Days out from the 2024 Olympia event in Las Vegas, Dorian Yates, who is undoubtedly one of the greatest competitors of all time has been reminiscing about some of the mandatory poses that he threw down back in the day. After recently winning over the internet by claiming his Front Lat Spread pose was the best of all time, he has taken a look at another mandatory illustration of muscle: the Rear (or Back) Double Biceps.
“So here, as always, the whole body is judged and although the name is ‘back double bicep’, not a huge emphasis is actually placed on the bicep as the pose is viewed from the back. Essentially it is the reverse of the front double bicep,” explained The Shadow on October 1, 2024 to his 1.8 million+ Instagram followers. Yates knows his stuff, because his perfectionism with posing led to six consecutive Mr Olympia trophy’s from 1992-1997.
“The entire back is on display along with the glutes, calves and hamstrings,” explained Yates, providing photos of his legendary physique. “Of course, as well as the triceps, (the) forearms and rear delts massively help with that 3D look of the delts. And, having strong rear delts helps not only with posture, but they (also) massively add to your back in this pose in particular.” For this Englishman, the Rear Double Bicep pose was a huge chance to make an impact with the judges. “I found this to be a really strong pose for myself, mainly because I was able to show the fullness of my back and another muscle that massively plays a part here is the traps,” he explained. “So, most of my strong points were on display here and although the weakness I would say is my biceps, I felt my forearms were so strong here, so it wasn’t noticeable.” While Yates looked phenomenal on stage, even he found the pose challenging and had to find ways to make up for perceived weaknesses.
“Even though I’ve said it’s a strong pose, it took me many, many hours to perfect,” he shared. “I really had to work on this mainly because I didn’t feel it was perfected with the wrist position, so that took a while to sort out. Plus, it became hard too because you can’t really see your back when posing even with two mirrors.” With practice and patience, Yates was able to blow away his competition. “You’ll see through these pics that even with the novice ones, you can see the shape and insertion of the traps and fullness of the muscles, it was early days but the potential was there.” As the history books show, the ‘Shadow’ was able to realize his potential and become a name that will forever be synonymous with the ‘O’. No doubt future stars and defending champions will be taking note.
