What is GPP?

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I have recently begun to explore the benefits of increasing ones GPP or General Physical Preparation. I borrowed some of these methods and philosophy from Cal Dietz who is a Strength and Conditoining Coach at Univeristy of Minnesota. This is nothing new and has been around for ages. You can think of GPP as gym class in your high school days. Very general activity like push ups, calisthenics, running, and various games. GPP forms your foundation for more advanced skills/training to build on top of.

What exactly is GPP?

General Physical Preparedness (GPP) is defined by Dr. Mel Siff, author of Supertraining, as a preparatory phase of training that, “…is intended to provide balanced physical conditioning in endurance, strength, speed, flexibility and other basic factors of fitness…” (1). GPP usually does not transfer to any specific skill, and depending on your fitness level can be pretty much anything. In contrary, SPP or Special/Specific Physical Preparation are movements or exercises that positively (or negatively) transfer over to the skill involved in sport or whatever you do. For example, I view squats as GPP for a 100m Sprinter; It involves the leg musculature and develops strength in those muscles with not much respect for the demands of an actual 100 m sprint. Contrast that to acceleration work for 60m, which I view as SPP,  that can have a direct positive transfer of to the 100m sprint. Accelerations work on the same biomotor abilities as a 100m sprint and helps develop acceleration.  Hopefully you can relate this to more than just track as GPP  has ramifications to all sports and all skilled movements (Martial Arts, Figure Skating, Salsa, Darts, Bowling, etc). I view GPP very similar to Work Capacity. Work Capacity is one way to look at how much work can you actually perform. Let me tell you a secret, fitness boils down to…. how much “stuff” can you do, how intense can  you do it, and how long does it take you to do that. Time brings a new element into the equation and gives us coaches a way measure and progress the workouts in a proper fashion. So the more active you are, the greater your work capacity and GPP and the less active you are, like couch potatoes, the lower your work capacity.

What does GPP have to do with me?

Everything! GPP forms your foundation and the bigger that foundation the better. We don’t want to be that individual that goes to walk up a flight of stairs and gets out of breath. Or the one, that is gasping for breath on the family hiking trip. Some examples of GPP that you may have heard of or tried are, P90x, crossfit, strongman, “300” training, and pretty much any group fitness or bootcamp style workout. They just want you to do as much work as possible in the time that your there. There is not much planning or periodization and it is usually just whatever the trainer feels like doing. You can also view cross-training a type of GPP, the key however, as with anything, is measuring progression. With many of these methods like crossfit and bootcamps, I see no effort made to track people and progress/regress them as necessary. How do you know if you increased your work capacity if you have no record of what you did before? Sometimes people like to see the numbers and these workouts I will show you give both coaches/trainers and clients another way to see progress.

How do I raise my GPP?

Do anything! Get off your butt; the worst thing you can do is lay there and do nothing. Fitness should be a requirement, like eating, sleeping, etc. It is just one of those things that should be done as often as possible, even though it is a pain to do. A sedentary life will catch up with you, and you can pay for it now or pay for it later. Once you raise your GPP for a couple weeks, I think you should focus on higher intensity methods to increase strength and muscle mass, which should be a goal of any good program. Then start to increase your GPP again. Building muscle is hard! It does not happen overnight. We know that lean muscle mass decreases as we age, and changes in metabolism inevitably occur. Gravity is always pulling us down and to maintain quality of life, it is necessary to hang on to as much muscle as possible. Get up and move!

Workouts

We want to use exercises that are big compound lifts to incorporate as many muscle groups as possible. The more muscle we use the higher the demand, and thus the more calories burned. Read that again ladies….more muscle worked=more calories burned. Here are some exercises that I start most people off with that increase their fitness level, gives them a chance to learn fundamental movements and get off the machines, all the while raising strength, cardio, mobility, etc. What’s great about these is that you don’t need any equipment except for some light weights(soup cans or water jugs work), and very little space. These can be done at home as well, you just have to get creative. The object is to break a sweat, work the whole body, not overly exhaust our self, but still be challenging, while completing the workout. I tell people all the time, do what you are capable of doing, and do it right. This builds confidence and confidence leads to success.

Level 1 circuit

• Squat, Push Up on Knees, Glute Bridge, Rear Delt Fly

  

Level 2 Circuit

• Squat, Push up on Knees, Reverse Lunge, Rear Delt Fly

Level 3 Circuit

• Squat, Hand Elevated Push Up, Reverse Lunge, Rear Delt Fly/Row

Level 4 Circuit

• Squat, Full Push up, Reverse Lunge, Bent Row

By level 4 you are doing FULL push ups, doubling the amount of movement with the lunges, as well as using a more compound lift that will allow more weight with the bent row(use water jugs instead of soup cans!). . Now that we have the exercises here is how we are going to program it…

week 1 Ladder 10’s– thats 55 total reps

week 2 Ladder 12’s – 78 total reps

week 3 Ladder 14’s – 107 total reps

week 4 ladder 10’s, up and down – 110 total reps

Go through all 4 weeks before going to next level of exercises. Ladders are done in a sequence of 1…2…3…4..etc, until you reach 10, 12, or 14 with NO REST. Going back down the ladder is 10…9…8…etc. Record how long it took you! We want to know how long it took you to do a certain amount of work, so you can beat it later in the week.  They do not take that long, about 10-20 min, and can be done 2-5x/week. These workouts can also be done at home and all you need is some space and creativity. If you want things faster paced, we can replace an exercise with something more metabolic (lots of reps) like jumping jacks, mountain climbers, or stair runs (all hotels/apartments have stairs). For more advanced trainee’s we can get much more challenging for a workout or keep things simple and use this more for a recovery day. These are basic general strength circuits and do nothing except increase your ability to tolerate work and recover.Track your progress and write things down!

But what about abs?!

I need to do some sort of ab exercises right? Can I go to abs class? Remember, abdominal muscles are just a piece of the core. Your real core starts at your shoulders and goes to your knees. Overdeveloping that “6 pack” is something that we want to avoid. We want a rigid strong torso that is stable in all planes. Also, getting that toned stomach is more about nutrition and total body workouts than targeting the muscle. Feeling the burn in your abs sadly does not equate to a flat stomach. Trying to get most people to progress through these exercises and doing them correctly will develop that total body strength and your abs will get stronger. I see very little need for dedicated ab routines until you are at level 3 or 4 and are going though the ladders  like a breeze. However, if you must, hit up some planks, leg lifts, or anything else you like after the workout for 5-10 minutes.

What Else?

That is about it. You can do these workouts after a walk with the dog, or do some yoga type movements before and finish with the workout. That shouldn’t take you longer than 45 min, and I assume most people go for a walk anyway, so just tack on 10 min and do something that will build some muscle. Try it out!

(1) Siff, Mel & Verkhoshansky, Yuri (1999). Supertraining. Supertraining International, Denver USA. p. 320