fitness help

[_TRiley_]

Hey all, have visited before and ask a similar question but now Ive left school and have ten weeks spare .. going to take things a lot more seriously.

Im a Shoalin kung fu student, about 5"8 at the moment and 9 1/2 Stone (60 KG) and right now my main goals are to be able to do the splits and develop a decent chest and arms, nothing body builder like though.

Kung fu is every friday evening for 2 hours and is very intense, consisting of a 30mins run before full stretches, push ups, kicks etc.

Now my home work out is very similar:

use a pull up bar (doing 20 pull ups at a time)
pull ups (30 at a time)
squats (30 at a time)
30minute run
full body stretches and pracisticing splits etc

Now the home work out isn't done daily, I'd say around 2 hours, 3 days a week but now I'm free I was intending to do this daily. I have heard lots about over working being bad, doing certain work outs together etc and hope I can get an opinion of my work out and would doing this type of work out daily do any harm to me?

[_TRiley_]

anyone able to help on this?

[cursor]

I doubt that it would do you "harm". I think, however, that there's no point in doing it every day (your body will simply not benefit). While I "workout" virtually every day, I make sure that I'm not doing the same thing (not stressing the same parts of my body). By strategically addressing various body parts you can maximize growth potential.

What is it that you hope to accomplish by exercising after this fashion on a daily basis?

[_TRiley_]

The reason why I train as I do is simply because I want to be strong and flexible. Train up my body and just become as strong, fit and flexible. Main goals at moment is to be able to do those kung fu 'skills' such as flips, splits etc .. but neither do I want to be real skinny and weak so in a way .. althought cheesy sounding I guess I want to be like Van damme. By that I mean bear similar characteristics.

One thing I fail to understand this, is that while I've been browsing the forum, many times I've seen the point made on constant work out on same body parts will infact have a negative effect. Well if this is the case, how come Kung Fu monks themselves work out from 4am till 10pm daily and still become amazingly strong and flexible .. including fast?

So you say I should focus on arms and chest one day and squats, splits on others for example?

[cursor]

It depends on how balanced your training program is. You can't, for example, lift heavy weights all day long, then repeat the same thing the next day. On the other hand, you can train with less intensity on a more frequent basis and show good progress. There are far too many in-between variables to deal with the subject in detail.

I would recommend that you ask someone who performs much the same way as you'd like to be able to perform. What do they do?