Motivation Quote by Dorian Yates

Shoulder width, in Yates-speak, is less anatomy lesson than hard-edged aesthetic law: the physique is a silhouette first, a body second. Coming from a six-time Mr. Olympia who helped define the “mass monster” era, the line is a reminder that size alone doesn’t read as dominance onstage or in photos. The V taper is visual propaganda. It makes the waist look smaller, the torso look athletic, the whole body look engineered rather than merely accumulated.

The specific intent is practical and prescriptive. Yates is telling lifters where the leverage is: if you want a physique that lands instantly, you build the frame. Broad delts and an upper back that flares outward create the illusion of proportion even when other details lag. “Absolute requirement” is the coaching voice of someone who came up in a culture that rewards ruthless prioritization, not well-rounded self-expression.

The subtext is about control and selection. You can diet for a sharper waist and you can train lats for width, but shoulder structure is partly genetic; clavicle length and shoulder girdle shape set the canvas. Yates isn’t just motivating you to do more lateral raises. He’s quietly dividing the room into those who can win the optical game and those who will have to compensate with conditioning, posing, or sheer density.

Context matters: bodybuilding is judged by how convincingly you embody an ideal, not by what you can lift or how you feel. Yates compresses that brutal reality into one clean standard: if the outline doesn’t hit, the rest of the work risks becoming invisible.