General Physical Preparedness

General Physical Preparedness, or GPP, is a way to describe a broad application of strength and conditioning. The focus is on general development of strength, power, speed, skill, movement quality and conditioning. Originating from the sports performance, building GPP is the base building or off-season phase of an athlete’s training plan. Eventually, GPP leads way to more specific training (SPP - sport-specific physical training), increasing intensity, and finally peaking for a specific event or sports season.

For our purposes, your level GPP is a great way to think about your fitness, and to start defining what you want your base to be. Training for a race or triathlon, or building to a certain deadlift number or hitting watts on a bike workout are all clear training goals. Defining what you want your general physical preparedness levels though is different. It’s more broad, and less easily defined.

One way to think about it is your work capacity. Just how much stuff can you get done in a certain time period? Once again, in the gym this is easily defined, but it’s going to take a little more imagination when considering outside the gym.

The right amount of GPP will allow you to complete life’s daily tasks with ease, plus the ability to do whatever else you want.

Let’s take the recent snow storm for example. Having proper GPP levels for you life could mean you can clean of your car, shovel the deck, travel around on the slippery and uncertain terrain and also hit the gym, work all day and be a useful and reliable human.

The point is that everyone’s baseline will be slightly different, but the take away is that you can define it for yourself. What do you want to be able to do? What’s holding you back from doing that? Maybe defining what you consider your base level of general physical preparedness will help you get there.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain