Thread: Westside 3 Day
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Old 07-13-2008, 07:56 AM
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Drag Your Butt Into Shape
General Physical Preparedness: Westside Style
By Dave Tate


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Many coaches and athletes don't believe in the benefits of GPP at all. Who are the worst offenders? Are you sure you want to know? Bodybuilders and powerlifters are by far the worst!. They feel that all they have to do is train the main lifts to get strong. This is why so many of them are out of shape.

I was first introduced to the concept of GPP a few years ago when Louie Simmons and I made a trip to Pittsburgh to watch John Davies train several of his athletes. John is a speed coach who was working with several players in Pittsburgh at the time. I weighed about 305 with a 2100 pound total at the time of this trip. My total was moving up but only by about five or ten pounds each competition. I knew I was missing something but didn't know what it was.

John was talking about how he'd never met an American player who couldn't benefit from added GPP. He said that just about every player he'd worked with was out of shape. American coaches, he said, were too quick to do specialized drills or movements before developing a solid base fitness level. Others athletes fail to maintain their fitness levels as they move through the ranks.

As we spoke I began to wonder if I'd lost my fitness level over the years. I'd spent the last few years force feeding myself to get my weight up and I only did those things I felt necessary in training. I didn't want to burn any more calories then I had to. At about this time we decided to go to lunch. The lunch hall was about a fourth of a mile away and up hill. John decided we would walk. Even though we could see the hall I still wanted to drive. About halfway up the hill I started to feel like I was going to die. By the time we got to the top I was soaked in sweat and beet-red. I thought my heart was going to pound through my chest. My question about GPP was answered.

My GPP was terrible and I was not only out of shape, I was way out of shape! I used to think this was how you had to be if you wanted to lift big weights. What the hell do I need to be in shape for if all I have to do is lift a weight that takes three to five seconds to complete? On the way home Louie and I came up with a plan. We knew endurance training (bike, treadmill, etc.) wasn't the ticket because it wasn't bringing up any weak points and not specific enough to our sport. We had to find a way to increase GPP while bringing up weak points.

The Solution: Sled Dragging

I decided to add in sled dragging six days a week with a few extra workouts. Louie had been doing these extra workouts for about a year and I just dismissed them as a waste of time. But the dragging sled could be used as a means of increasing work capacity. The use of a sled has many benefits:

- The sled is easy to use and doesn't require a special trip to the gym.

- The sled is specific to the development of the special skills necessary for maximal strength. (And by the way, we never run with the sled.)

-Many movements can be trained with the sled, some of which are listed below. There are movements for the abdominals, shoulders, hamstrings, etc. Virtually every muscle can be trained with a sled.

- The sled is a great way to induce active restoration. In many of the upper body dragging movements, the eccentric is eliminated because of the nature of the sled. This in turn is great for recovery because the tearing down of the muscle is much less in concentric-only movements.

I've presented just some of the possible GPP and restoration movements. It's worked wonders for us at Westside and for the athletes I train. The added GPP and hamstring development has improved many of our deadlifts and the upper body work has helped more shoulder problems caused by overtraining than anything else we've tried.
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