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.

The barbell will be your best friend.

 

 

The barbell loves you.  It gives you strength, power, athleticism, muscles, and a strong heart.  All you need to do is feed it weight plates and sweat.

It wants to hang out with you and do squats, deadlifts, presses and rows.

It wants to introduce you to some of its very awesome friends like the prowler sled and farmer walk handles.

The barbell would like to help you calm the stress in your life and help you forget about the coffee you spilled on your new slacks this morning.

Don’t be afraid of the barbell if you’ve never had one.  It won’t judge you as you learn and will always be there when you come back, no matter what.

The barbell is always your barbell whether you use that one, or that one, or the one with the rust on the knurls.  It is still your best friend.

Let the barbell into your life.  Learn its favorite things.  Do its favorite things.  It will make your life better.

 

Get up.

The Turkish Getup, or simply the Getup is one powerful tool because of its simplicity, its loadability, and its impact on overall health and mobility.

As we age we lose the ability to move, especially if we neglect it. Moving down to the floor and getting back up may sound simple but for many people it is either difficult or downright impossible.

At some point in my training, I strive to have all of my clients capable of getting up from lying on the floor on their back.

Other than being able to save yourself if you fall, it has a lot of potential as a workout itself; spend 5 minutes of nothing but getting up and down. Add a weight vest. Do full turkish getups with a kettlebell or dumbbell. Add sprints, or push ups, or box jumps, or pullups in between rounds of getups. It is a total body experience especially if done with added resistance; the core activation, the shoulder stabilization, the unilateral leg work.

Now that I write this, I don’t do enough of them myself.

Let’s say your life is hectic, you can’t make it to the gym. You get home, walk up and down the stairs for 5 minutes. Then perform 5 minutes of getups. You’re done in 10 minutes and you’ll probably feel better.

Here’s a YouTube search: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=getups&sm=3

You don’t necessarily need any added resistance. Just get down and get back up.

Lie on your back with one knee up.

Roll up on to the opposite elbow.

Press up onto the hand.

Thrust up the hips and bring the lying leg back underneath you into a kneeling position, hand still on the ground.

Lean up.

Stand up.

Reverse it.

-Larry