Progressing the K.I.S.S. program

As promised, I will do a progression for the K.I.S.S. program since I have been getting emails left and right about what to do after you have exhausted all the strength gains you could make from this program.

Simple answer - Variation!

There are several variables you can alter in order to change a program or “freshen it up”.  One way I would progress the K.I.S.S. program is to start varying the exercises.  The reason I chose the exercises that I did was because they are basic exercises.  They are fundamental movements that you should learn how to do properly.  Once you are ready to progress the program, you can look to learning some different exercises and looking to branch out into various rep ranges.  So, lets focus on those two aspects - exercise selection and rep range variety - as the basis to progressing the K.I.S.S. program.

Exercise Selection

The basic program centered around 3 movements each workout.  A lower body movement, an upper body push exercise and an upper body pull exercise.  The workout was centered around 2 different training days which were alternated over a 3 day training week.  For the progression of the program, we will now add more variety and have different exercises on each training day.  I will still stick with only 3 exercises per workout because I want to keep things simple and I want you to develop good form on each exercise and, more importantly, really drill those exercises so that you can keep adding more and more weight to the bar and progressing.

We are going to swap out the old exercises for some new variations, but don’t worry, we wont deviate to far from home and, after a 4 week training cycle, we can move the other exercises back into the mix and try and set some more personal records.

Workout A

Front Squat

Incline Bench Press

1-arm DB row

Workout B

CG bench press

Half kneeling 1-arm pulldown

Step up

Workout C

Pull up

RD

DB Bench press

Rep Range Variation

In our original program, we used two very simple rep ranges - 3 sets x 5 reps and 3 sets x 10 reps. Obviously the 5 rep range is more geared towards strength (pretty much anything from 1-5 reps) and the 10 rep range is more geared towards hypertrophy, anatomical changes or muscular endurance.  Since you have been working those rep ranges for several weeks and have progressed significantly, you can now look to branch out a little bit.  We will use 3 different rep ranges for this next phase of training:

Strength - 5×3-4

Moderate - 3×6-8

Endurance - 3×10-12

Each training session will  focus one rep range for each exercise.  They will go in the order of the exercises listed above.  So the program will look like this:

Workout A

Front Squat - 5×3-4

Incline Bench Press - 3×6-8

1-arm DB row - 3×10-12

Workout B

CG bench press - 5×3-4

Half kneeling 1-arm pulldown - 3×6-8

Step up - 3×10-12

Workout C

Pull up - 5×3-4

RDL - 3×6-8

DB Bench press - 3×10-12

Simple enough, right?  There are several other ways we could set up the rep ranges, of course.  If we wanted, we could asign one rep range to each given day and train like that for awhile.  The problem that I run into with that is if I do something like 5 sets of 3 on one exercise, I am usually totally destroyed and the other exercises suffer.  Plus, do you know how long it takes to do 5×3 on each exercise on a training day?  This way is a little easier to set up, you get to train all three rep ranges in each workout, and each movement - lower body, push and pull - get a variation in repetitions between each workout.

This is just something simple and is no way intended to imply that it is the only way to do things or that it is optimal for someone with something specific to train for (IE, sporting competition).  However, for the general trainee just looking to add strength, drop fat and get in shape.  This simple variation should work wonders.

Keep it simple and train hard!

Patrick

patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com