Okay, friends. I’m here to talk about some fitness academics — specifically the difference between periodized and GPP training. We’re making a switch in the way we’re programming inside the gym at Lumos, and coming this Monday we’re moving from a more periodized model to a GPP training model.
The most important place to start is defining what these things actually are. What is periodized training? What is GPP training? How are they the same? How are they different? What are the best things about each, and why are we making the switch?
Starting with periodized training: this came from the Soviet sports world and is a time-based, calendar-driven training approach where we vary intensity and specificity over time. Periodized training is split into cycles — mesocycles, macrocycles — lasting anywhere from a couple of weeks to months, to even years. At the upper end, think Olympic athletes training on four-year quads. The idea is that you have a competition in mind, and your training is arranged around peaking for that competition at a specific time.
GPP, or General Physical Preparedness training, also comes from that same Soviet sports development world. GPP was often used as a pre-season or out-of-season training program, or as a base-building block before athletes moved into specific periodized programming for a competition down the road.
In GPP programming, things are more varied and not tied to a specific calendar event or competition. Instead, GPP makes its money on a broad base of training and exposure to lots of different things. One of my favorite concepts here is the idea of “can you go?” — meaning, what shape are you in right now? In periodized training, you’re always working toward a peak that’s coming later. In GPP, the idea is that you’re always in pretty good nick, always prepared and ready for whatever life throws at you.
Another key point with GPP: because there’s no singular competition driving the program, the focus is more on capacity and consistency.
Benefits of each:
For periodized training, the biggest benefit is predictability. We know the timeline and the calendar, which means we can dial in all the variables — volume, intensity, specificity — so that by the time we hit a competition, we’re peaking at the optimal level. Generally in a periodized model, athletes are bought in enough that training days and rest days are consistent and predictable. That predictability allows for highly specific stimulus and a clear roadmap of where training is now and where it’s going.
For GPP, the biggest thing is transferability. A broader range of training transfers to more situations — weekend sports, life activities, whatever it may be. We’re not peaking at a specific date; instead we have broader capacity across lots of different challenges. GPP also carries a lower cognitive load — it’s less about tracking what you did last week and adding a specific percentage, and more about what’s in front of you today. It’s also more resilient to schedule disruption. If you miss a week or even a few days, you just hop back in where the program is and pick it up. Because it’s more varied, GPP tends to be a little more engaging — it has more elements of fun and adventure, which across time and populations tends to make it more mentally and habitually sustainable. Finally, because GPP is inherently a base builder focused on work capacity, it sets you up for any other program you might want to do later. If you decide you want to run a race or compete in a powerlifting meet, you’re already in a good spot to build toward it.
Why we’re switching:
At Lumos, we’ve developed a lot of programs, and many of them are already periodized. Coach Brett’s hybrid program, Coach John’s compete program, and most of our personal training and individual program design are inherently periodized — built around races, competitions, specific calendar dates.
Having that in place has actually led us to realize that we may be over-indexed toward periodization, with everybody playing off the same sheet of music regardless of whether their goal is competition-focused or just broad, life-purpose training. If you’re someone who loves training the same lifts week over week and has a race on the calendar, one of our specific programs is probably a great fit. The group class switch is for everyone else.
We’ve also done a lot of work looking at attendance data and doing some qualitative work on who our group class clients actually are — how many times a week people are coming, and the variability of which days they show up. What we found is that the frequency and variability of attendance makes GPP-style training a more appropriate match for our group class population.
The last thing that will work well with this switch is that GPP-style programming gives us more space in class to do one-on-one coaching, skill development, and movement exploration. It allows us to be more present to what we’re doing on a given day, because we’re not as focused on where today fits in the larger calendar.
These are both very good ways to train, and they’re not so much totally different styles as they are different training lenses. GPP is the more zoomed-out lens. If you zoom out far enough — three months, six months, a year — a GPP program will still cover lots of lower-body strength work, conditioning, gymnastics, and all the rest. It may not be as predictable week to week as a periodized block, but over time you’ll still tick all those boxes.
This starts Monday. We’ve programmed GPP here before; we’re going to run with it for the next cycle. Cycles now are less about what to expect over the next six weeks and more about which coach is the primary programmer. Each of our coaches has slightly different programming biases, and those will come through — but it’ll be less prescriptive and more varied overall.
If it doesn’t work great, we can always switch it back. Comments and questions are welcome. If you have things you’d like to see in the program, just let me know. Like everything we do, this is about using physical fitness as a vehicle for self-exploration — figuring out what works best not for professional athletes or the general population, but for our people in our group classes right now. We’ll see how it all shakes out. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you at the gym.
