GymTraining
🇺🇸 Ronnie Coleman
Reign: 1998–2005
Biography
American bodybuilder known as "The King" and widely regarded as the greatest of all time. He won eight consecutive Mr. Olympia titles from 1998 to 2005, sharing the all-time record with Lee Haney, and took 26 IFBB professional titles in all. Coleman was famous for a rare combination of size, conditioning and brutally heavy training — squats and deadlifts with weights few competitors touched. He entered the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 and received the Arnold Classic Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.
Training approach
Coleman trained with weights almost nobody else in the open division touched, and he treated the squat and the flat bench press as the foundation of his size and strength. What is less often repeated is that he rarely worked in the low-rep range despite those loads — the weight was heavy, the sets were not short. He kept competing and training through serious back injuries, which later required multiple surgeries.
Compiled from public sources; accounts of the details differ.
Own supplement brand
Ronnie Coleman Signature Series founded in 2011 Launched in late 2011. Coleman stresses that he owns the company rather than licensing his name to it; the best-known products are the "Yeah Buddy" pre-workout and King Whey protein. Visit the site →Prize money from titles
- 1998$100,000
- 1999$100,000
- 2000$100,000
- 2001$100,000
- 2002$100,000
- 2003$100,000
- 2004$100,000
- 2005$150,000
Total for first places$850,000
Counts winner's prizes only; payouts for second and third place in those years were not published.
Olympia appearances
Shared the podium with
Photo: www.localfitness.com.au · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons