The Home Guide to GPP

My ebook is now on sale at Barnes and Noble and Amazon:  The Home Guide to General Physical Preparedness

A simple, no frills guide to prepare for the physical demands of life and occupation with minimal and hand-made equipment at home or in conjunction with gym equipment workouts. Sprint, carry, drag, push, pull, and mobilize yourself to a more balanced, vigorous, and capable body.

Use it:
to learn how to exercise
to enhance your current style (or use it exclusively)
during the off-season
as preparation for military training
before the police or fire academy
to prepare to work as an EMT
as a break from your usual program
as a way to balance your body and find weaknesses
as preparation for any physical event

Includes:
Equipment list
Exercises and how to perform them
Over 80 preplanned workouts with enough variations to probably triple that
Progressions for sedentary readers
Progressions for sprints
Why focused and experienced trainees should include a few GPP style workouts
Reasons and motivation to get training and use the included techniques

I suggest reading it on a full screen laptop or computer because the conversion to e-readers like Nook and Kindle wasn’t perfect.

$5 at Barnes and Noble

$5 at Amazon US store

It is also available in other countries at their respective international Amazon store.

Old School Health

I’ve discovered The Art of Manliness finally and they have some cool stuff about training from yester-year and other neat styles from around the world.  This one posted earlier today is a quick daily regimen that can certainly be broken down into its parts: Old Time Strong Man morning regimen

GPP 2

Yesterday’s GPP was as follows:

30 minute walk with a 25lb weight vest

4 rounds(no vest) of 3 sprints of varying speed and distance followed by 5 clean and press with a 50lb sandbag.

4 rounds of holding 50lb buckets for as long as possible.

When I vary my speed and distance on sprints I usually reduce speed if I run further and vice versa. I simply cannot do them like I used to. Most of the time I work in the 20 yard range maxing out at around 85%. Occasionally I go longer and I’ll stick to 75%. Occasionally I’ll go much shorter, probably less than 12 yards. I will blast as hard as possible from the start and then stop when I reach full speed.

General Physical Preparedness

General Physical Preparedness or GPP is a somewhat random style of training with a goal of being physically prepared or just fit and healthy.

It is rather boot camp or military oriented in that it uses mainly bodyweight exercises, obstacles, and mobility drills and provides a degree of conditioning and endurance.

Today, my workout went like so:

Fast walk with a 25 pound weighted vest for 15 minutes. (With hills)

4 sets of 5 weighted pullups with the vest.

Fast walk with the vest for another 15 minutes and included a few short, light sprints throughout.

Dropped the vest and performed a series of sprints from 10-25 yards in distance with speeds anywhere from 60-90% of my max speed. I think I did 8 sprints total.

Finished with 4 sets of 5 bodyweight pullups.

Felt great doing it, felt great for the rest of the day.

Throw some stuff together and have at it. You can make a GPP day of bear crawls, sprints, and sled drags. Or hit the track and jog a mile and a half with a set of pushups and squats at the end of each lap. Or walk for 60 minutes and perform a few getups at 10 minute intervals. Build an obstacle course in the backyard…

Skies the limit.

With the warmer weather on the way I will be having more GPP days. Slinging iron is one thing and being able to sprint, walk or jog for distance, and mobilize your bodyweight is another.

-Larry