The Fallacy of: "Practice Makes Permanent."

by Neil Anderson

Perfect!

There is a thought among fitness professionals that goes like this,

"Practice makes permanent.  Exercising in a way that is sloppy makes the slop permanent.  This slop breaks people and leads to crappy workouts."  

I simply disagree with certain exceptions. 

I can think of no natural movement or process of skill development that supports this.  None.  Instead it is my experience that the opposite is true.  Movements, even sloppy ones get better with practice.  Not worse. We see this every day at GPP.  People who come to our place with crappy running technique get better and better at running over the years.  Those who start off with terrible dead lifts, terrible squats, terrible cleans and etc., get better and better with practice.  In fact, the ONLY way we have of truly teaching movements, is to put someone on the bar and have them try.  All the instruction in the world will not make up for time on the bar.  Period.  

Your body is an amazingly adaptable machine.  It is nothing if not efficient.  It is nothing if not self-correcting.  Its' entire goal is to keep you well and safe (self-preservation).  To think it would perform movements again, and again which aren't safe or efficient, undermines the entire purpose of your being.  Think about it.  Why else would you get better at walking after you learned to go a couple of steps as a toddler?  I mean, if "Practice Makes Permanent" you'd never get better at walking.  You'd stumble around like a baby first learning to walk your entire life.  It takes years for children to get good at walking.  If fitness "experts" were right, all that crappy walking would just lead to more crappy walking at infinitum.  Yet we see this isn't so.  Neither is it so when someone learns to ride a bike.  Or when someone learns to throw a ball, and so on, and so on ... 

There is no amount of instruction that can prepare a person like DOING can.  None.  So at GPP we DO!  It is our best teaching tool.  

Many have asked why we don't hold beginner classes, or require folks to receive (read: "pay for") hours of instruction before asking them to squat, or dead lift, or clean and jerk.  The real question is: why are they doing it in other places?  The most effective way to teach a movement is to let someone move.  It always has been.  It is how we (humans) learned to do virtually EVERY movement we've ever mastered.  Can you imagine sitting your 10 month old down in front of a white board and teaching the fundamentals and rudiments of walking and making them master certain elements before "letting" them take their first step?  No, teaching movements before "allowing" you to move has nothing to do with teaching movements.  More likely it is about lining pockets.   

Practice does not make permanent - with few exceptions.  If you are conscious of trying to be more and more healthy, you will practice in a way that ensures mastery.  Those who are not serious about health (the "exceptions") will never master anything.  The thing about these folks is they never intended to get healthy in the first place.  All the instruction in the world (white board, and etc.) wasn't going to help them anyway.   

Your GPP trainers will show you the basics of every movement we perform.  We will also show you the best ways to keep safe while obtaining the most benefits possible from the workouts and movements.  There will be parts of this instruction you retain and parts you forget.  In that case, we will simply remind you or show a new principle or fundamental.  But we will ALWAYS let you move.  It is the most important part of this process.  

What's the Diff?

by Neil Anderson

Candice B.

We are often (read: constantly) asked what makes GPP different from other places.  It is a fair question.  To the uninitiated we look pretty similar to some of the new "performance training" centers popping up all around.  My first reaction to this question is to pop immediately into our spiel on "Optimal Health."  Problem with this is, the Optimal Health lecture can run a little long ("what - NO!").  And to someone who is "just asking" it's probably not something they are ready for - YET.

Nothing quite explains the differences in our programming style, philosophies and community like what we did today (I write these the day before - referring to yesterday'sABs-Mash workout).  You will find nothing like the Abs-Mash workout anywhere.  It is entirely our own.  In fact, all of our OTC stuff is completely unique to GPP.  Workouts likeSTAB, Shredder, Lemon, Side Slayer, Smabs, OTC - (anything) and etc. are workouts you'd never find outside of our influence.  They are some of our most popular workouts.  They are so for a reason.  They work.  They simply do the job of increasing your health effectively and efficiently.  They also look good on.  And the thing is, we all know it.  You couldn't do a workout like one of these without instantly knowing and feeling the immediate positive benefits.  

We are lucky at GPP.  We aren't LIMITED by the expectations of "performance training."  Therefore we can do things like, biceps curls, crunches, sideups, triceps extensions and other single joint movements.  Why do single joint movements?  They work.  They always have.  But, what makes GPP programming special is that we combine these movements with many other methods (cleans and jerks, dead lifts, squats, running, etc.) to yield a healthier affect.  Yes, folks ALL the functionality and ALL the aesthetics without the wheel spin of straight performance training.  

When you do performance training you cannot do biceps curls, or crunches, or triceps, or ANY of the other tried and true methods that just plain work.  Performance trainers eschew these with utter disdain.  They will mock you for it as openly as I do when you clap a burpee.  Doing a biceps curl won't directly add to their work capacity (performance based terminology).  It is inefficient programming for competing in the sport of fitness and dominating others with their hyper-elite badassity.  Every minute they spend doing a biceps curl takes away from minutes they could be doing more pullups - the things they are literally awarded points for.

I'm being a little hard on performance training here.  Truth is, we respect them immensely.  We just don't want to train like them.  We don't like their limitations.  We want to do the stuff that works (all of it) - for our specific pursuit ... Which is probably the easiest way of pointing out our differences without having to watch a person's eyes glaze over. 

Hairy

by Megan Wallace

The other day I had a little chat with a friend. Our conversation got me thinking deep. Now bear with me because this is about to get hairy. We talked about how hair can help us express ourselves (positive) but it can also disguise us (negative). Think about it. What if all your hair was gone today (guys you are included in this). How would you feel? What would be different about you? Would you be a different person, have a different brain, different functionality, different emotional, mental, spiritual feelings and thoughts? 

Although you may feel insecure or uncertain, you are still you, right? What is the difference?  The difference is sometimes we let our appearance determine how others think of us.  Worse, sometimes we let what others think of us affect how we think of ourselves.  We are all in this hairy journey for the same thing.  Success.  How is it that we expect to be successful if we let ourselves be limited by how we appear on the outside?  Or more to the point, how others feel about how we appear?    

At GPP we understand that we are all in the same boat.  We GET that a person's self-worth would not be determined by the length, cut, style or color of someone's hair, or lack thereof.  We would neither impose our own views upon a person's appearance, nor would we stand for another's views to be imposed upon us, intentional or not.  We are happy to leave that kind of thing to other places, besides we are too busy avoiding the Yak to even care.  Choose your hairstyle and wear it well.  Go bald, go big, go short, go blue - just get GOing.  And while your going, bring others along with you.