The Case for Playing More Catch

Hello!

January is finally over. In my corner of Brooklyn that most notably means the beginning of my work with three new amateur athletes looking to make their mark on the world. I’d like to introduce the new faces for the year before jumping into today’s discussion topic and my usual recommendations.

Some of you may have noticed that I have been more diligent about growing my presence on social media. Hot tip - post an exercise video barefoot. There is price to pay in the unsolicited DMs, but I guarantee you will get a few hundred new followers. If anyone knows how to gracefully remove themselves from a niche algorithm, let me know.

While we’re on the topic of feet, I stumbled upon the most Brooklyn thing I have ever seen. In what is a mindboggling intersection of normcore, vintage menswear, and running culture, Hoka released a Speed Loafer. No, this is not an Onion headline. Yes, it promptly sold out upon release.

Team BKSC 2025

Helping up and coming athletes was one of the driving forces behind me returning to school at the end of my twenties. Being able to continue down this path has been dreamlike in a lot of ways. The applicants for this year’s program were incredibly competitive and I am very grateful to have been able to unload some of the emotional toll of choosing the winners onto my esteemed judges. This past weekend we confirmed the cohort for this year’s sponsorship program and I am delighted to introduce them for the first time here.

Shaquille Roberts - A 5-time marathoner, Shaq is a co-founder of the Bronx Burners, a group focused on making running accessible and creating opportunity through community. He has some ambitious performance goals for himself this year, but all in service of his mission to inspire others and build a space where runners of all levels feel supported. You can read more about Bronx Burners and their initiatives here.

Diana Vizza - New York State record holder, Central Park Track Club runner, Triathlete, EMT, community advocate, aspiring medical student. Diana has achieved so much already, but has her sights set on the world’s biggest stage - the Paralympics. With three years left in this quad, the next twelve months of training and preparation will be an integral part of her journey toward the games.

Paul Rabic - Another Olympic hopeful, Paul was part of the 2023 World Championship team for USA Bobsled. After an injury setback, he is looking to get back up to speed now and crack the squad that will travel to Milano Cortina. Bobsled is like many of the Olympic disciplines in that it is a largely amateur pursuit in the financial sense of the word. I will be doing everything I can to help Paul peak at the right time and book a ticket to Northern Italy at the top of his game.

What If Exercise Was Fun Again?

The perfect workout. Enhancing your recovery routine. How much protein you should be eating. Which wearable tech to use for tracking performance.

There are more ways to optimize performance today than ever before. With so many levers to pull on to upgrade how we feel, it’s amazing anyone actually gets out for a run anymore. Forget the anxiety of squeezing every last percentage point out of your routine, where do you even find the time for all of that?

Decision anxiety and procrastination by optimization have crushed many an aspiring fit person. Instead of just lacing up and hitting the pavement, people agonize over fine-tuning their programming. The fitness industry is now worth $257 billion (2024) and growing 5.6% annually, and we’ve managed to commoditize movement in a world where exercise is completely free.

This, combined with the trend of copying the latest and greatest routine on TikTok, means that millions of people have turned exercise into an unenjoyable obligation - a checklist item that feels more like a chore than a choice.

Do you remember the last time you played tag? How many calories did you burn? What was your heart rate zone? I really hope you have no idea. More importantly, was it fun?

Even if that last time was decades ago, I bet you remember how much fun it was to run around with your friends. You weren’t worried about optimizing recovery, tracking progress, or programming your next mesocycle. You were just moving.

According to this bizarre chart I found, playing catch for an hour burns about 176 calories for a 155lb human. The average person burns about 100 calories per mile running. That means you’d have to run 1.76 miles to burn the same amount of calories as you would playing catch. There are plenty of people out there who would find playing catch far more appealing than going for a run, but might not consider it exercise. Did you ever ask an adult to time you as you ran around the house? What if you did that today? That would be a sprint workout, and it would be fun.

I’m a big proponent of having that fun outside too. The monotony of treadmill running is punishment enough, but research also shows it isn’t mentally engaging. It makes sense - you step on, turn on your speed and incline, and then zone out to Netflix until it’s over. You’re not actually thinking about running or navigating the world. Exercising outside, on the other hand, has been shown to have greater physical and mental benefits than indoor training.

