Program Review: German Body Comp for Athletes
There are a few things that I know to be true about most athletes:
- They tend to require lots of short, explosive movements
- They perform better with less fat on their bodies
While there are definitely exceptions to the above rules (for example, marathoners and sumo wrestlers), these are plenty that fit the rule – martial artists, gymnasts, football players (particularly skill positions), track and field athletes, the list goes on and on. So when choosing training programs for athletes, it’s important to consider what impact it has on one or both of those characteristics.
One program that we have found to be extremely effective is Charles Poliquin’s German Body Comp for Athletes program. It’s a progression on the original German Body Comp (or GBC) program, which is a fat-loss program designed for the general population with emphasis on full-body training session that use big movements, high reps and short rest periods. However, the Athletes version of the program makes some modifications to help balance maintaining or increasing athleticism with improving body composition.
For example, each day of the 4-day split in the program begins with some variation of an Olympic lift. Because of their technical difficulty, Olympic lifts are usually best left out of programs for your average Joe or Jane, but are incorporated here because of their ability to generate power without adding excessive amounts of body mass (also known as relative strength). In general, the repetitions are kept lower than usual to emphasize development of fast-twitch muscle fibers that are important to excel in most sports.
The important thing to note with this program is that there is room to vary things a bit – if you know what you’re doing, it can be used more as a template than as a “do as written or it won’t work” setup, and it’s quite easy to swap out variations on Olympic lifts, squats, pullups and presses that comprise the core of the program. Charles’ personal recommendation is to stay on it no longer than 6 weeks, and I’ve found that between 4 and 6 weeks is best, depending on recovery abilities.
For the original article direct from Charles himself, click here.
