The first "Summer Camp" I did was August 1983 where, as a young Karate Black Belt, I took some class mates and friends out to the grass for kata and kumite training
I had made friends at the dojo, and had friends who I took to the dojo, so had a tight group of training friends "under" me coming up through the coloured belts, when we went for our first weekend camp, before I ever formally taught at a dojo
This was a couple of years before the "Ninja craze" properly took off
Rocky 3 had been out for a year and we now had it on VHS, so that was being watched over the Summer - Eye Of The Tiger had been Number One a year earlier and was still being played everywhere - many of us went on to take up boxing properly at boxing gyms in the coming years, and there was a lot of early interest in boxing at that time.
Return Of The Jedi had been released at the cinema and we had a pirate copy of that
The A Team had just started being shown on ITV Friday night and everyone was watching that
Knight Rider was starting it's second series
So we primarily practiced Karate, the katas, and as well as kumite, the bunkai applications of the Kata out on the grass
I didn't teach any of the Judo throws on grass, though we did cover some Karate tds, and some Judo newaza, the pins and the Juji Gatame armlock - so in a way this was "Mixed Martial Arts" course (!)
Nobody knew anything about Ninja and swords yet, though there was a lot of interest in lightsabers, and many people had the plastic toy ones which lit up (which we did not bring out to the grass)
Other films that year included:
Flashdance
Sudden Impact - the fifth Dirty Harry
Octopussy - James Bond
Superman 3
Staying Alive
Twilight Zone movie
