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> The author Daniel Lieberman has put it well: Exercise is healthy and rewarding even though it’s something we never evolved to do. We have ostensibly spent mu

• pmarreck 1y ago
  > Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level My flat feet (and those of my mom, and those of one of her parents, ad infinitum) would beg to differ lol Also, most of the energy our bodies burn to run just turns into heat, it's all very inefficient... even if sweating itself works pretty well, and even if our heat tolerance is high assuming we have a source of fresh water
  • Invictus0 1y ago
    I mean, would you prefer we add in some evolutionary pressure? Note also that there are numerous champion runners with flat feet.
    • pmarreck 1y ago
      One contributing factor to human weight gain when given a non-limited supply of food is apparently the knocking-out of the gene that produces uricase, which pretty much every other animal has (and they usually don't get fat, even when given unlimited food supply). Not a single human has a working uricase gene. It has been hypothesized that famines throughout human history (there's your "evolutionary pressure") have contributed to this. My point is that selection pressures do not always lead to optimal outcomes... https://chatgpt.com/share/688e4822-4e44-8004-9625-21a254fa026d https://chatgpt.com/share/688e4822-4e44-8004-9625-21a254fa02...
  • tristanMatthias 1y ago
    My friend has fixed his flat feet by focusing on yoga poses that engage the “knife edge” of his feet (ie: the outside). It took some time but he reckons it’s very noticeable. Maybe worth a try?
    • federiconafria 1y ago
      It worked for me, it's not even about specific poses, you need to consciously keep your ankle from collapsing and yoga helps with that.
  • janderson215 1y ago
    I’ve read in a few places that the flat feet comes from wearing shoes that don’t allow your toes to splay, which causes the muscles that create the arch to atrophy. Not a scientist and have never had flat feet, so can’t confirm, but I recently started wearing zero drop shoes and definitely feel a healthy soreness as my feet get stronger.
    • SoftTalker 1y ago
      Also when you run don't land flat-footed or heel-first. Land on the front part ("ball") of your foot, this lets your calf muscle absorb the shock, rather than sending the shock straight up your tibia into your knee.
      • monocularvision 1y ago
        This was a total game changer for me when running. I would always develop some sort of knee pain at some point but since making a very minor change to how I land my foot, I am running without any. Make sure to start and transition slowly though as there are warnings about injuring your Achilles and other muscles in your calf if you start off too aggressively.
  • fmbb 1y ago
    Nobody claimed we are intelligently designed. Evolution is not perfect. We are still better at running long distances for long stretches of time than any other animal.
    • bee_rider 1y ago
      Evolution is also just optimizing you to live long enough to reproduce and then help your kids get well set up. So, it is fine if your legs start to go in your 40’s. You can help chase down the antelopes ‘till then, then go weave baskets and watch the fire for a decade or so, then die in your 50’s. Actually, it doesn’t seem like a horrible life, but I think we’re hoping to stick around a little longer.
    • antisthenes 1y ago
      > Evolution is not perfect. We are still better at running long distances for long stretches of time than any other animal. Not really. We are on par with many animals, or rather they are on par with us, with some tradeoffs on both sides (e.g. humans are better in hotter weather). Wolves, wild dogs, horses (and other fast hoofed herbivores) are all roughly on par in pure ability to run. What made us even more successful is the ability to plan and organize (wolves have this), sweat (only humans can do full-body) and use of tools.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    My wife's a podiatrist. I can conjure what I've heard her tell a thousand people over the years: invest in arch supports. Shoot for the ones that run about $50 and are rigid. Don't start with the $500 custom ones, and skip the $10 soft ones you see at the pharmacy. Go to REI or a running shop or a sporting goods store and get those instead. My knees freaking killed me when I was running. I started using the supports my wife bought for me and it instantly improved, and far beyond any placebo effect. Before: my knees ached after I ran 100% of the time. Now: they never ache anymore.
    • AtlasBarfed 1y ago
      AND YOU DON'T NEED TO RUN to start with. And if you are overweight and sedentary DON'T RUN TO GET INTO SHAPE. Walking, hiking, swimming, biking, and weight training. Mix all of it so you get cross training effects and distribute stress across many domains. Running is, by the standards of the statistical hole America is in terms of obesity, an "advanced" activity. We're talking about something that involves a stress increase of 2.5x to 4.x over walking. Now consider that an obese person with an extra 50 lbs of fat is on their body. Running will be an extra 200 lbs of stress on your feet, and none of that fat tissue is absorbing impact or stabilizing that impact. And on top of it, the fat will disrupt the neuro-biomechanical flow of your neuromuscular system, making you less coordinated and therefore also harder to absorb the impact. As I said elsewhere: use GLP-1 to get the fat down and simultaneously employ a gentle ROUTINE activity program that morphs into more and more exercise and exercise variety.
