What: Speed into Acceleration camp, sponsored by Mercy Walworth Hospital and Medical Center.
When: 8:30 to 10 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from June 29 to July 31. There will be no camp the week of July 13.
Where: Calvary Community Church, Highway 50 and Harris Road, just south of the hospital.
Cost: $100 per athlete
Eligibility: All students in grades 7 to 12 can participate. While the camp is geared toward middle and high school students involved in sports, students do not have to be in a sport to participate. Students must not have any physical restrictions.
Sign up: To sign up, call James Eischeid at (262) 245-2187 or send a check payable to Mercy Walworth Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinic, Attn.: James Eischeid, to N2950 Highway 67, Lake Geneva, WI 53147. Include participant’s name, age, gender and address along with parents’ names and phone numbers.
Brent Wesolek, a coordinator at the Janesville Mercy Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center, demonstrates push-ups on medicine and stability balls, the type of floor exercise that will be part of the camp in Walworth.
LAKE GENEVA — Kim Andresen has two active boys who play baseball and basketball.
She knew they were capable of working up a sweat, but she wondered if they were able to properly prepare their bodies for a hard workout.
Andresen last summer enrolled her sons Clint and Colton in a speed and agility camp developed by an athletic trainer.
“They’re both very athletic, so it wasn’t that I thought they needed the workout itself, but (the trainer) was talking about proper stretching and warm-ups and cool downs,” she said. “And I just thought it would give them the knowledge of how to do those things.”
Mercy Walworth Hospital and Medical Center and athletic trainer James Eischeid offer the Speed into Acceleration camp to prepare middle and high school athletes for their upcoming sports seasons.
The camp this summer will be three days a week June 29 to July 31. This is the sixth year the camp has been offered by the hospital, which has a sports medicine and rehabilitation clinic.
Eischeid, who leads the camp, said all warm-ups, stretching and drills are modified to fit each athlete’s specific sport, from volleyball to soccer to baseball.
“They’ll learn how to warm up specifically for their sport,” he said. “And they’ll get their whole body in shape—upper body, core and lower body.”
Eischeid said the camp usually attracts about 10 students, allowing him to work one-on-one with each athlete to perfect his or her skills for his or her sport.
Each session begins with a 20-minute warm-up that consists of a light jog, light stretching and a functional warm-up—training that puts the focus on movement not just muscles.
The majority of each session is spent doing drills, including exercises to improve flexibility, agility and acceleration. Some sessions are spent playing games so students can apply the drills in a competitive setting.
“All the drills and motions mimic what happens while they’re playing,” Eischeid said. “Every drill can be tweaked for different sports.”
All athletes are tested at the start of the camp and at the end of the camp so they can see their progress.
Andresen said her sons were surprised after the first day of the camp last summer.
“The first day they came back, and they were just dripping (with sweat), and I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’” she said. “And they were like, ‘Holy cow! That’s the best workout I’ve ever had.’”
Andresen said Eischeid reinforced what her sons already had learned from their coaches but added to their knowledge by teaching them the proper way to prepare for a workout or a game.
“He showed them that it doesn’t have to be complicated,” she said.
Eischeid said he has designed the camp to quickly and effectively work an athlete’s whole body without overwhelming it.
“Nowadays, kids are in all these camps, and if kids are in all those, I won’t press them to be in mine,” he said. “It’s just another thing they’re doing to their body. But I encourage them to do this when they’re not doing other things. It gets them away from the soccer ball, off the soccer field and puts them in a camp that keeps them in shape but doesn’t delude them.”
Eischeid said if athletes take anything from the camp, it’s how to properly prepare their bodies for exercise so they don’t get injured or don’t stay injured for very long.