Should GPP Make a Comeback? Digging Ourselves out of the Modern Injury Abyss
Derek M. Hansen - November 2025
Introduction
Even though I started my career in the sport performance field, working in Strength and Conditioning and focusing on speed development, the majority of my major projects in the last ten years have focused on injury management. Teams are finding that the biggest challenge in modern sports is staying healthy and ensuring players are available to make an impact in games. With all the so-called advancements in training, equipment, nutrition and rehabilitation, we still find ourselves at a precipice where the prospects of a team can be thrown into turmoil with a handful of serious injuries to key players at the wrong time.
As such, team staff are scrambling – at all levels including professional, collegiate, national team and high school – to maintain a healthy lineup throughout the season. While there are new technologies and methods for treating injuries, these innovations have not necessarily contributed to a reduction in the incidence or severity of injury. Common excuses have included the impact of artificial playing surfaces to the negative influence of modern civilization and technology on sleep, recovery and cognitive focus. Yet, one cannot feel a bit helpless knowing that progress has not been achieved in reducing injuries and tangible solutions do not seem to be within reach under current conditions.
Solutions to sports injuries are commonly examined and implemented in isolation. What is the mechanism of injury? Is there an exercise that I can do to prevent a muscle strain or a joint sprain? How do I strengthen that area? What is the best hamstring exercise to prevent a strain in competition? What supplement will help me? “Give me the magic bullet that inoculates me against that particular group of injuries that are common in my sport.” In many ways, we are narrowing our focus too much in the effort to solve these problems, putting our chips down on just one number in the hopes that we will hit the jackpot. If you place too narrow a focus on one problem, inevitably new problems arise elsewhere.
When the total number of ACL injuries is published from the NFL season, armchair quarterbacks immediately blame artificial turf fields as the cause. At the time of the writing of this article, I have observed 30 ACL injuries by Week 9 in the NFL, with 21 of those injuries (70%) occurring on grass fields. While this type of reductionist thinking persists, injuries continue to pile up with well-compensated top performers falling at the worst possible times.
I was always taught to take a broader view and, essentially, reverse engineer an injury or a performance shortfall. Why are we failing? What is the series of events that can lead up to an injury or a poor performance? Never do I find myself saying, “what is the one specific thing that caused the injury or created the problem.” Why? Because the majority of mishaps are created by a pattern of chronic behavior and/or a system that perpetuates that behavior allowing the problem to accumulate over time to ultimately result in an acute failure.
In this article, we will examine the whole body of preparatory work that must be included in an athlete’s programming to help us avoid the chronic issues, acute failures and physical deficiencies that lead to problems with overall athlete preparedness and resiliency. In many ways “it takes a village” to integrate a variety of methods over a continuous progression and for an extended period of time to ensure all boxes are ticked off on the way to competitive durability. The challenge in the modern world of athlete specificity and ongoing competition proliferation becomes a question of “where do start” and “how do we find the time?” We are stuck in a world of aircraft carriers with short runways trying to execute successful take-offs and landings in jumbo jets. Strategies must be put in place to enact a comprehensive year-round approach to athlete preparation.
Why the Focus on General Preparation?
Back in the days of grand periodization arrangements for athlete development, the General Physical Preparation (GPP) period would be undertaken at the beginning of a training program to develop general qualities such as conditioning, muscular endurance, work capacity and basic movement skills using non-specific exercises over numerous repetitions and durations. The GPP period could last anywhere from four to six weeks and be followed by a Specific Physical Preparation (SPP) period that included more sport specific exercises at a broader range of intensities approaching those required for competition. The intent of the GPP training was to develop a broad foundation of training – as illustrated in Figure 1 – that would allow for more intensive and complex training in subsequent phases, while also improving overall injury resiliency and durability, structurally, neurologically and metabolically over the entire season.
