Broaden fitness to specify skill

Many of you hear me shout, remind and mention it often; GPP, or General Physical Preparedness. But what does “GPP” really stand for? 

Not having a specialized background in traditional sports, I think I caught on to this relatively easier than most, since joining the Marine Corps was my first-ever experience with any kind of fitness or conditioning program. (No joke.) What it helped me to realize is that fitness is an overall endeavor, not a specific skill to play lacrosse, run a marathon, or shoot free throws. 

GPP is laying the foundation of fitness to prepare... Prepare for what? Prepare for anything. The unknown and the unknowable, right? But that doesn’t mean that GPP is the end state; it can also prepare you for the "anythings" of something. It can lay the ground work in our physical traits but, after we get a solid foundation, it can take you toward Specific Physical Preparedness “SPP”, for a sport or a specialized skill.  

So how can we achieve GPP? By programming within the micro, meso and macro spheres of fitness. We program to achieve balance, not to bias specialization. Take the spinning-plate analogy, for example:

We have ten plates to represent each of the ten physical traits (I call them "trait plates"): cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. We start spinning each plate on a stick and we constantly monitor each one, making sure to re-spin our sticks so all plates keep spinning. We can do less work by focusing on just two or three plates and spinning them so they are very fast, but the rest of the plates will eventually fall. But if we take our time to watch all ten plates (the macro), focus on the few that start to wobble (the meso), and prioritize our spinning to the one about to fall first (the micro), we can keep all ten plates spinning; we don't need to have a few super-fast spinning plates, but we don’t want any to fall…

Or, as the saying goes, “You don’t have to be the best at everything but you can’t suck at anything.”It is common to “cherry pick” your fitness, but the reality is that you can’t. Overtraining only a few areas will leave you deficient in other important areas of fitness. We all want to do the things we’re good at, but the honest truth is that we get stronger by doing the things we’re weak in; this can apply to more than just your workout regimen.

So I encourage every CrossFitter to take GPP to heart; seek out a general, broad fitness to implement into your routine. Constant variance will help you set a solid foundation in GPP which will lead you to the path of superior specialization when the time comes. In the meantime, if that time doesn’t come yet, we can enjoy being fit, being healthy and having fun!