The Fifth John Davies Western Area International Summer Judo Camp 2014 was hosted at Kingsley School Judo Club in Bideford, North Devon on Sunday 17th to Thursday 21st August and this year welcomed 2009 World Champion Tomoko Fukumi visiting with British Judo Olympian Joyce Heron.

Both leading females ran exceptional coaching sessions to over 70 junior judoka from the ages of 10 to 17 years old. The coaching was based on technical and physical developed for all the young athletes attending the course.

Joyce Heron led a first class performance development session based on groundwork “newaza techniques” on the Sunday evening before the young judoka had a chance to put into practise their new skills in randori.

Monday morning started with circuit and run before breakfast.

Then Tomoko took charge with a great display of her World Class winning technique Ko Uchi Gari “Minor inner reap”.

The demonstrations and explanations on how the throw is developed was an inspiration to all the young athletes, who all spent time building the skills to complete the throw before Tomoko
explained the progression against certain possible opponents and contest situations.

After her session the children had a chance to ask questions about her career and her experiences while competing on the World Tour and London 2012 games.

After lunch the whole group where transported to WestwardHo for an afternoon of Surfing with the North Devon Surf School.

The evening training was a Randori focused session which allowed all the athletes to practise their own favourite skills and emphasis and the new skills from Tomoko and Joyce.

Tuesday morning’s early fitness sessions took place again before breakfast but with a change over in the groups from the previous morning. The first judo session of the day was led by 2013 Junior World Champion Judoka Natasha Maslen.

She led a great fundamental development of Uchi-Mata “inner thigh throw”. The technique was broken down with some great ideas in building the technical skills to produce this powerful throw and develop the progression into moving uchikomi practise of the throw.

The afternoon activity was yet another physical challenge as the group headed of to Rock and Rapid adventures to take part in a challenging indoor climbing experience.

The day once again ended with another randori in the evening with a mix of Tachiwaza “standing” and Newaza “groundwork” fights.

Wednesday started with a break in tradition as the athletes were allowed to rest before the start of the first judo session at 10am.

This was led by former Great Britain International Janine Johnson, who continued on from the philosophies of the previous sessions. Janine focused her session on Okuri-ashi harai “foot sweep” before adding a series of movement patterns which allowed progression into the athlete’s individual favourite throws.

After lunch they returned to for an afternoon randori session lead by BJA Technical Officer Sandra Klinger. The session started with a unique street dance routine which was used as physical warm-up for the group led by Darren Bennett.

The day came to an end with a fun relaxing evening BBQ and team games, this was enjoyed by all and included a few Ice Bucket Challenges.

As the evening came to close, a final big push to clean up in double quick time to try an avoided another early morning fitness session was great motivation for all the judoka.

Thursday’s final day arrived with a group fitness circuit on the mat area, before a final judo session led by Simon Ward who focused generally on refreshing judokas memories of what they had learnt over the past four days.

The young athletes had a chance to practise once again as the coaches helped remain the judoka of all the key points to practise. The session came to a relax end with some fun judo games to help bring the camp come to a close for yet another year.