Figure 1: Progressing from General to Specific in a Comprehensive Training Program
While this type of preparation model worked well in the past, over the years early specialization models have tended to provide greater short-term, sport-related gains in competency, particularly in sport development models that place a high value early mastery and advanced ability. We see this commonly now in all sports where youth development leagues – at very young ages – reward athletes (and parents) with promotions to “select” teams that hold a higher level of prestige. One-dimensional talent identification programs filter out the early achievers from the pack and heap praise on them as the next supposed big stars of the sport. It is also common for university recruiters to identify prospects at very young ages in an effort to outdo their competition and reserve the rights to these predicted All-Americans. Unfortunately, a disservice is often done to a large number of late-bloomers – and potential elite performers – who may decide to remove themselves from the development pool and quit their sport because they have missed an ill-conceived talent identification window created by moronic sporting officials and leadership.
A combination of impatience and stupidity have led to the adoption of what can be considered the “get rich quick” schemes of athlete development. GPP phases of training are often discarded for more specific preparation approaches and entrepreneurial driven ventures. Sport specific and skill-intensive training camps or weekend clinics are promoted over an organized system of athlete development. And, on top of these sport-specific events that are attended throughout the year, the amount of actual games and competitions are continuing to increase in number. Sports that were predominantly contested in high school seasons over a three to four month period are now played over multiple season through clubs year round in a race to make single sports the only physical activity an athlete experiences in their lifetime.
What has been the result? An examination of injury statistics tends to speak volumes. Not only have injuries not been reduced through innovations in equipment, medical technicals and sport training methods, in many cases we have seen increases in very serious injuries. What used to be a rarely witnessed season-ending injury is becoming more and more the cost of doing business at all levels of sport. The ruptured Achilles tendon was viewed as an injury experienced by the veteran athlete trying to hang onto their career or the recreational middle-aged athlete trying to recapture the glory days on the field or court. Now, we are seeing more of these injuries in athletes in their early twenties over a broad range of sports. The three or four Achilles tendon ruptures we saw 20 years ago in an NFL season with players in their thirties has now blossomed to 15-20 injuries per year with the majority of them happening in players between the ages of 23 and 27 years. And, we continue to see more ACL ruptures, leg and foot fractures, joint dislocations and hamstring strains in all sports, many of which do not involve violent contact between opposing players.
While there have been many hypotheses to explain the explosion in injury statistics, rarely is the focus placed on training habits. A reverse engineering process and historical analysis of sport development trends and training methods seems to provide some of the most profound conclusions related to these injury problems. If you conduct a training audit, the mathematics do not add up. Our athletes are missing the basic building blocks of resiliency. An analysis of the competition schedules of professional, collegiate and high school athletes – looking at hours, weeks and months dedicated to sport specific practice and competition – in relation to their general physical preparation investments does not compare. There is a deficit. They are overdrawn. Their savings have been depleted long ago. And, their muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones are looking for a cash infusion.
What Should a Good GPP Program Look Like?
It is easy to preach to coaches and athletes that they should develop a broad array of general qualities in the initial stages of their training program. The thought process is that a large number of activities and exercises should be incorporated in the early phases of a training program to establish a general fitness foundation, with the density of work bringing down the intensity of any one activity in an effort to provide a smooth progression of stress. The number of repetitions and sets in a preparatory phase will also be relatively high in order to drive adaptation on endurance qualities, both systemic and localized. While this is all well and good, it is not as simple as throwing the kitchen sink at an athlete to make sure they get exposed to all types of training. There should be specific strategic goals for any GPP program implemented in a logical sequence and progression of work.
Figure 2 identifies a number of key areas of development for a GPP program. In my case, I’m typically developing athletes with speed as the ultimate by-product on the back end. For such a training goal, I prioritize technical development and biomechanical precision as a key foundational goal for athlete development. Every exercise that we do, particularly drills or activities related to speed, must be done with a high level of precision. Because the GPP period is carried out at sub-maximal levels of effort, it allows athletes to master complex movements at velocities that they can manage. Combined with a high number of repetitions, athletes can truly hard-wire their neuromuscular and proprioceptive systems to follow a precise pathway to high performance.
Figure 2: Key Elements of a GPP Program
Another priority is the establishment of a robust overall fitness and conditioning base covering multiple systems. While it is common to assume that long running workouts and grueling conditioning workouts will be an obvious fixture of a GPP program, more advanced minds will be looking at more creative ways to develop a comprehensive conditioning foundation. Conditioning does not have to mean all training is directed towards aerobic endurance development. While the aerobic energy system is an important component of base fitness and an athlete’s recuperative abilities, it is only one element in a range of activities used to develop a base of work.
