Building Bigger Gas Tanks with GPP
posted on August 10, 2023
Electric cars are coming in hot and everyone has been looking into them. If I had you choose between two models of electric cars at the same price, one with a 300 mile range and the other with a 600 mile range, which one would you pick? Well of course we want to ride around with bigger mileage capacity. With GPP we can help improve your overall work capacity, essentially increasing your mileage capacity for work. I’m telling you with proper GPP training , you can train longer with more intensity and still have some juice left in the tank. Who wouldn’t want this adaptation?!
GPP stands for general physical preparedness. GPP is the general training that helps increase your specific training. GPP will improve your aerobic fitness (work capacity), your recovery between exercises and sessions, your quality of movement and enhancing your ability to handle larger workloads. GPP has a main goal of improving movement patterns and fixing the weak links with more practice with various movements. Some GPP movements include push, pull, hinge , squat and loaded carry/drags. So if you’ve been in Powerful and wondered why we’ve been doing all these different variations of squats, hinges, weighted carries, sled pushes, medicine ball throws and more… well it’s because we’ve been in a “GPP build a bigger gas tank” block. We’ve come a long way this block at improving your overall work capacity and that will pay great dividends to this upcoming strength block. GPP is the foundation building block to SPP aka specific physical preparedness. For most powerlifters this means your squat bench and deadlift, for Olympic lifters it’s your clean & jerk and your snatch, for athletes, your SPP would be your position in your sport.
When should you use GPP: the beginning of an offseason, after a long hiatus in training, post injury, deloading and active recovery. GPP is to set you up for the next block of training and level you up while you prepare for the more specific movements of your training and sport. This is a great opportunity to add overall training volume to workout sessions.
I hope this was a helpful intro into the importance of GPP and I can’t wait for you to give it a try if you haven’t yet. Let’s rock some GPP to build those bigger gas tanks!
Cheers,
CEJ
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