Dorian Yates Workout: The Blood and Guts 4-Day Split Explained

Dorian Yates' workout is a 4-day split built on very low volume and very high effort: after one or two warm-up sets, he took a single working set of each exercise to failure and then moved on. He trained shoulders and triceps, back, chest and biceps, and legs on separate days, with three rest days in the week, and the sessions were short by bodybuilding standards. It's the method behind six straight Mr Olympia titles from 1992 to 1997. It's also a poor fit for most people as written, so this guide covers the original split, the reasoning behind it, what the research says about one-set training, and a version that suits a normal lifter.

Who is Dorian Yates?

Yates is a British bodybuilder, born in 1962, who won the Mr Olympia contest every year from 1992 to 1997. He trained at Temple Gym in Birmingham, a basement gym he bought in 1987, and retired after the 1997 Olympia following a run of injuries that included torn biceps and triceps.

His approach came from the high-intensity training (HIT) school associated with Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer, which argues that a few sets taken to the limit beat a long session of moderate ones. His training video Blood and Guts gave the style its nickname.

The Dorian Yates 4-day split

The split below is the version most widely published from his Olympia years, as he has described it in interviews and the Blood and Guts video. Published accounts differ a little on exercise order and rep ranges, and he changed things across his career (earlier routines reportedly used two working sets), so treat this as a representative outline, not a transcript.

Day	Session
1	Shoulders, traps and triceps
2	Back and rear delts
3	Rest
4	Chest and biceps
5	Rest
6	Legs and calves
7	Rest

Every exercise follows the same pattern: one or two warm-up sets that get heavier (more on the first lift of the day, fewer once the muscle is warm), then one working set to failure.

Day 1: shoulders, traps and triceps

Exercise	Working sets	Reps
Smith machine shoulder press	1	8 to 10
Seated dumbbell lateral raise	1	8 to 10
One-arm cable lateral raise	1	8 to 10
Dumbbell shrugs	1	10 to 12
Tricep pushdown	1	10 to 12
Lying EZ bar extension (skull crusher)	1	8 to 10
One-arm reverse-grip pushdown	1	10 to 12

Day 2: back and rear delts

Exercise	Working sets	Reps
Pullover machine	1	8 to 10
Underhand-grip plate-loaded pulldown	1	8 to 10
Underhand barbell row	1	8 to 10
One-arm plate-loaded row	1	8 to 10
Reverse pec deck (rear delt fly)	1	8 to 10
Bent-over dumbbell raise	1	8 to 10
Weighted back extension	1	10 to 12
Deadlift	1	8

The underhand, slightly upright barbell row is the lift most people now call the Yates row. Deadlifts come last, when the back is already tired and the load needed is lower.

Day 4: chest and biceps

Exercise	Working sets	Reps
Incline barbell press	1	8
Plate-loaded chest press machine	1	6 to 8
Incline dumbbell fly	1	8
Cable crossover	1	10 to 12
Incline dumbbell curl	1	6 to 8
EZ bar curl	1	6 to 8
Machine curl	1	6 to 8

Day 6: legs and calves

Exercise	Working sets	Reps
Leg extension	1	10 to 12
Leg press	1	10 to 12
Hack squat	1	8 to 10
Lying leg curl	1	8 to 10
Stiff-legged deadlift	1	10
Standing calf raise	1	10 to 12
Seated calf raise	1	10 to 12

Leg extensions go first to pre-tire the quads, so the leg press and hack squat need less weight to reach failure. There's no barbell back squat in this version.

The principles behind it

Warm-up sets aren't work. The lighter sets rehearse the movement and prepare the joints, and they stop well short of fatigue. Only the last set counts.

One set, taken to failure. The working set ends when another full rep with good form is impossible. Because there's no second set to save energy for, the weight is heavy and the effort is total; that's the whole trade the method makes.

