Yeah, I never bought into Dorians training being shit hot. Ronnie buried everyone in intensity. And, like Mentzer, he did way more sets then he said he did.
J
Escrima told me that nobody trained harder than Dorian. I personally witnessed that this was not the case. Well, at least it wasn't the case when I witnessed Casey Viator do his work set on the Nautilus pullover versus Dorian's set on the the exact same machine (The 70's chain version). Now, Dorian is my top three favorite bber of all time, and I consider the best that has ever competed. Better than Ronnie. So I hesitate to criticize the greatest of all time, especially when it comes to his back which was also the greatest of all time.
First, Dorian does not do the movement as intended. He hunches forward instead of lifting his chest up which will allow him to draw his elbows as far back as possible enabling a full contraction. He does five concentric reps and three forced reps. In comparison, Casey, did 7 positive reps very strictly stretching back so far that I thought he dislocated his shoulders on the first rep. And with his chest up he drove his elbows well past his hips. This was follow by 3 very intense forced reps, much like Dorian's forced reps, and then this was taken further by doing another three very slow negatives, he attempted a fourth but could control the descent before the spotter caught him so I didnt count it.
Casey couldn't match Dorian's grunting and groaning but I do believe he took the set further than Dorian did measured objectively.
Dorian trained brutally hard, and more importantly, consistently hard but I think he's a little dillusonal when he said that no one trained as hard as he did because it simply was not possible for a human being to train harder than he did.
