There’s a reason Milos Sarcev is a legendary bodybuilder and trainer. You don’t achieve that status with run-of-the-mill training sessions. The back workout he recently took JYM Athlete and IFBB Classic Physique pro Stefan Rivera-Clack through may soon become the stuff of legend, too.
It’s a good thing we captured the entire workout on video (above), otherwise you may not believe the amount of work performed by Stefan. At times, we wondered if it would ever end. Fortunately, Stefan had some nutritional assistance: throughout the session, he sipped on a prototype of Milos’s soon-to-be-released JYM intra-workout formula containing EAAs, BCAAs, creatine, glutamine, beta-alanine, citrulline, and simple fast-digesting carbs.
All told, Stefan completed 32 total sets of more than 15 different exercise variations – all of which focused on the back, mind you. And he made it through every rep, which is an impressive accomplishment. Frankly, very few people would be capable of finishing even half of this workout.
“I bombed your back in every way possible,” Milos told an exhausted Stefan after the workout.
“I pushed you to the limit with heavy weights. I pushed you to the limit with reps. I pushed you to the limit on peak contractions, on eccentric [negatives] overload, on slow eccentrics.”
Milos even went so far as to call the workout “torture” – in a good way, of course.
“Do you feel like a truck ran over you, and then came back a few times?” he asked Stefan.
“I feel like it was a mixture of lifting, running sprints, and doing CrossFit, as far as how it felt,” Stefan replied. “I felt a crazy pump, though. Lats are pumped up, forearms are pumped up.”
“The body is going to adapt,” said Milos. “The greater the shock, the greater the adaptation.”
Scan through the workout chart below. You’ll see that every one of those 32 sets consisted of 10 reps, but don’t let the simplicity on paper fool you. This routine is an unpredictable barrage of giant sets, supersets, negative reps, peak contraction holds, stretching, and loads ranging from moderate to extremely heavy.
Aside from the initial sets of pull-ups, Stefan completed only one set of each exercise before moving on to the next. (He ended up repeating most exercises later in the workout, but not on consecutive sets.) Rest between exercises was minimal (as little as 10 seconds), as Stefan is in stellar physical condition and doesn’t need as much time to recover than most.
Disclaimer: Don’t Try This at Home
Let’s be clear. Milos designed this back workout specifically for Stefan, a professional-level physique competitor with years of training experience under his belt and with ambitions to take his performance on stage to the next level.
Should the average person reading this take on the workout? Probably not. The purpose of documenting and sharing the training session is simply to provide a peak into how those at the highest level of physique competition really train, particularly those under the guidance of a legendary figure like Milos Sarcev.
