Dana Linn Bailey is More Popular Than Phil Heath or Kai Greene
Bodybuilding's Baddest Bitch!
Dana Linn Bailey is More Popular Than Phil Heath or Kai Greene
It’s safe to say that Dana Linn Bailey is exquisitely unique in our industry. In fact she may be the most popular person on our industry – even more popular than Phil Heath or Kai Greene. She has managed to achieve both tremendous success in competition and in the various business ventures she has with her husband Rob, without conforming to anyone else’s expectations of what a woman in our industry should look like, dress like or train like. Her legions of loyal fans and followers worldwide number in the tens of millions, and they’ve supported her Flag Nor Fail clothing company as well as her new Run Everything Labs supplement brand. But what about competing? If you read her column in MD, you know that she hasn’t competed since 2014. and she neither trains nor eats like her rival IFBB WPD pros. Will she compete again?
You were the very first Women’s Physique pro, and you were the very first Women’s Physique Division (WPD) Olympia champion. Many feel that you set the standard for what the division was supposed to be. Do you feel that standard has shifted over the last couple of years? If so, where do you see your physique fitting into that?
After becoming the first-ever WPD pro and also winning the first-ever 2013 WPD Olympia, you would think it would have been safe to say that I was the standard. In 2014, I came in with the similar kind of package, just a little more conditioned. I had also brought my legs and glutes up tremendously. It should have been a no-brainer that I should have won it again. But every show is different, and every show is judged differently. It’s a show based on opinions. There is never a clear-cut winner, and sometimes it is a toss-up.
People ask me all the time, “What’s going on with Women’s Physique? Do you feel like you need to put on more muscle?” My answer, and I would also tell this to anyone getting ready for shows, is don’t base your body off any other winner, because they all look so different. The Olympia is a compilation of all the winners of each show held that year. If you look at the lineup, everyone looks very different. Some look more like bodybuilders, some more like Figure competitors. It all depends on who shows up to compete, and who’s judging. It’s an opinion-based sport, so there will be variances all the time and you need to realize that, otherwise you will just be one of those people who bitch that they should’ve won and it’s all politics.
You chose not to compete in the 2015 Olympia after taking second at the Arnold Classic in the spring, because you had so many other business ventures going on. It’s safe to say that out of all the women in WPD, you have the least need to compete for purposes of making money and staying relevant. So even though the Olympia is still three months away as we speak, there is widespread speculation that we will not see DLB onstage. Would you please address that?
It’s undecided right now. I don’t even know. My life has been very crazy these last couple of months. Even crazier than last year, which I didn’t think was possible. But when you add a new supplement line and a new public Warhouse Gym to the table, shit changes! There’s just so much work. So to do a show, I don’t know, it just has to make sense.
I’d really love to step onstage, but to me it’s almost selfish to do that right now. We are all buried in work with Flag Nor Fail, the Run Everything Labs line, the Warhouse Gym and possible franchise, the camps, the Speed Warhouse car shop, plus some other projects we are starting. And then I go and say, peace out, guys … I’m too busy over here getting shredded so I can pose in a sparkly bikini onstage for three minutes? That’s a drastic way to put it. But on a real note, I am just not as productive when I’m in prep mode. Right now, I’m super-efficient.
You and your husband Rob are well known as being a great team. He supports your goals and dreams. How does he feel about you competing again? And do you think most of your fans care whether or not you compete?
Really, when I didn’t do the Olympia, I thought it was going to be this big thing where people would be upset. I was in tears for like a month. It was actually Rob’s decision not to do it. Number one, I needed a break. My body needed a break. My head especially needed a break. In one of my columns in MD, I talked about the mental toll competing takes on you. It can have such a negative impact on you psychologically. I’ve been competing consistently for about nine or 10 years. I think mentally, I needed the break the most. Competing can change the way you think about yourself, what is in shape and what is not. Anything less than show-conditioned is “fluffy.” Right, girls?
So, I think it was a great decision to take a break and just breathe. I was really worried at first. Would people forget about me because I didn’t compete? Honestly, I probably cried for a couple of weeks here and there after we made the decision because competing is all I know, so what was I without it? But after I announced I was not [competing] later on, it was the total opposite. No one seemed to care. I mean, I know people wanted to see me onstage, because they enjoy following the journey and the struggle, but they weren’t upset I wasn’t … they understood.
I think with taking this break, it will make it that much more special when I do return. It spices things up a bit, than to just compete year after year. Most people think, it’s the Olympia. Why wouldn’t you do the Olympia? It’s expected that you do it if you’re one of the top athletes. If you don’t, it throws a little wrench in the works. Then there’s a comeback story: DLB comes back to the stage!
Has it been challenging for you to stay in good shape, without having any contest on the horizon for so long now?
You know what? I think I’ve been in the best shape of my life for the so-called off-season this past year. When you’re in that bodybuilding cycle, you know, you always have a show you need to get shredded for, coming up at some point. For me, it’s always the Arnold and the Olympia. So you do the Olympia, and then you fall off for a month because you’re like … fuck, I have to do this all over again soon? You slack on the diet and the cardio because you’re thinking, I’m gonna have to do that every single day for 16 weeks for the Arnold. So you fall off the fitness train. If there are cookies available, you have to eat them, because coming up soon, you can’t eat them at all. So you gain a little bit and just say, “I’m bulking for my next show.”
You have spoken about your newer types of training in your MD column, such as incorporating elements of both powerlifting and CrossFit into your regular workouts. If you did decide to compete at the Olympia, would you have to go back to a more standard bodybuilding style of training for at least the last few months? And I assume you would also have to return to eating six to seven meals a day like you normally would for a contest prep?
You know what? If I do go back to the stage, I’m not sure how George would handle it, but I would love to do a whole trial of the training and the diet that I do now for my next show. Just for fun. I know the other way works. I know the seven meals a day works, and I know the fasted cardio gets me very lean. I still do fasted cardio, but the difference now is that I don’t eat for like four hours after that. I drink some coffee, and I just get right to work. You just get so much more done eating only three meals a day. Being a bodybuilder, you don’t get anything done, just constantly stopping to go warm up food and eat. But I think I would stick to what I’m doing now— it would be a cool science experiment!
Back to your current training. Have you found that breaking free of the typical bodybuilding workouts and doing completely different things has actually allowed you to make improvements in your physique that otherwise may never have been made? I’m thinking specifically about your Smolov squat programs that boosted your squat PRs significantly. Have your thighs grown this year since you have been doing that?
I definitely think the powerlifting has not only made me stronger, but it’s built more muscle, especially in my legs. I only did the Smolov Jr. squat program, which is only a four-week program. With that I was able to add 20 pounds to my squat, and improved both the size and shape of my legs. So I can only imagine if I did the full program. After I finished that, I still tried to maintain squatting heavy two or three times a week because I actually enjoy it.
Combining different styles of training has made the workouts a lot more intense. I also don’t train for as long anymore, because we do such huge power movements. Every day starts with one. Today was back, so we did deads. We worked up to a one- and two-rep max. Rob did a one-rep max. And we don’t always max-out. The rep schemes change based on how we feel and our mood. So a typical workout generally starts with a big power movement— like a squat, bench, dead or sometimes a standing overhead press. Then we do three to four warm-up sets to get to our working sets, which are usually five to eight sets of anywhere from one to six reps.
After our big power movement, I’ll usually get into more of a bodybuilder-style workout with more volume, supersets and drop sets. It’s still very intense, just more focused on form and with less time in between sets. Then, sometimes we like to finish with some sort of cross-training exercise, like rowing on a Concept2, battle ropes, jump rope, thrusters or anything that makes us feel like we are athletes again. I really enjoy that my workout is constantly changing, and it’s not the same bodybuilder split. There are no rules to my training. Some days I squat, then bench, then train shoulders. Whatever I feel like doing that day is how I train.
Just out of curiosity for those who are more into strength, what are your one-rep maximums on the big three power lifts?
I’ve been working on my “legal” powerlifting bench form, so I haven’t maxed-out on that in a while. It used to be 225. I was benching like a weirdo, but I was super strong like that. My elbows pointed out, so the bar would be about an inch from my chest instead of touching. I haven’t tried for a max in powerlifting form, with a dead stop on my chest. But I do pause sets of five with 185, so we will see what I can do soon with a legal. For squats, I’m up to 335 at a bodyweight of 135. I need to try for a new deadlift max soon. I pull 355 for a single, but it’s pretty easy now.
Have you been training this past year with the standard types of goals expected of someone who competes in a physique sport, mainly improving specific aspects of your physique? Or have you been working on other aspects of fitness that are not necessarily tied into your appearance?
My goal is always to look good. That’s the bodybuilder side of me, the aesthetics. I want to have big, round shoulders. I want to have abs. I want to have lines in my legs. That’s why I still maintain the bodybuilding portion of my workouts, with higher volume, supersets, drop sets, higher reps, that kind of stuff. But really, my main goals for a while now have been strength goals. That’s been my focus with powerlifting, just getting those numbers up. But always at the same time, I like to look good. And maybe I’ll compete again, so I am always training with that idea in the back of my head, too.
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