General physical preparation is needed if you want to take your maximal strength to its furthest potential. GPP is the base that your special skills sit on. A small, weak base will sabotage your sports performance. Training your competition movements too soon and or too often in your career will lead to mechanical and metabolic deficiencies. 
 
There are many biological reasons conditioning will help you build more strength.
 

• Aerobic conditioning helps maintain healthy joint and soft tissue strength.
• It serves as an excellent recovery workout.
• Increased blood flow during rest. 
• Improved use of capillaries to handle increase in blood flow. During training, blood flow can increase 6 to 22 times higher than when at rest.
• Improved metabolic waste removal.
• Higher aerobic capacity facilitates higher recovery capacity between anaerobic reps and sets.
• Be able function longer before building an oxygen debt (EPOC - excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and recovery faster after building an oxygen debt. 

 
GPP enhances and expands the base of your neuromuscular coordination and your general work capacity. This is a necessity even if your sport specializes in one strength domain and a narrow energy system, like Olympic weightlifting.  In other words, imagine if you could combine the skills of an Olympic gymnast and the work capacity of an Olympic wrestler to an Olympic weightlifter. You would have a hybrid that would have no mechanical limitations, could grind through higher workloads, and recover faster between reps, sets, and training sessions.  
 
If you are a strength athlete: Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman, Highland games, etc. you probably despise “cardio” and avoid it at all costs. If you do, this is good news. This means general physical preparation (GPP) in the form of conditioners will be an easy add on that will give you improved strength results with quickly due to the ‘newbie” gains you will receive for not yet hitting a plateau in your conditioning. 
 
As you progress through stages of development from beginner to intermediate to advanced to elite, the amount of GPP required will change. Novices need more GPP than sport specific training, while elite athletes require smaller doses of GPP to assist in recovery and keep a baseline of preparation. GPP requirements also differ throughout the year as you cycle through off season, in season and competition preparation.
 
I am going to show you how to add a conditioner to your training session. There are two things we want to achieve with these conditioners. We want them to increase your fundamental skill base— balance, speed, accuracy, coordination—and we want them to increase your work capacity (stamina and cardiorespiratory endurance). This means the exercise selection will include universal motor recruitment patterns and you will use a spectrum of metabolic conditioning (metcon) templates.
 
The metcon can also contain the accessories to your main lifts. 
 
Use mostly concentric only conditioners to minimize tissue damage:

Sled dragging
Versa Climber
Swimming
Biking
Rowing
Ski Erg
 
Incorporate other fundamental movements you don’t use, like gymnastics. If you are not familiar with handstand push-ups or walking on your hands, then the neuromuscular control you will develop from these moves will easily improve your performance in overhead barbell positions like the jerk and overhead squat.
 
Example Session for an Olympic weightlifter:
 
Part 1
Snatch Technique Primer
Snatch 70%x3, 75%x3, 80%x3 3RM
 
Part 2
METCON
4 Rounds
4 Snatch Pull on Riser at 100% of Snatch
5 Strict Parallette Handstand Push-Ups
6 Depth Jumps
25 Calories on Assault Bike
1:00 Rest
 
Perform each round quickly with no rest until you complete the bike calories. You should be out of breath when you get off the bike. With this session, the competition movement is done first to ensure quality technique. The metcon contains an accessory specific to the snatch, two body weight movements that will enhance motor recruitment patterns found in weightlifting, and then a ‘cardio’ machine as a finisher to ensure your cardiorespiratory system has been taxed sufficiently. Rest one minute to allow your heart rate to lower enough to execute quality form on the next round of snatch pulls. Four rounds should be enough volume for most athletes. 
 
Final Notes
 
Include 1 or 2 active recovery sessions (aerobic only) per week to speed up recovery.
Recovery is driven through the aerobic energy pathway. Use the concentric only conditioners mentioned above. Sessions should be 20 to 30 minutes with heart rate around 130 to 150 beats per minute. You can use different templates like long slow distance, intervals, and tempo.
 
Periodize your conditioning. Increase volume when far away from competition and decrease conditioning when two to three weeks out from competition.
 
Focus on developing a baseline level of conditioning for health, wellness, recovery, and improved athleticism. You do not need in elite level of endurance to see the benefits of conditioning.