Search Results for "k.i.s.s"

It has been often said:

“In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the experts there are few.”

This quote is one of particular interest to me since part of my whole philosophy is based on the simplicity of training.

Once upon a time, I was a beginner, a grasshopper if you will.  I wanted knowledge so much, that I would read anything I could get my hands on.  This left my head spinning with ideas and things to try out in my clients programs and my own.  The funny thing is that the programms became cluttered with so much “stuff” that they didn’t really make sense.  I wanted to do everything!  I wanted to use every single concept I had read about at the same time.  There were so many possibilities that I couldn’t decide which were important to keep in the program and which I could have done with out.

After a long time of putting things together in a variety of ways and experimenting with all sorts of ideas, I realized that there were only a hand full of ways that things made sense to me.  There were a hand full of things that got me the best results and the possibilities of what could be put into a training program became whittled down to a few basic concepts and ideas.

Young trainers and trainees often ask questions about program design and I answer with simplicity.  They then follow up with “Well what about….”  or “Could I put this in here?” or “Don’t I need to do….”

So many possibilities, so little time!

Ivonne, one of the co-founders of Optimum Sports Performance (and my wife), had a great quote that she told to a client, that I really wish I had come up with (but I didn’t).  In fact, the quote is a reflection of the basic K.I.S.S. program template that I wrote.  The quote was:

“Push something, pull something and do something for your legs.”

Sounds simple enough right?  In all honestly, it really it is that easy!  Go to the gym, warm up and then push something, pull something and do something for your legs.  Finish with some cardiovascular work and you have yourself a complete workout.

Simplicity for the win!

Patrick

patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

did enjoy your 3-day training split. Is there any way to incorporate this into a 4-5 or even 6 day training week split? Any suggestions? I am currently continuing my cutting diet and need to lift heavy weights, but your program looks to only take about 30 minutes a week, which would be great on a caloric deficit.

J. Hawkin

Thanks for the question and for checking out the program and blog.  There are probably several people out there who read the blog and would like to have a 4-day training program instead of a 3 day training program, so here it goes.

Just to reiterate, we are going for simplicity.  For the 4-day program, we will train on an upper/lower training split.

Day 1 – Upper body

bench press – 4×4

1-arm DB row – 3×8

High cable rear delt flyes – 2×12

Day 2 – Lower body

Squat – 4×4

1-leg RDL – 3×8

Back extensions – 2×12

Day 3 – Upper bod

chin up – 4×4

DB shoulder press – 3×8

Rope Face pulls – 2×12

Day 4 – Lower body

Deadlift – 4×4

Split Squat – 3×8

Glute bridge with stability ball hamstring curl – 2×12

That’s it – short and sweet.

Just as in the 3-day split, make sure and start with lighter weight and really learn good patterns.  4 reps doesn’t mean a 4RM.  The weight should be manageable when you are starting out and the form should be clean!  You have plenty of time to increase weight and work up over several weeks.  Remeber, strength doesn’t happen over night.

For more training ideas check out the Optimum Sports Performance Forum.

Patrick

patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

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

Today I was supposed to do a follow up to the K.I.S.S. program, but I lied. I will do it tomorrow instead because today I have two cool news stories that I would like to share with the readers.

The first one could go down as one of the greatest stories ever. If you coach athletes (more importantly youth athletes), if you play sports, if you are a teacher, if you have kids, or if you just want to see an incredible story, take 3 minutes out of your day and watch this:

Check this out!

The second story is about the AZ Cardinals. Although they didn’t win last night, it was an incredible game and an incredible season! On saturday, the story below was run in the AZ Republic about the AZ Cardinals Strength and Conditioning Staff and Sports Medicine team. I love finding stories about strength coaches in the paper, so I thought everyone may like to check it out as well. I posted it on the Optimum Sports Performance Forum. Here is the link:

AZ Cardinals S&C

Enjoy!

Patrick

I have gotten a lot of great feedback from the K.I.S.S. program.  Some people have been emailing me asking how they can progress the program after they do it for a significant amount of time and have hit a plateau.  I’ll address that tomorrow.

Today, I’d like to refer the readers over to a colleague of mine in Canada, MariAnne Anderson (some may know her as BUILT from a variety of health and fitness forums on the internet).  She is a trainer who focuses on strength training and fitness for females.  She keeps a blog as well – Got Built – and asked me if she could post the K.I.S.S. program on her blog.  She added some information to the blog including some diet and nutrition info, some ideas for dynamic warm up and some implications for females.  So, I thought everyone reading would like to check it out – K.I.S.S program ala BUILT.

Enjoy!

Patrick

patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com