General Physical Preparedness?

[gymrat]

In some of the articles I've been reading, they talk about increasing one's GPP. Does an increase in GPP mean an increase in your body's ability to recover from workouts (a faster recovery) or does this just mean a reduction in how sore you will get from the same workout. I guess what I'm wondering is if you were to workout with a good routine that utilizes gradual loading and deloading for six months and you made good progress, would you be able to perform more reps/sets with the same or higher %'s of your new 1RM (or even add in new movements) than you did when you started, without it leading to overtraining. Thanks.

 

[Freddy]

In some of the articles I've been reading, they talk about increasing one's GPP. Does an increase in GPP mean an increase in your body's ability to recover from workouts (a faster recovery) or does this just mean a reduction in how sore you will get from the same workout. I guess what I'm wondering is if you were to workout with a good routine that utilizes gradual loading and deloading for six months and you made good progress, would you be able to perform more reps/sets with the same or higher %'s of your new 1RM (or even add in new movements) than you did when you started, without it leading to overtraining. Thanks.

One's GPP is just what it sounds like, one's general physical preparedness level.

However, the process of increasing your GPP (sled dragging, medicine ball throws, concentric only work) will reduce soreness and improve recovery.

As a consequence of raising your GPP level, in the future you should recover better from workouts and be able to tolerate more demanding workouts.

Your final question is tricky.

Typically, as an athlete improves, he is going to increase his neural efficiency, and may find that he can do less volume at any given % of a 1RM, even with a high level of GPP.

 

[J DUB]

If you are just a lifter, you only need to be able to recover from lifting a weight a couple times then resting and repeating. Walking on a treadmill can do this for you, but GPP is very specific to what you are training for. Once you get more advanced, sled dragging and all that might be good, but don't think about it too much unless you are really having a hard time recovering. In this case, if you do GPP phase be careful how much you do.

GPP is very misunderstood, and a lot of novices just starting Westside for example think this is so important when it really isnt. Focus on lifting more weight! Why do you care about being able to do more reps with a certain %, if you are trying to get stronger worry about what you do once or twice. BTW, I just spent the weekend with Dave Tate and Jim Wendler, this is pretty much what they had to say about it.