Your Summer Camp, sorted
Six judo related games, and a book of drills. Take what you need.
Summer camps coming up?
Tons of kids, different grades, mixed attention spans — and somehow, always, the best week of the summer. The ones who show up to camp really want to be there. You get to do the fun stuff: the games, the team challenges, the technique sessions that run a bit longer because you have more hours on the mat.
But the prep for any summer camp can eat your time.
So I’ve pulled together a handful of Koka Kids drills and games that make summer camp easier to run — the kind you haven’t used a hundred times, from coaches who really know what they’re doing. Including an Olympic champion, an IJF referee and three National Team coaches. I’ll drop those right after a quick word from our sponsor.
First, a quick word from our sponsors.
The Koka Kids Coach Newsletter is proudly sponsored by Pembee. Pembee is an online booking system that helps grassroots judo clubs cut through the admin that eats into actual coaching time. Several of you have already taken up the Pembee Offer for Kodak Kids readers and are already trying Pembee at your Dojo, which is brilliant to see.
For those who’d like to give it a go, here’s the offer (please make sure you use this link so it’s attributed to Koka Kids thank you!)
Here’s a message from Pembee’s founder, Ed
From Ed at Pembee 👋
When I talk to coaches, I hear the same thing over and over: they didn’t get into judo to spend their evenings buried in spreadsheets. That’s exactly why I built Pembee — to take the bookings, payments and parent messages off your plate so you can focus on what happens on the mat.
Take registers. Instead of a clipboard, every attendance mark, medical note and emergency contact sits on your phone — so if a child has an inhaler, you’ll know in a tap. One coach, Debbie, told us: “For 3 years I’d been manually keeping track of payments and registers. With Pembee I just sent the link and parents did all the registration themselves — it saved me a huge amount of admin time.”
If that sounds like your week, come and have a look. It’s free for 30 days, with 25% off for the Koka Kids family.
Back to planing your Summer Camp
A rough camp-day rhythm
You probably have your own flow, but here’s a simple shape that keeps kids moving and stops the afternoon slump from taking over:
Morning warm-up. Something quick and fun. Belt Races or Flamingo Randori. Ten minutes, get them laughing, get them warm.
Technique block. Teaching Uchimata progressions and/or Refereeing Skills for the older group. Split them if you have the mat space or multiple coaches.
After lunch. Go physical: the Cuban Drill wakes everyone up. Or if you prefer a calm start go with Don’s Technique Game.
Technique block. A good time for a reminder of this morning’s skills, bring those same skills into randori or team challenges.
Pick two or three of the drills below, slot them into your day, and you’re sorted.
Pick your drills - grab what’s useful.
The best drills I’ve used haven’t come from a manual but from other coaches. Thank you to these coaches for sharing.
Miriam Blasco, Olympic Champion and 8th Dan, shares a game that turns belt-tying into a race. The little ones love it. So do the older ones, and no one realises it is also a great cardio workout because they’re having so much fun.
From my own sensei, Don Werner. Four world champions and 296 national champions came out of Pinewood Judo, and this was one of the few games Don actually played with us. Pairs take turns demonstrating a technique and naming it in Japanese. As the easy ones get used up, it gets harder. Last pair standing wins. Brilliant for a mixed-ability group — and a lovely way to keep Don’s legacy alive on the mat.
Teaching Uchimata for Younger Players
Peter Gardiner, Sportif Judo founder, 6th Dan and former Danish National Coach, breaks down how to introduce uchimata to kids step by step. These progressions are useful for any coach wondering how to develop this technique which is notoriously difficult to teach to kids.
Sensei Sandra Bax’s balance game. Kids hop on one leg, hands behind their backs, trying to unbalance each other. Zero setup. Perfect for a warm-up or a randori alternative when the energy needs redirecting.
Adapted from a drill by the late Ronaldo Veitía, the legendary Cuban coach who led his team to multiple Olympic and world championship medals. Fast, physical, and exactly the kind of thing that wakes a group up after lunch.
Janet Ashida-Johnson, IJF A-Level referee and 7th Dan, has a session that teaches kids the signals, the calls, and what the referee is actually looking for. Great for the older group, and a proper change of pace from technique work.
I hope that helps the Summer Camp prep! Grab what’s useful. And if you want more where these came from, the Koka Kids Book 10 Throws and 20 Drills is packed with exercises designed for kids judo classes. Ten techniques and twenty drills to practice the fundamentals of those techniques - the kind of thing you can flip open, pick one, and run.
Until next Monday,
Nik x