I personally have had the very fortunate experience of training with an expert in Chinese internal martial arts. Through my training with him, I learned that Chinese internal martial arts, were not magical, but just the most efficient ways one could use the human body. As I studied, I learned that I could do, at least on some level, all of the typical demonstrations of internal power. As my studies progressed I realized that modern athletic training covers most, if not all of what could be learned in the internal martial arts.

However, here on Aikiweb there seems to be a notion that "internal" and athletics are very different things. That some how athletes cannot do the things that internal martial artists can do. I don't believe this to be the case. I believe modern athletics training actually teaches the core lessons of internal martial arts, but in a more dynamic and functional way.

So I'd like to ask, what is the perceived difference, and assumed superiority of internal martial arts over good athletics training?

I think I mentioned this before, but Ark was a competitive gymnast before he started developing these skills and conditioning. And he would be the first to say that gymnastics had no overlap training wise, and in fact impeded his ability to learn his current skill set.