(Not) Being at Odds

For nearly every man, woman, and child, increasing GPP (general physical preparedness) isn’t at odds with anything else in the fitness repertoire.. By definition, GPP is everything. It’s not specific enough training to curb your flexibility or undermine your strength. Since most everyone taking on this training is training this way for the first time, it’s a common misperception that they may be trading, say, new strength for less natural flexibility. In reality, inside of a GPP focus “a rising tide raises all ships,” strength and flexibility included.

The disclaimer, of course, is that in instances where one has a specific elite performance capacity near the end of their human potential in say sprinting, marathon, weightlifting, figure skating, or otherwise the truth is nearly any indirect training would have detrimental effects on performance. Even then, we see examples like CrossFit Games Champion Matt Fraser was at what was assumed to be near his genetic potential as a competitive weightlifter only to find new personal bests after he’d retired from weightlifting and taken on GPP training in CrossFit. The idea being that increasing his GPP improved the base of his athletic pyramid making for taller specific peak performance. Nonetheless, I can’t think of a single person in our community that may be in jeopardy of sacrificing any one lane of performance in a pursuit of more general preparedness.

That being said, it’s time to shift away from a mindset that lifting weights at DEUCE Gym suffices one corner of your fitness repertoire, while your favorite spin class covers cardio, and forgetting yoga would mean forgetting the flexibility corner of your game is in order. If you like spin, do spin. If you like yoga, do yoga. However, GPP is designed to be a complete program.

GPP is speed, balance, agility, strength, flexibility, stamina, endurance. It’s skills and it’s technique. It develops the ability to put out short efforts and long efforts. It’s the gambit.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach