Bodybuilders have been arguing about the best way to train since the early 70’s, when Mike Mentzer and Arthur Jones started preaching their signature high intensity training style, promoting maximum failure and twenty minute workouts. This challenged Arnold’s training program, as he was known for training multiple hours a day, sometimes twice a day. Tom Platz was another Golden Era bodybuilder that conflicted Arnold’s views, Tom liked to train insanely hard but infrequently, just like Mentzer. After the Golden Era feud came Lee Haney, sporting the “train to stimulate not annihilate” philosophy. Safe to say it worked for him, as he’s tied for the most Olympia victories of all time. After Haney’s reign, Dorian Yates burst onto the Olympia stage with the most methodical approach to training since Mike Mentzer’s. Yates’ training style was similar to Mentzer’s, as they both proposed training with insane intensity and allowing for maximum recovery, but Dorian seemed to push it in the gym for a little bit longer than Mike liked too, getting up to no more than one hour workouts, compared to Mike’s twenty minute sessions. Immediately after Yates, Ronnie Coleman started pumping out DVD’s of eight hundred pound squats and twenty three hundred pound leg presses, and it became clear that he trained heavy and hard, but one would argue not as close to failure as Dorian Yates trained. Coleman was dethroned in 2006 by Jay Cutler, and if you’ve ever come across his social media you know his training style all too well. Jay Cutler has become known for “12 repetitions” and he was also big on the pump, or getting maximum blood flow to the muscle. He didn’t train to failure, but he kept the intensity up with high volume and short rest times. Phil Heath came in after Cutler, and sported a very similar training philosophy, only Phil Heath focused on lighter weights, feeling the contraction on every rep.
But the question is: which bodybuilder had the most effective training program?
Well today we’re going to answer that question with a study published in September 2024, titled “Exploring the Dose-Response Relationship Between Estimated Resistance Training Proximity to Failure, Strength Gain, and Muscle Hypertrophy: A Series of Meta-Regressions”. The researchers realized that training to failure was becoming a hot topic in the fitness industry, and they wanted to figure out if training harder really led to more results. When defining failure, the researchers looked to R-I-R, or reps in reserve. The less reps in reserve someone has at the end of a set, the harder or closer to failure they’re training. The researchers also adjusted for training experience, an adjustment that is crucial to the study’s credibility because a beginner’s results could skew the data when being compared to an advanced trainee.
Here’s what the scientists found, to quote the study, “The dose-response relationship between proximity to failure and strength gain appears to differ from the relationship with muscle hypertrophy, with only the latter being meaningfully influenced by R-I-R. Strength gains were similar across a wide range of R-I-R, while muscle hypertrophy improves as sets are terminated closer to failure.”
So if you want to get stronger, don’t train close to failure–lift heavy, not hard as Pavel Tsatsouline says–and if you want to build muscle, train as hard as possible, or at least that’s our read of the literature. We’ll have this study linked in the description, so don’t be afraid to check it out and draw your own conclusion.
With the results of this meta analysis in mind, it’s time to think back to our question. Which bodybuilder trained the best? Well, since the study concluded that changes in muscle size increased as sets were terminated closer to failure, we’re going to have to go with Dorian Yates, as he trained to failure, going all out on every set. Just watch blood and guts if you haven’t. and we think he’d definitely agree with us. If you disagree with our opinion and six time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates, let us know why in the comments, and on your way down there, make sure to click that subscribe button for more Physique Philosophy.