Tyler,
There is a collection of so-called "internal" arts (taiji, baji, bagua, xinyi etc.) usually associated with the Chinese but which also exist in externally different forms in the Japanese systems. Basically if you really want to develop skill, sooner or later you're going to end up "internal" in some way anyway, its just the Chinese developed training systems to target this skill specifically. People make a big deal out of it but most of it is hot air and brain washing. I don't recommend even bothering until you've been doing "external" stuff involving basic body mechanics and taking and dishing out blows. That prevents some of the nonsense that ends up taking place when people get too much into their internal stuff. To give you an idea - I've been training in this stuff for more than seven years now and have studied with people from Halifax to Beijing to Yunnan and I've met maybe five students of this generation who actually got it...the other hundred or so were just deluding themselves and wearing fancy costumes. And some of this latter cohort had been training for twenty years and convinced themselves they had all sorts of fancy powers. When someone comes along and actually hits them and breaks their illusions of ultimate mastery they simply dismiss them as "too stiff" or some other nonsense like that.
I've given most of my life and pretty much all of my adult life to martial arts and let me lay out some guidelines:
1 - Don't look for the "right" style - look for the right teacher. This is, after all, a very personal transmission. The style is just a scaffolding for imparting understanding gained through training and experience. People with some kind of "protector" background are often a good choice, be they military, law enforcement, fire, EMS, rescue etc. These people live it. Be wary of people who depend on martial arts teaching to make a living, this significantly alters their motives and thus the way they'll train you
2 - Look in low-lying places. Parks, dingy gyms and generally unappealing non-commercial environments hold the best treasures. Anyone with prime real estate and lots of staff is not to be trusted. These people have big overhead costs which means they need to attract as many people as possible and can't risk harming egos. Martial arts = Systematic Ego Attrition. If you're not feeling inadequate, unhappy with your progress, overwhelmed by how much you still have to learn AT EVERY POINT IN YOUR TRAINING, then you are not being trained - you are being duped. Particularly beware of people who promise rapid advancement and praise you from day one. Proper martial arts training is not really profitable. It would be nice if it were but its not. Most people can't handle it. Most people aren't cut out for it, they want to "play" at martial arts and go home self-satisfied and act like a tough guy around the office cooler because they have a yellow belt. Very few can understand that there is enough ego-gratification in our society thank you very much and the best man is the one who makes you feel inadequate enough to go home and train harder but not so much that you want to toss yourself off a bridge in despair.
3 - Find someone who's training philosophy echoes the Strong First training methods. The extent to which this organization and Pavel's training philosophy reflects what I have found to be most effective in my own training is the reason I am so drawn to this community. Drill basics again and again and again. Simple grinding out of basic movements will yield far greater skill than all the fancy new moves in the world. My own personal training core consists of two or three movements I do for several hundred repetitions every day in addition to a single form. That is the only way I have ever made progress. When push comes to shove you can't remember the fancy wrist lock you learned in class last week, but your body remembers the punch you threw ten thousand times and can deliver it effectively without thinking. That is skill. The rest is commercial fluff. Also find someone that can train proper observation skills. This is what I find is most lacking in martial artists at all levels - you cannot learn what you cannot see. You must train your "eyes" (actually your visual cortex) to see what is going on otherwise you can't progress. Mirror neurons are the martial artists basic hardware - you must train them until you experience visual/kinesthetic synesthesia as part of your daily life. Train them and you will progress much faster than others. Fail to train them and you will never really learn anything. Find someone who understands this concept and teaches it.
The teacher who really catapulted my own progress taught me basically two things: the importance of basic training and grinding out repetitive, boring sessions until you have some kind of epiphany through them (then it gets really really, really fun) and the importance of training observation. These are the two fundamental pillars of martial skill. The rest is either deliberate obfuscation or commercialism. Don't trust what is too popular. It attracts the wrong people. Amateur Boxing is not cool anymore. So you'll get personal attention from those old guys at the community gyms (if there are still such things in your area...mine closed...thus my shift to Chinese stuff.) If you want to keep it simpler you might consider Systema since if you're doing Kettlebells you can stick with the Russians. I like Vladimir Vasiliev and his crew in Toronto, but I don't think Systema is for everyone. Again, its the teacher. I really like Vladimir and I really like his students and the community there, so I want to train with them. I've met people in my "style" who I don't like and don't think are very smart and so I have nothing to do with them. Martial art, like any art, is ultimately an extremely personal thing, don't let people brainwash you into a mass-mind mentality. Too many lemmings as it is.
Hope that helps.
