I went into kyokushin because I got a taste of hard contact from doing Okinawan Goju in Portugal as a teenager ( as well as boxing, judo and wrestling).
Kyokushin was the only place I could get that in Karate here.
Luckily my sensei was a polish freak that had done MT so he loved head shots, LOL !
But most kyokushin is now so "sport specific" that it's lost a bit of its "fighting karate" mentality.
Kyokushin was always more "MT with a GI with karate hands" than anything else in the old days.
But I digress.
I believe that the more "specialized" a system is, the more CRUCIAL it is to "cross test" VS other systems, my sifu is of the same notion.
There are times when he askes me to "box" my fellow mantis students to give them a "taste" of boxing/MT and it is a rude awkening for them.
Our group is smaller now, one of the guys left late late last year and the other is more iregular...
At this stage what I am doing is making HIS mantis MY OWN, but I do miss the sparring.