  Improving coherence times of quantum bits is a fundamental challenge in the
field of quantum computing. With long-lived qubits it becomes, however,
inefficient to wait until the qubits have relaxed to their ground state after
completion of an experiment. Moreover, for error-correction schemes it is
import to rapidly re-initialize ancilla parity-check qubits. We present a
simple pulsed qubit reset protocol based on a two-pulse sequence. A first pulse
transfers the excited state population to a higher excited qubit state and a
second pulse into a lossy environment provided by a low-Q transmission line
resonator, which is also used for qubit readout. We show that the remaining
excited state population can be suppressed to $2.2\pm0.8\%$ and utilize the
pulsed reset protocol to carry out experiments at enhanced rates.