In Figure 3, I list a series of basic activities – which is, by all means, is not a complete list – designed to establish a base of work that will ultimately catapult or athlete into higher levels of preparedness for subsequent specific preparatory phases. As a speed development coach, I use a variety of sprint drills to develop both technical qualities and running-related strength qualities. Sprint drills can help with the conditioning of the lower leg and foot, the establishment of a robust core – including abdominals, hip flexors and posterior chain elements, limb repositioning abilities and key postural requirements for fast running. In many ways, I view drills as more of a strength and conditioning modality than a technical exercise. Do you achieve better results with better technical execution? I would like to thinks so. But, I am often thinking more about accumulation of foot contacts, knee lifts and postural control than I am about precise arm placement. In general, I like to think that everything counts and, hence, will continue to place a high qualitative emphasis on all prescribed movements in every phase.
Figure 3: Exercise Selection in a GPP Program
Resistance work for both drills and regular acceleration activities is often construed as strength and power training. However, I primarily implement resistance work for postural awareness and limb positioning. The weight only needs to be as heavy as required for establishing and maintaining a desired acceleration posture, allowing the athlete to focus on relaxation and execution of key limb movements at the correct step frequency and foot placement. While there is an obvious strength benefit to moving weight, whether pulling a sled or running up a hill, the synergy established by incorporating technical goals with physiological benefits is a win-win in my mind. With the right progressions, appropriate loads and an emphasis on optimal mechanics, resisted drills and accelerations can go a long way to building a more resilient athlete in the long run. Additionally, the implementation of this work under the guise of sub-maximal, technical work avoids all the pitfalls of developing over-use injuries and chronic tissue quality problems.
Figure 4: Use of Light to Moderate Resisted Sprints for Technique & Postural Development
Another way to establish good overall conditioning results is through the implementation of a broad series of strength and fitness circuits. These circuits often involve the use of body weight and/or medicine ball passes, as shown in Figure 5, to accumulate thousands of repetitions in a week, with very little recovery between sets and a continuous flow to the work. Volume can accumulate at a healthy rate from week-to-week, as the intensity of work can be considered relatively low to moderate. The medicine balls themselves need not be too heavy as the primary goal is pairing movement with mobility, while also developing basic coordination skills. It is very easy to overload exercises in an effort to make them more difficult and drive profound adaptations. However, there is always the danger that excessive loads can creep up in a sinister manner over tens of thousands of throws and passes, with new problems popping up before a proper intervention can be executed. Sometimes, less is more in the early stages of athlete development.
Figure 5: Medicine Ball Circuits Performed in Various Positions
It is always valuable to create a range of GPP fitness circuits to rotate throughout the preparatory phase. This can include a variety of warm-up and cool-down routines as well. The circuit options may be delineated by time-to-complete, total volumes or an emphasis on type of exercise or movement skill. In the case of medicine ball circuits, one circuit may be more rotation-oriented, while another group of exercises may focus on linear passes or abdominal strength. Some circuits may be an amalgamation of these various goals. The idea is to create some variation for physiological reasons, as well as providing some level of novelty and psychological diversity. Once you have created a battery of circuits, conceptually illustrated in Figure 6, organization of training can be a much easier proposition, choosing the right combination of circuits to match your needs for a particular session or week.
Figure 6: Preparing a Variety of Circuit Arrangements for Implementation by Rotation
Some form of conditioning runs, either presented in an interval training format or steady state activity, will round out a GPP program by not only building the aerobic energy system and associated local muscular endurance qualities, but also infusing active-recovery qualities into the training program. These techniques can be supplemented or substituted with other aerobic training modalities using treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical machines and/or pool training to unload the athlete in the early stage of a GPP progression. Integration with the circuit training approach also yields significant complementary benefits, as there are circulatory contributions to the continuous nature of up-tempo circuit training. Development of an aerobic foundation has proven to pay injury resiliency dividends over the long term by enhancing recuperative abilities and providing a steady stream of oxygen to peripheral muscle and connective tissues.
