GPP: DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE IT

In light of my most recent post, wherein I discussed my concurrent training for a strongman competition and a half marathon and praised the value of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) as it related to both, I’ve received numerous questions regarding how one goes about acquiring this GPP.  And right away that question just confuses me.  Folks, it’s in the name: GENEREAL physical preparedness.  We used to just plain call that “being in shape”.  That’s what GPP is.  When you have good GPP, you’re in good shape, and when you’re in good shape, you can do things that people who are in good shape can do: run, jump, throw, climb, swim, etc. You’re “physically fit”, you’re ready and able, you have GPP.

If you grew up in the 90s, this was already in your head.  And, if not, you have no idea what this means.

Short post right?  No, I suppose we can talk some more on the subject, because there are still more questions.  Much like “The Tao Te Ching”, the GPP that can be written of is NOT the true GPP.  What I mean is, inevitably, someone wants to know what program to follow to develop GPP and what metrics to use to evaluate their GPP.  This mentality is proof of concept of how vital GPP is, because everyone has become a specialist and the notion of simple unquantifiable fitness eludes people.  It’s a weird thing too.  I remember growing up and you could see a dude and flat out say “he’s in great shape”.  AND we could even tell the difference between guys that were in good shape vs guys that were specialists. I remember being able to look at gym rats with 500lb benchs and 50” guts and going “Yeah, that dude is strong, but he’s not in good shape”, but apparently, now, we are confused.

And so, if you’ve been afflicted with a terminal case of specialization, that’s a sign of exactly what you need to do in order to start developing some GPP: do something DIFFERENT than what you’ve been doing.  If you need a start, do something COMPLETELY different.  That doesn’t mean go from low reps to high reps in the weightroom: it means go from lifting to swimming, or running, or cycling, or hiking, or anything that isn’t standing in one spot and lifting something.  If you are a rower, go wrestle someone. If you’re a fighter, go skating.  Just go do something DIFFERENT that you’re bad at.  If you’re bad at something, it means you have room to improve, and typically one observes RAPID and exponential growth when they first begin a new activity.  Lifters call these “beginner gains”, but they exist with all physical activities.

That guy in the first lane has LOTS of room for improvement

But how long?  And what program?  And reps and sets?  THIS is why your GPP is bad: you keep wanting there to be rules.  This is GENERAL physical preparedness: it’s your body’s preparedness to perform general physical activity.  When you need to have everything planned, structured and organized, you’re defeating the purpose.  You need to be able to respond to situations on demand, irrespective of what or when that demand is.  Can you jump when you need to jump, or do you need 14 hours of foam rolling and a slingshot before both feet leave the ground?  If someone throws a ball at you without warning, are you going to have a broken nose?  If someone takes a swing at you, are you going to block it with your face, or can you bob and weave? 

You know who has great GPP?  Children!  Or, at least, they did.  Sedentariness is sadly affecting our youth as well, but if you remember back in the day, kids played all the time, and they played a diverse and WIDE range of games, exposing themselves to physical activities.  In any given day, a child could be expected to go swimming, climb a tree, go across monkey bars, play a game of football, and ride a bike, skateboard or scooter.  Think about if you tried to make an office drone live that kind of day: they’d chalk it up as some sort of Instagram victory and talk about “living that life”, demanding a free t-shirt and a medal.  We drift so far away from the things that we all KNEW made sense when we were kids. 

Somewhere a bunch of adults are doing this EXACT same thing, except covered in mud and calling it "obstacle course racing"

And those kids didn’t approach these activities with a fixed and rigid training program.  Have you ever tried to train a kid?  They have ZERO attention span: they just wanna do what seems fun at that moment and then move on to the next fun thing.  Allow yourself to be afflicted with the same attention span.  Carve out some time in your schedule for GPP and just go find something to do.  Hell, go to a dollar store and grab a handful of cheap sporting goods.  Get a Frisbee, a football, a softball and some cones, and set up obstacle courses and throwing stations.  Throw in a jump rope somewhere.  Go shovel a few extra driveways this winter and mow a few extra lawns this summer.  GO FOR A WALK.  When’s the last time you went walking just for the experience of walking?  And hell, you can do it in a mall like an octogenarian: malls have air conditioning and a food court, it’s awesome.  But just go out and have some sort of fun.

And yeah, you’re never going to be good (or even decent) at EVERYTHING out there.  I’m an awful athlete: full stop.  My throwing and catching skills are terrible, lateral movement is poor, skillwork is lacking on anything that isn’t fighting, but I’m “good enough” at enough skills that I can fake it with something else when the need arises.  It’s one again about GENERAL physical preparedness, so as long as you’re creating a broad spectrum of physical excellence to pull from, you do yourself some favors.  As soon as you settle in to a rut and decide “this” is going to be your GPP, you’re missing out on some of the benefits.  Go find something different and weird and go try to suck less at it.