General Physical Preparedness

Louie Simmons well into his 60s still cranking out some serious power lifting totals




Hope everyone is having a good weekend. I just got done crushing a workout in my parent’s basement! I know I promised in an early post to video tape my next workout in the dungeon but I forgot my camera in Syracuse. Heavy overhead pressing, a lot of push pull supersets and ring work summarizes the workout quickly. Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of goal settings for myself. One of my major goals over the next 6-12 months is to read a total of 15 books. These books consist of Zach Even Esh top 5 books, Joe Defrancos top 3 books, and the seven books required for Louie Simmons West Side Barbell Certification. Looking at this list you may think I am planning on taken the West Side Certification, but I am not. I will explain. As respected and successful as Zach and Joe are in the training industry Louie Simmons has decades of experience training world class athletes over both Zach and Joe. On top of being an elite level powerlifter for decades Louie also runs arguably the top power lifting gym in the world, Westside Barbell Club. At this club Louie has trained over 100 top level power lifters and athletes on how to become STRONG. Based on these accolades I think it is easy to understand the importance I put on Louies top 7 books. Not to mention both Zach and Joe learned a great deal of there knowledge from.... thats right Louie Simmons
My buddy Austin and I often have long conversations discussing fitness (although Austin always manages to switch the topic over to crossfit). We often talk about Louie Simmons and I love referring to him as the god father of strength. I love reading Louie Simmons articles (I have read well over 100 of them), but I especially enjoy listening to his interviews. I often joke with Austin how at first sound or glance Louie sounds like an old time trucker. Every time I listen to these interviews Louie leaves me speechless with the knowledge and passion he has in this field. One thing that Louie seems to speak of over and over is what he calls GPP or General Physical Preparedness. After hearing multiple interviews and reading multiple articles in which Louie mentioned GPP on more then one occasion I decided it would be a good idea to begin researching this phenomenon. So what is GPP you may be wondering? Here is a great article I found on one of my websites explaining what GPP means.