Happy Memorial Day weekend!

    Just a reminder on safety when running or riding a bike on the street. When jogging, proper protocol is to run on the shoulder into traffic. When riding a bicycle, it is proper to ride with traffic as far to the right as possible. If you are listening to music while you are running, you should keep the volume down far enough that you can hear traffic or people coming up on you. Female runners should be aware of their surroundings at all times. It is best for females to avoid running in  isolated areas. If you prefer running in these areas, run with a partner. It is not safe to listen to music while riding a bike. Why the safety reminders? Twice while running on the roadside this weekend, drivers thought it was funny to position their cars with their passenger side wheels on my side of the white line on the shoulder. One group was two teenagers, and the other one I couldn’t make out. Just being hit by the sideview mirror while running or on a bike could be fatal, especially if cars are travelling faster than 50 m.p.h. If you are driving, pleases be considerate of riders and runners. Give them as much space as you can. You’d hate to be the cause of a runner or biker being the one their family is remembering on Memorial Day.

    On the brighter side, it’s time to tip our hats to a couple of our athletes. First of all, congratulations to Stephanie “Midge” Parks. She was named MVP of her High School’s Varsity softball team. Midge is only a sophomore. She was their starting pitcher. She set the school’s record for on base percentage at .68O and batted over .400 for the year. Josh Anttila attended the High School Combine at Iowa University this year and was named as one of eight to move on to the  High School Super Combine in Canton, Ohio. If Josh does well there, he will have the opportunity to play in the National High School Blue/Grey Bowl this year. Both these athletes have the combined qualities of hard work and being humble at the same time. Once again, while other athletes are sleeping in on the weekend, hoping to wake up better athletes, our athletes are getting up and making it happen. Congratulations to Stephanie and Josh and all of our athletes on another great year. With that in mind, the deadline for camp registration, June 4th, is coming up quickly. Don’t be left on the bench! See you this summer.

    We are finishing up the spring and preparing for the summer. Most high school seniors graduated this weeknd. Congratulations to everybody that graduated. Next weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, and that will mark the end of our Saturday and Sunday workouts at Grass Lake School.  To avoid any confusion, we will be holding open trainining Saturday, May 28th and Sunday, May 29th.  There will be no Saturday and Sunday workouts starting the first weekend in June.We will use this time to start preparations for our summer Speed and Agility camp. Some of you have signed up. We will be making reminder calls this week to those who expressed an interest in our camp over the past few months. We hope to see you there. If you have any questions for us, you can call either Steve or Larry at 847-395-6100 or, you can e-mail us at info@kcconditioning.com. Hope to see you over the summer.

    Greetings from Northern Illinois. All is good at Kinetic Connections. The thought for this week’s Newsletter comes from an observation made in our P.T. Clinic. One of our therapists mentioned she had all high school patients. I made the comment that the common denominator of all of those high school athletes seeing us for theirdings and dents was that they don’t attend our speed and agility sessions. Most the high school athletes we see with stress type injuries don’t do anything outside their sport physically to make themselves better. The therapist that made that comment went on to say there you go trying to make your plug for your camps. I guess we at Kinetic Connections should be proud of the product we put out. A great example of somebody we work with is David Meade at ACHS. He is a sophomore baseball player and pitcher. He has had some injury trouble. He’s done what’s necessary to eliminate the injury and started attending our Sunday morning sessions. He has started as a pitcher and also relieved as a pitcher for the varsity this spring without a return of that injury. He has been a part of the baseball team’s battle for first place in their division. Congratulations to David and going the extra step. Not only do we help with performance, but more importantly, we aid in injury prevention. Have a good week. Hopefully we’ll see you all on the playing field and not in the Phyisical Therapy clinic.

    Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. As I write this, we’re having one of the rare nice days this spring. It’s nice to see people out walking, jogging, and riding bikes today. A sure sign summer has to be coming. Seeing the sun makes everybody feel better. Unfortunately, after a long winter people find themselves a little above where they want to be weight wise. Over the winter some of the participants in our exercise class competed in a friendly weight loss competition. out of 9 groups, 20 participants, three of the groups made the goal of collectively losing 7% their bodyweight. All of the participants in the competition exercised, but the ones that succeeded in achieving their goals made honest changes in thier diets. We have seen several people in our physical therapy practice who have lost over a hundred pounds without exercising. That is something to think about if you honestly want to lose weight. With summer coming, farmers markets will be starting. Think about substituting fruits for sweets. They are high in fiber and natural sugar (non-processed sugar). Eliminating sweets made of processed sugar from your diet is a good way to get started this summer. It is amazing how much processed sugar we as Americans consume and don’t even know it. Start reading labels and eliminating sources in your diet that have processed sugar in them. Substitute those sources with fresh fruits and even fresh vegetables. You’ll be surprised at the results.

    We are still taking registrations for our summer speed and agility camps, and will continue to do so until early June. Hope to see you there. Also, we’d like to congratulate Lexi Hermes. She has worked with Kinetic Connections since junior high. She is now a junior in high school. She had 3 hits and 3 RBI’s last week in a  3-0 victory over her high school’s cross county rival. This was no easy feat as they were facing one of the best high school pitchers in southeast Wisconsin. Congratulations to Lexi and everybody on her team. Sara Fonk was the winning pitcher in that game. She and her sister have been with us almost as long as Lexi. We always like to hear about our athlete’s successes. Keep up the good work everybody.