Call me crazy, but playing catch one day, running the next, going rock climbing with a friend the next sounds way more fun than just running or lifting weights every day.

When people talk about multi-sport athletes, it’s usually about how kids shouldn’t specialize too early. Studies have shown that young athletes who play multiple sports develop better overall athleticism, reduce their risk of injury, and actually perform better later in their primary sport compared to kids who specialize too early.

But this doesn’t stop being true when you’re an adult.

Think of movement like language. The more words you know, the easier it is to communicate. The more movement patterns you explore, the more adaptable, resilient, and capable your body becomes. Strength from lifting, agility from basketball, endurance from running, body awareness from yoga - it all stacks up to make you a more complete athlete, no matter your age.

The fitness industry encourages the opposite - niche, hyper-specialized training plans that lock you into one approach. From a risk avoidance and adaptation standpoint, doing the same workout every day isn’t a great idea. Think overuse injuries, stagnation, and lack of recovery. The best athletes and healthiest movers in the world? They do a bit of everything.

So many people treat training like bitter medicine - something they have to endure, rather than something to enjoy.

So, what if it was fun?

One of my favorite follows on Instagram is @coach_ryanpatterson. Ryan mostly posts himself lifting absurdly heavy barbells over his head, but what makes his content appealing is how much fun he’s having. His catchphrase at the end of every video? “Training is fun.”

That’s exactly the kind of attitude people should aspire to have about exercise.

For me, that moment happened a few weeks ago during my weekly sprint workout on Wednesday nights. I posted a video on Instagram of a moment that captured this sentiment perfectly:

Mid-sprint, I just started laughing. My training partner, Yianni, thought I was laughing at him, but really, I was just feeling pure joy - running as fast as I could, moving my body, in an incredible setting, with a good friend. It was one of those moments where I felt completely alive.

Not every workout is going to feel amazing. But if every session feels like a miserable obligation, something needs to change.

Instead of forcing yourself into someone else’s idea of fitness, ask yourself:

• What kinds of movement make me feel good?

• What do I actually enjoy doing?

• If I wasn’t worried about progress, PRs, or calories burned, what kind of activity would I do for fun?

The best workout is the one you actually want to do.

An attempt to be more mindful with my phone.

I am by no means addicted to my phone. That sounds a lot like somebody who can’t stay off their phone. While I really do feel like I have a respectable relationship with my all-knowing pocket computer, I like to experiment with different ways to limit my time using it and instead pay attention to the real world. A patient recently recommended two apps that they have been using to use their phone as an instrument for good.

How We Feel acts as a kind of point and click journal for, you guessed it, how you’re feeling. When you open the app it initiates a check in where you first choose from four options that best describe how you feel right now: high energy and unpleasant, high energy and pleasant, low energy and unpleasant, and low energy and pleasant. After picking one, you pick an additional descriptive feeling from a pool of words and then it creates a timestamp that you can as much or as little detail to as you want. Once you complete the check in, it gets added to a pool of data that you can use to discover trends. Do I tend to be stressed out later at night? Am I more content earlier in the week? Does being around my pets affect my moods? The app also uses all kinds of tools like sound patterns, breathing exercises, and reframing strategies you can try.

One Sec is a lot like putting parental controls on yourself, albeit in a much more thoughtful way. Instead of just locking an app that you know you spend too much time on, it forces you to pause when you open. If I open Instagram, it locks the screen for 2 seconds and tells me to take a deep breath. It then shows me how many times I’ve attempted to open the app in the last 24 hours and asks me if I still want to use Instagram. If I say yes, it asks me why and I can choose from stock or custom options like, “I need to upload a reel for work”. There are a bunch of options for how it reacts when you open a selected app, but they all force you to make a much more deliberate choice to spend your valuable time on your phone.

I don’t know how long I’ll continue to use either app, but both have been interesting ways to recognize my own behaviors and hopefully learn from that information.

That’s all for today. For everyone who has a three day weekend because of President’s Day, enjoy and try to get outside. For everyone else, I feel you.

Until next time,

Dr. Dean Hottum

As always, if you are somebody you know would benefit from working with me, I am always happy to chat and see if you are a good fit. Hit the button below to set up a call today.

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