Past failure with a partner. A training partner then helps with one or two forced reps, or lifts the weight so the lifter can lower it slowly for a couple of negatives. Rest-pause reps get used the same way. Yates trained with a regular partner for exactly this reason, and without one these techniques range from awkward to unsafe.

A logbook. Every session aimed to beat the last one by a rep or a small jump in weight. With so few sets, progress on paper is the only way to know the plan is working.

Rest days are part of the plan. He never trained more than two days in a row, each muscle got a full week before its next session, and published accounts describe lighter weeks every month or two. Our deload week guide covers how to run one.

What the research says

The evidence backs part of the method and contradicts another part.

On volume, the clearest test is an 8-week trial of 34 trained men who did one, three or five sets per exercise, three times a week. Strength gains were similar across all three groups, which is a real point in favour of brief training: the one-set group needed about 13 minutes a session. Muscle growth was a different story, with the higher-volume groups gaining more size in the biceps and thighs, and the authors concluded that hypertrophy follows a dose-response relationship with volume. For most people chasing size, more than one set per exercise works better.

On failure, a 2023 meta-analysis of 15 studies found no evidence that training to momentary muscular failure builds more muscle than stopping short of it. There was a trivial edge for failure under looser definitions of the term, and the authors suggest the link between proximity to failure and growth isn't a straight line. Hard sets matter. Grinding out the final impossible rep, on current evidence, adds little.

None of this means Yates was wrong for Yates. Studies describe averages over a few weeks in ordinary trained lifters, not an elite professional with years of practice at extreme effort, and his routine still totals seven or eight working sets a session once you count every exercise for a muscle group. It does mean you shouldn't expect one set to beat three.

Who should and shouldn't try it

It suits experienced lifters with at least two or three years of consistent training, who know what true failure feels like and can reach it without their form falling apart. It's a sensible choice if you're short on time, bored of long sessions, or you recover slowly from high-volume plans like a classic bro split or the six-day Arnold split.

Skip it if you're a beginner, because you need repetition to learn the lifts and one set a week of each isn't enough practice. Skip the forced reps and negatives if you train alone. And think twice if you have a history of tendon or joint trouble: maximal loads taken to failure every session are demanding, and Yates' own career ended with muscle tears.

A toned-down version for normal lifters

Keep the four days and the rest days, drop the extremes. Do two working sets per exercise, stop the first one a rep or two short of failure, and take only the second to failure on machine and cable moves where a missed rep is harmless. On free-weight lifts like rows and deadlifts, leave one rep in reserve on both sets.

Day	Exercises (2 working sets each)	Reps
1: Shoulders and triceps	Smith machine shoulder press, lateral raise, tricep pushdown, skull crusher	8 to 12
2: Back	Lat pulldown, barbell row, seated cable row, rear delt fly, back extension	8 to 12
4: Chest and biceps	Incline press, chest press machine, cable fly, incline dumbbell curl, EZ bar curl	8 to 12
6: Legs	Leg extension, leg press, leg curl, Romanian deadlift, calf raise	10 to 15

That's roughly 8 to 10 hard sets a session, done in 40 to 50 minutes. Log every set and add a rep or 1 to 2.5kg whenever you hit the top of the range. If you'd prefer to hit each muscle twice a week, an upper/lower split does that in the same four days.

The kit it relies on

Blood and Guts is a machine-heavy routine, and that's deliberate: a fixed path lets you reach failure without a bar ending up on your chest. Temple Gym had plate-loaded machines most home gyms never will, but you can get close.

A Smith machine handles the shoulder press, incline press and a squat substitute, and our best Smith machine guide covers the home options. A multi-gym gives you a weight stack for pulldowns, rows, pushdowns, chest press and leg extensions in one footprint, while a standalone cable machine is better for crossovers and single-arm lateral raises. For legs, see our guides to the plate-loaded leg press and the more compact vertical leg press.

Recommended reads

1. The best multi-gyms in the UK
2. The best Smith machines in the UK
3. The best cable machines in the UK
4. The bro split explained
5. Push day workout