The Ultimate Kū Body Program Experiment

If you haven’t read the first post, What is The Ultimate Ku Body?, please do before you go into this program.

Again, I want to emphasize what the title says.  Experiment.  

What I enjoy about the people I work with is that they are down to try things out and guinea pigs for my programs.  Plus, they enjoy the idea that I’ll be doing the program with them as well.

You may be asking yourself, “Why would I want to experiment with program that I don’t know will work?”

First of all, how do you know if any program will work?  Just because you see pictures and see stats on a particular program doesn’t fully mean it’ll work.  Why? Because the programs don’t it work, you make the program work.

There are countless programs out there that people have bashed on saying that it’s not smart programming or that people will overtrain and so forth.  But guess what? Those programs gave results to many.  You have to find what works best for you.

For instance, people bash on CrossFit and CrossFit bash on people who don’t do CrossFit.  But both sides of the quarter are getting results.

The reason why programs work, is the buy-in.  You have to believe in the program and want the program to work.  If you begin a program with skepticism, you have already failed.

But if you approach a program with excitement, curiosity and tenacity, great things will happen.

The Ultimate Ku Body Experiment

The goal of the Ultimate Ku Body Program is to improve performance in both Strength and Endurance, in this case specifically running.  Many of us who have already started to experiment are not big runners at all.  Actually, we don’t run unless if we absolutely have too which is rare.

The following template is flexible and can be adapted towards what you have available in your training facility.

As I mentioned, this is a flexible program and the above schedule is an ideal week that we’d like to work our way up to.

On our three main days, Day 1, 3 and 5.  The sets and rep progressions for strength exercises are as followed:

Week 1:

Total Body: 4 x 1
Strength: 2×5
Accessory Lifts 2-4: 3 x 8-10

Week 2: 

Total Body: 4 x 1
Strength: 3 x 3
Accessory Lifts 2-4: 4 x 10

Week 3: 

Total Body: 4 x 1
Strength: 3 x 5,3,2
Accessory Lifts 2-4: 5 x 8-10

For the Accessory lifts, you choose exercises that’ll help bring up your strength movements for that day. Example, Day 1 is Bench and Pull ups, so after those strength movements are done, the accessory movements are you biggest bang the buck movements that will assist those exercises like DB Incline Press, Dips, Rows, and Rear Delt Flyes.

You will also notice Tempo Runs in there.  Simply put, tempo runs are not jogs nor sprints.  They are like 75% of your sprint.  Enough to get your heart rate up and feel like you are actually trying.  The Tempo Runs are broken down like this:

Week 1:

Tempo 1: 100 yard x 6 with 1 minute rest
Tempo 2: 100 yard x 8 with 1 minute rest
Tempo 3: 1200 yards total x B/S with 1 minute rest
B= Big (200 yards)
S= Small (100 yards)

Week 2: 

Tempo 1: 100 yard x 6 with 45 sec rest
Tempo 2: 100 yard x 8 with 45 minute rest
Tempo 3: 1200 yards total x B/S with 45 sec rest
B= Big (200 yards)
S= Small (100 yards)

Week 3: 

Tempo 1: 100 yard x 8 with 45 sec rest
Tempo 2: 100 yard x 10 with 45 sec rest
Tempo 3: 1400 yards total x B/S with 45 sec rest
B= Big (200 yards)
S= Small (100 yards)

Bodybuilding (Optional)

Some of you are addicted to training.  The optional bodybuilding days are dedicated to you.  But it’s very important that you work on either the same muscles you did the day before along with a few exercises that work on your weaknesses, that will not take away your performance for the next training day.

This means, no training to failure or trying to see how much weight you can lift.  The purpose of this can be used for active recovery and keeping you meatheads sane.

A simple bodybuilding for Day 2 would be:

A. TRX Push Ups: 3 x 12
A. TRX Rows: 3 x 12
B. Seated Rows: 3 x 12
B. MB Slams: 3 x 12
C. Triceps Pushdowns: 3 x 12
C. EZ Bar Curls: 3 x 12
Core Circuit

Intervals:

For intervals we are using shuttle runs.  The purpose of this on leg days is to build up lactic acid.  This means you perform shuttle runs with minimum rest, in order to build up the lactic acid.  As the reps progress, your speed should decrease and legs feel heavy.

We did 40 yard shuttles with 30 seconds in between for 6 rounds.  That was enough for all of us to be done.

Long Slow (Ruck)

Day to get outside and go on a hike with a loaded pack.  Nothing crazy, a simple 30-60 minute hike with a weighted backpack can set as a good active recovery day and improve your work capacity.

As mentioned before, this is an ideal weekly schedule.  The first week, I wasn’t able to get out for a Ruck since this is a new schedule and I have a family.  There has to be some give and take here and there while I get the training schedule in place.

METCON

This is a metabolic conditioning training session that should be short, sweet, and straight to the point.  It shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes to get this done.  One of our favorite ones for these are EMOMs and Ladders.

The past METCON we did was EMOM for 10 minutes alternating between Bench Press and Pull ups.

Thoughts

I know this was a quick overview but I wanted to get the thoughts out there and welcome any questions.  The first week, everyone felt good and was like the switch up for training with the addition of running.  We still want to improve our strength so that will be a factor that I will be strongly monitoring with everyone.

Hope this inspires you to try something different from your normal routine.  With the idea of developing the Ultimate Ku Body, I felt running had to be incorporated not just for overall health but also performance.