Question on GPP

So I have typically done two GPP workouts a week. After my two lower body days, I typically do backwards sled drags (love these as a quad exercise, too) and sometimes substitute these with farmer walks. As dumb as it sounds, I couldn’t really figure out something really good to do on my upper body days and/or between days for fear of exhausting my legs.

My wife has a stationary bike at home (she isn’t really into lifting haha) and I was wondering if, instead of sled drags or switching out sled drags some days, I could do cycling for ~10 minutes really fast pace or 20 minutes more intermediate pace and on my upper body days I could buy a rowing machine to do 10-20 minutes of rowing. That way, my GPP would be easier to split with upper and lower body days for 4 total days. It would also benefit me on rainy or snowy days when I can’t really go drag my magic carpet sled around the yard or walk with my farmer walk handles without busting my ass. Currently, when it’s raining outside I would typically hop on her bike and just go as fast as I could for 10 minutes which makes me sweat my balls off, so I assume it would be OK.

I should add that aside from just doing GPP to simply build my work capacity for lifting, I want to do it for my general health as well. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!

Any or all would be cool! What’s awesome with your more general goal is you’re actually better served mixing it up vs being super specific.

If you’re after general health, I’d offer you actually want some of the longer duration. In your case it might be easiest to keep the heavy stuff on your lower days and then do more like 20+ minutes at a heart rate around 125 or so on a bike/ rower on the upper days. Heart health requires us to live in the aerobic zone a good bit - that helps keep it elastic. That should have a serendipitous side benefit of not wrecking your legs (after the initial shock the first week or two).

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Thanks man, appreciate the response. I think it’s a good idea to maybe incorporate some longer duration cardio, too. I’m off to order a rowing machine now.

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You need 20 minutes continuous at about 70% max HR 2-3x week to get cardiac benefits.

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