe them,” shared Dorian Yates.
While Yates wasn’t huge on intensifiers, that wasn’t the case for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Through the years, the former seven-time Mr. Olympia shared that he consistently used dropsets, supersets, and forced reps in his workouts to build muscle.
There’s a time and place for just about every training method. For Yates, dropsets and supersets weren’t as critical to his rise in the Men’s Open.
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