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GPP — General Physical Preparedness — is the foundation every strongman athlete needs but too few actually build. This article breaks down Volume Density as a practical framework for developing it, with three ready-to-use protocols.

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For me, it was Louie Simmons that put the GPP concept on my radar. The first few articles I was digging into had me thinking it was all just sled dragging and prowler pushing, but as I kept digging deeper I found that GPP had a lot more substance than that. I also found a unique method of creating GPP that worked for strongman athletes who were always more in favor of short bursts of maximal effort than long periods of burn.

We have to embrace that GPP is the base of the pyramid. The foundation on which the peak is formed. It's all the training qualities that make every athlete athletic. Building strongman athletes — insanely strong men and women capable of strength demonstration in a wide variety of situations — GPP is something that we need in abundance. In this article, I want to give you something you can sink your teeth into that can level up your GPP toolkit.

The Problem

Strongman athletes skip GPP — or run it wrong

When athletes embrace strongman, they do so because they fall in love with the implements. They fall in love with the culture. How much can you lift? How far can you carry it? How high can you throw it?

They don't get into it because they want to build their aerobic capacity, enhance their mobility, or build the agility that it takes to reach the upper echelons of the sport.

Then they hit plateaus. Find the divide between novice and open to be too wide to cross. Maybe even get injuries every time they go to hit a personal best.

GPP is a necessary evil for most. That makes it that much more important that you don't spend time spinning your wheels. Get it done efficiently and reap the benefits — more quality work in subsequent training phases, resilience as you pursue new levels of performance, and enhanced recovery as you start training competition movements for the competition.

What disappears when you hit a peaking or strength block

GPP needs its place in the training program. If you spend all your time on events, stacking strength protocols and training only the events, you can end up in a situation where key GPP adaptations start to fade.

• Your aerobic base will erode. This system drives recovery between sets and between training days. It is also what helps you recover between events on competition day. When you prioritize strength output by controlling rest times and emphasizing heavier loads, your aerobic capacity fades.
• Your mobility and stability decay. Old faults you thought you'd eliminated begin to show up again. Hip stability, foot strength, and the qualities that support strong, productive training start to disappear.
• Connective tissue becomes symptomatic. Tendinopathy becomes more of a problem, and you start getting flare-ups in joints or muscles that force you to take steps to preserve the integrity of the rest of your training.

The Solution: Volume Density in GPP

An athlete that can do more work is an athlete that is in better shape. An athlete that can hold positions longer, and execute tasks well more times without stopping, is an athlete with better work capacity and better general physical preparedness.

It's not always about the hardest training, and the sessions don't have to be brutal. It just has to be organized in a way that stacks. The athlete needs to become a version of themselves that can do more total quality work and recover from it.

Volume Density protocols are some of my favorites for achieving this goal. When I say volume, I mean a metric calculated by multiplying your sets by your reps. The thing that we forget is that this metric needs a timeframe to give it context. When you consider it that way, suddenly you can see it as a ratio: work/time.