Once you have established a menu of exercises and training types for your GPP program, the next priority is to arrange these training sessions in a manner that provides synergy amongst all elements. Proper ordering of work is not as imperative as it is in a Specific Physical Preparation (SPP) phase due to the relatively lower intensities of work experienced by the athletes. Training on each individual day should be taxing enough to create peripheral fatigue on the day, but not so intense that soreness and fatigue bleed into the next day’s training sessions. As you can see from the training week documented in Figure 7, the relative intensities of work on each day do not vary considerably. Even though acceleration work is being performed on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the sub-maximal nature of the work – with a greater emphasis on relaxed technical execution – does not create a significant impact on the recuperative abilities of the Central Nervous System (CNS). Similarly, the work being carried out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while high in volume and exhausting at the time, does not create residual fatigue that impairs performance on subsequent days. If progressed gradually, muscle soreness does not become an ongoing problem as athletes adapt rather quickly, so long as overall volumes are within the capacity of the subjects.
Figure 7: A Typical GPP Microcycle for Speed Focused Athletes
Once the GPP phase is completed, a de-loading week can be inserted to help consolidate the gains achieved as identified in Figure 8 after an ambitious, but achievable, six week climb in general activity volumes are accumulated. As mentioned earlier, this loading phase may be shorter if time is limited and only three to four weeks of general development is possible. I always try to front-load a program with as much foundational work as possible, as I know the investment will carry the athlete to greater heights once we reach the competitive period. Some coaches may think that I am living in a fantasy world by trying to achieve a six week GPP phase, but it does beg the question – in our current world of limited windows – as to why we do not consider all off-season training a “general preparation” scenario. Enough specific work is carried out in training camps and in-season periods through both practices and games. Why not treat the off-season as one large general preparatory period to shield athletes from the overtraining pitfalls of a specificity based approach? At the very least, I think it is a question that needs to be asked.
Figure 8: Accumulating Volumes of General Work in a Preparatory Phase
However, if we are focused on providing a gradual progression into more specific work when we prepare athletes for their sport, we can begin to look at a more polarized approach in a weekly distribution of work. A well-developed GPP period can allow athletes to safely attain higher intensities and volumes in the following Specific Physical Preparation (SPP) phase. In order to sustain a series of high intensity sessions, alternating high intensity days with lower intensity days allows for more complete recovery of Central Nervous System (CNS) neuro-muscular components that are heavily taxed by sprinting, jumping, explosive throws and maximal weightlifting, as illustrated in Figure 9. This is often referred to as a “high-low” approach to microcycle planning, and ensures that specific elements can be introduced to an athlete in a way that helps them manage the training load from week to week in preparation for the demands of actual competition. SPP is a necessary bridge from GPP to actual competition in both a performance and injury resiliency sense.
Figure 9: A Polarized SPP Microcycle for Speed Focused Athletes
The benefits accrued through an extended, well-planned GPP program are indisputable owing to the fact that the accumulation of a broad spectrum of work has foundation-building benefits that carry well into successive phases, including the competition period. The GPP commitment is both a short-term and long-term investment in that athletes will benefit throughout their competitive season, but also realize career-long benefits in terms of the annual accumulation of multiple GPP phases over several years. Athletes that are not exposed to this type of work will have difficulties in successive years trying to withdraw funds from an ever shrinking bank account, ultimately driving their bodies into unrecoverable debt. Specificity, on the other hand, is a high-risk, short-term investment strategy that may provide a measure of instant gratification, but can also be associated with a high probability of hardship and shortened careers in the long run. While physical and fiscal responsibility is never the most exciting approach to life, these methods do ensure a significant level of sustainability for both performance and overall well-being. Figure 10a and Figure 10b show how a GPP-based athlete preparation approach can drive performance over the long term, with a lower incidence of both chronic and acute injuries.
Figure 10a: Specificity-Based Approach Impact on Athlete Sustainability
Figure 10b: Infusing a GPP-based Approach to Athlete Preparation
“But Competition Seasons are Year Round… What Can We Do?”
The saying, “We are the product of our environment,” by W. Clement Stone, can apply very succinctly in the case of our current problems with athlete injuries. The push to specificity has ultimately resulted in an environment and sporting culture that appreciates and favors competitions and games over physical preparation and other developmental activities. If we cannot change the structure of the environment that athletes are occupying, what options are available to coaches? It seems as though we are backed into a corner.
