Technique Shiai and a training with tense

Yesterday was the last Kendo training of the beginner course for this semester at Dresden University. As every semester we do a little Technique Shiai for beginners. They don't have a Bogu yet and can't do a real Shiai. Therefor we do this Technique Shiai as a little suprise without telling them before.
The participants have to show what they learned in the last six month and three referees have to judge them with Hantei decision. The exercises have been Kirikaeshi and Uchikomi-Geiko (Men,Kote,Kote-Men,Do,Men). Its always lots of fun. In the beginning they are quite shy and not very self confident. But in the latter rounds all of them give their best.
I was a referee and before we started Stephan gave us some instructions which important points we should look at:

• Fighting Spirit and Kiai
• Distance (Maai)
• Flow of the movements
• the overall beauty

In the final match my decision differed from the other to referees.
Her last men strike was much better than his one and she invested everything in this last technique while he only did a steady, but good technique. I gave more importance to this mental process than the general lookalike.
In fact all of them have done a great job and its difficult to decide. I hope all of them will continue with Kendo as it teaches you coping with sudden difficult situations.

Afterwards we did a very intensive and exhausting training because we had only one hour.
Some points I figured out:

• the attack interval is nice in Jigeiko
• fight against weakness of the body with fighting spirit
• 100% concentration, 100% strength in 100% of the time
• even more flexibility between Men, Kote, Do and Tsuki

Well, its time for the next training, no time to write more detailed stuff