A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

I just returned from a two-week trip to Poland with my girl. It was awesome. Our trip took us from Vienna to Warsaw, then way up north to Dabki, which is a surfer's paradise at the baltic sea. After spending a week there, we went to Poznan for another two days. From Poznan it was back to Warsaw and eventually home. Although there's so much to say about Warsaw when it comes to the martial arts, I'll skip that for now and focus on Dabki and Poznan instead. You see, Dabki is situated in quite a unique spot: on the one side, there's the baltic sea while on the other one, there's the Bukowo-lake. Obviously, this location makes it pretty much perfect for water-sports enthusiasts. For me, too, the plan was to spend my days doing little but windsurfing and laying on the beach. Didn't turn out that way, though, as the weather had its own plans: most of the time it was rainy and cold, definately not beach-like. Wind-wise, it was either completely still or extremely windy,...

Ok, I'll admit I'm late, but hey, better late than never, right? Without further ado, let me present to you the Shinergy[battle] Spring Cup '11 :

On Saturday, 19th of march, the Shinergy[battle] spring 2011 took place. From my school, three competitors entered the challenge and fought their way through the tournament. The Shinergy[battle] is a full-contact event that follows an action/stop ruleset. The basic idea is to combine the best aspects of pointfighting and full-contact fighting without having to bear with their downsides. You see, semi-contact pointfighting, where the action is interrupted after each hit, has the definitive advantage over other forms of fighting that it places great demands on an athletes tactical skill, speed and precision. On a negative note, obviously, most of the techniques that score great points in semi-contact fighting are utterly useless in every other form of combat. Just watch some of them fights and you'll see what I mean. Full-contact fighting, on the other hand, has the big advantage that it comes pretty close to actual fighting. It is not fighting, mind you, it's still a sport. Howe...