Clearly, we must change the current perception of what comprises an “in-season” training program. In the past, coaches were content to enter a “maintenance” phase when it came to almost all aspects of Strength and Conditioning, holding onto whatever gains that were made in the off-season. Relatively low volume programs were the mainstay, essentially kicking the physical preparation can down the road. Other frivolous practitioners have put forward neatly-packaged attempts to “micro-dose” training by performing half-hearted attempts at maintaining athlete qualities. However, inadequate off-season preparation windows only render any microdosing attempt as the flying of a white flag, surrendering all possibility of preserving athlete preparedness, since no foundation was ever developed in the first place.
Figure 11 identifies three different scenarios that may be encountered by an athlete. In Scenario A, we have a situation where a proper off-season training program has been followed by an athlete, with full volumes achieved over 12 to 16 weeks. While this may sound impractical, it can be achieved under the right conditions if an athlete is motivated and has the support from coaches. Once the competitive season is initiated, lower volumes of work, albeit at high intensity, can be sprinkled in to maintain both preparedness and readiness throughout the season. In Scenario B, we do not have the luxury of a voluminous off-season preparatory period. If only low volumes of intermittent work is undertaken during the competitive period, detraining will inevitably occur. Microdosing will only yield micro-results in this case. Isn’t specificity a drag?
Figure 11: In-Season Training Scenarios
Ultimately, most coaches and athletes in the modern age are faced with Scenario C, particularly at the professional sport level. Preparatory periods are short and inadequate. The only recourse is to engage in macro-level training wherever possible to improve preparedness throughout the season. Because of the demands of in-season practice and competitions, taking an aggressive approach to physical training may negatively impact readiness in the short-term. However, it is surprising how athletes can adapt very quickly and take on the additional training demands. In many ways, more aggressive physical preparation work within a season is a significant cultural and mindset change on the part of all athletes and coaching staff. A greater knowledge of the demands of practice or a specific emphasis in practice can allow Strength and Conditioning staff to arrange their workouts in a complementary and non-competing fashion. A push for more GPP style training methods during the in-season period, while counter-intuitive, appears to provide the best supportive approach to maintaining a combination of fitness and health throughout the competitive schedule. Perhaps remedial GPP programming may be able to save the day after all.
Some Final Thoughts
While we have identified some clear risk factors behind the increasing injury totals amongst athletes in all sports, it does not mean that we have arrived at a solution for changing the minds of professional league owners looking to expand regular season schedules or the club basketball coach wanting to enter more tournaments. However, we can identify some strategies for enhancing injury resiliency within the scope of physical preparation. In a world where athletes at the top of the professional ranks are encouraging young people in public service announcements to embrace a multi-sport approach, playing up to three sports each year, we still find these messages fall on deaf ears. Money does all of the talking, whether your vying for NIL compensation, hoping to become an influencer in social media or you run specialized camps hoping to lure more top prospects (and even more non-prospects) to your monthly skills showcase event. Specificity is the culprit and those looking for a quick fix are feeding the flames of this wildfire.
A shift to or resurgence of the General Physical Preparation (GPP) model can be seen as the fire extinguisher in this situation, but should be viewed more as a grand proactive strategy for preventing a disaster. Shrinking windows of opportunity can plainly be identified as a major reason for this shift away from GPP methodology that was so commonly applied 30-40 years ago when injury rates were far lower and non-contact injuries were an aberration. We are living in a brave new world where semaglutides are the solution for poor eating habits and obesity, botox is the primary anti-aging strategy and tariffs are seen as a grand strategy for the domestic manufacturing revival and a novel stimulus for innovation. Yet, we all know that there are better ways to get the job done, without having to resort to unsustainable and, sometimes, unsafe practices. It will be the onus of coaches to decide which path will ultimately be best for their athletes in the long run.
Do you give in to the trends of the masses where widespread social, cultural and consumer behavior patterns are adopted by the majority, driven by a desire for social identity, convenience and influence from peers or social media? Or, do you fall back on proven practices that may not appear to be sexy, require a degree of patience and a consistent, deliberate approach to general physical development? The choice is clear and the choice is yours. The health and well-being of your athletes depend on it.
