An optimized pumping geometry for transient collisionally excited soft X-ray lasers is presented, similar to the geometry proposed by [1]. In contrast to usual approaches, where a nanosecond pre-pulse is assumed to provide the optimal plasma preparation and a picosecond pulse performs the final heating- and excitation process, two pulses of equal duration in the range around 10 picoseconds are applied. Both pulses are produced in the front end of the CPA pump laser. They are focused onto the target with the same spherical mirror under non-normal incidence geometry, optimized for efficient traveling wave excitation for the main-pulse. A first experiment was performed on Ni-like palladium (14.7 nm) at less than 500mJ total pulse energy on the target. This proves that this configuration is at least as favorable as the standard GRIP scheme, providing much simpler and more reliable operation.