The ONLY 10 Exercises You Ever Need (DORIAN YATES)

If you ever wondered how physical therapist Jeff Cavaliere would react to Dorian Yates’ list of only 10 exercises that men need to build muscle, you’ve come to the right place. In this video, I am giving my reaction to a list of exercises that 6x Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates came up with featuring the o

I really believe this. Yeah. For the average person, if they did 10 exercises twice a week and each exercise, the last set was to failure. For the average person, that would be a brilliant routine. That would change their life.

So, today we get to do something fun cuz I get to talk about somebody that I grew up working out to and um ultimately winding up about onethird the size of him. If you could only prescribe 10 exercises, what would they be? Let’s go through what Dorian had to say. >> All right. >> If you could only do 10 exercises to train your entire body to build the best physique, what 10 exercises would you do?

Oh, 10 exercises. All right. Let’s start with legs. Yeah. 10.

All right. Leg extensions and or squat, leg press. Okay. Whatever. barbell, Smith machine, squat machine, leg press, compound pushing.

Yeah. >> All right. Um, leg extension I’m not a huge fan of, but I will say I know why he picked it clearly because he says build the best body. >> Your leg extension is going to get your quads. >> Yeah.

Better than any other exercise to isolate the quads if you want to really build them up. My only issue, as I’d say, is as a as a PT and someone who suffered from pretty bad knees for my almost entire adult life, uh that exercise doesn’t feel so great, and I know it’s a little bit problematic for other people who have existing knee issues, but if you’re able to do them, then certainly I could see that being a good option. I wouldn’t have it in my top 10, but I know why it’s there. Um, obviously a squat or a leg press variation. I definitely like the squat better than a leg press.

I think that the leg press, there’s so many ways you can cheat that. You really can’t cheat a squat all that much. Yeah. But I will say from a squat perspective >> from an overall standpoint, certain people have difficulties building different parts of their legs just based on their anthropometrics and their in their body shape itself. Right?

If they have a long torso and short femurss, they’re going to have an easier time building their quads because they can stay more upright. Whereas someone that has longer femurss and a shorter torso is going to have to bend forward more. And then they’re going to say that they hate the exercise in terms of building their quads, but they love the exercise because it builds up their their glutes and hamstrings, which makes it a really good compliment to the quad focused leg extension. And again, when we’re limited in choices, that’s one of the things that you have to sort of make is those those picks. And >> that’s one of my favorite combos right there.

Leg extension and squat. >> Yep. Uh back. Well, if you could choose what you want, I would do nautilus pullover and It’s going to be a toss up between a row and a and a pull down for the second one. >> Okay, >> let’s go pull down for argument sake.

Literally one of my first visions of Dorian Yates training was with the Nautilus pullover machine. Like he is one of the originators of that exercise or made it popular certainly with me because he did it. Yeah. >> And I follow a lot of things that he did trying to get the same results. Again, tried but [laughter] the issue is it’s not as accessible in a lot of different gyms.

because they don’t carry it as much anymore. Um, if you are going to do the exercise, you got to drive with the elbows. Driving with the elbow. This is an elbow driven exercise because you’re basically moving your humorous through space. You’re not just grabbing on with your hands and trying to dominate or move with your hands.

That’s not how this exercise is designed. You don’t get as much power in the exercise. And one of the best benefits of it is being able to load it up very heavily and be able to drive down, get that humorous down, adducted towards your sides, doing all the things we know the lats do. And again, I I would I would I would include it in a top 10 of mine if I thought everybody had access to it. If I made a video about it here or my top 10, I couldn’t include it because I know there’s too many people that tell me I don’t have access to the machine.

So, what do you think about the lap pull down? >> Oh, that’s a tough one for me. He said a row or a lap pull down. So, if it was me, I would go with the seated row. >> Seated row >> because I think that the seated row is truly one of the absolute best backb building exercises you can do.

And I think one of the best benefits it gives you other than or beyond the pull down is what it can do for the rear delts. It allows you to get extension of the arm back behind the body, which gives really good overload to the rear delts, which are always sort of relegated to those really light dumbbell exercises. The rear delts can handle good load if you’re supporting them and you’re supporting it very well with a seated row. You got other muscles helping out and it basically works your entire posterior chain. Whereas I don’t think you get as much low back or midback development when you’re doing the lat pull down as you do on a seated row.

Yeah. I mean for my upper back, one of the exercises you had me do for the longest time was the CD cable row with my elbows wide. And I noticed like my my upper back blew up. >> We could change elbow positioning with the pull down too. Obviously Dorian liked underhand variations.

You could go underhand on the pull down a little bit more biceps. You can go overhand. You could go wider. You can work more Terry’s major. There’s a lot of options.

They’re both amazing exercises that like literally I don’t know if I I might put them both in my top 10. I don’t know if I would take because one’s going to be a vertical pull and one’s going to be horizontal pull. So in my top 10, I’d probably have both of them in there. >> All right, let’s see what’s next. >> Um some kind of bench press movement and a fly movement.

That’s six. Okay, so I just made a video about how I dislike the fly, but start with the bench press. You have to do some variation of a bench press, especially when you’re limited to 10 exercises and you’re trying to get all the pushing muscles to be worked in concert. There’s nothing better than a a horizontal bench press, right? For me, though, it’s going to be dumbbells.

Do I think that the barbell bench press is a bad exercise? No. It’s just going to be a lot more challenging orthopedically for a lot of people with the freedom of movement of the dumbbells. Some people think it’s more challenging because you have to control that. But once you have your basic level of coordination through lifting beyond, let’s say, six months, I think the dumbbells are going to give you a lot more freedom and that movement allows you to adapt to fit your body more than the barbell does.

The barbell forces you to bench with it rather than the dumbbells allowing you to bench with your body. >> Right. And I’ll I’ll put in there that I I personally like the incline bench press with dumbbells the best. >> Well, he didn’t differentiate, right? He said, “Yeah, I mean, if I I think if I was going to pick one there, I’d probably go incline over flat.

” Yeah. As far as the fly component of the recommendation. So, I just don’t I don’t like the fly because I don’t think that your shoulder is as protected as it can be. And because I know we’re looking for the stretch and we’re looking for adduction, that’s the complimentary thing we get from the fly to the bench press and makes it a requirement. I just want to see you do it like in standing with a cable crossover, right?

a cable fly variation so that you have a safety