      • lemonberry 1y ago
        "And if you are overweight and sedentary DON'T RUN TO GET INTO SHAPE." This. Many people aren't in good enough shape to run. And if they do run their form is often terrible. There was a website years ago at WasWayFat.com about a guy that lost a ton of weight just stepping on an aerobic stair in his home. Wayback machine has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170710225625/http://www.waswayfat.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170710225625/http://www.wasway...
      • terribleperson 1y ago
  • mtalantikite 1y ago
    I had flat feet most of my life, until I started a 5x per week yoga practice (ashtanga based). One day about a year into it I noticed that I had defined arches, something I hadn’t expected at all. All those one leg standing balancing poses really develops your ankles, knees, and feet. Some years later when I started running with typical arch supporting running shoes, picked out for me at a specialty running store where they record your stride etc, I developed pretty bad plantar fasciitis as soon as I started hitting 8k on my runs. Swapped them out for zero drop Altras and I haven’t had issues since. All that is to say our feet are pretty well designed as long as you give it the strengthening it needs. You should take care of your feet, but not coddle them, is how I’ve come to view it.
  • maxerickson 1y ago
    Most energy used for any work (in the physics sense) ends up as heat, eventually.
  • Llamamoe 1y ago
    Flat feet are often a problem of foot muscles and posture. Physiotherapy and strengthening your feet can most likely work wonders even if your family has genetic predisposition for the problem.
  • wredcoll 1y ago
    We're optimized for walking, not sprinting. And if you think our moving->sweating is bad, check out horses and dogs.
  • tim333 1y ago
    If you'd been running barefoot as a kid as nature evolved us for you likely wouldn't have the issue.
• Xenoamorphous 1y ago
  How much of that is due to only using two limbs? Which also makes us slower I guess.
  • derektank 1y ago
    There is actually some evidence that, in a sprint, humans might be able to run faster on all 4 limbs than on 2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/
    • _Algernon_ 1y ago
      >some evidence https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
      • derektank 1y ago
        I think it's sort of reasonable in this case, given there's very little investment in running on 4 limbs, while nation states fund track and field programs to the tune of millions of dollars. That the small number of 4 limbed runners are making progress against 2 limbed runners does indicate it might allow higher peak performance. Of course, 4 limbed runners have probably already plucked the low hanging fruit in performance improvements, but the researchers aren't projecting linear improvement
        • jessekv 1y ago
          Don't sprinters start with 4 limbs on the ground? The advantage of the 4 limbs seems to be gone by the second step. Trail runners often run with poles on up or down hills. Not sure about top speed, but from experience the poles definitely help with endurance.
    • kbutler 1y ago
      The article was published in 2016, and the authors extrapolated from 7 data points (!) over about 7 years of progress in the world record. This is obviously insufficient to project 30 years into the future. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/#&gid=article-figures&pid=figure-1-uid-0 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/#&gid=article-figur... That record progressed 2008 18.58 2015 15.71 2.87 seconds over 7 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenichi_Ito_(athlete) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenichi_Ito_(athlete) If we check in on more recent progress since then, we find the current record is 15.66 set in 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20241222175947/https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/88771-fastest-100-m-running-on-all-fours https://web.archive.org/web/20241222175947/https://www.guinn... Another 7 years, for an improvement of 0.05 seconds, or about 850 years of linear improvement to reach Bolt's 9.58 seconds. Anyone wanting to bet on beating Bolt by 2048?
• jb1991 1y ago
  Ask anyone in the army how all those years of running drills have affected them as they got older. It’s not so rosy. Lots of knee problems in that group. Above average practice of running throughout life also increases likelihood of requiring pacemakers later in life.
  • derektank 1y ago
    People in the army are also regularly carrying an extra 50 pound ruck, 25 pounds of body armor, and enough other various and sundry items to add up to about 100+ lbs of total kit. That's probably what's destroying people's knees more than the running by itself
    • Phlebsy 1y ago
      Coupled with weeks if not more of regularly scheduled sleep deprivation so you never actually recover from any of those hard days.
  • fmbb 1y ago
    Army personnel in general is unnaturally beefy and I'm sure these running drills often are done carrying load, no? Humans are evolved to run, but not to have heavy frames and not carrying material for fighting wars.
  • polio 1y ago
    It's more that the military's goal isn't to produce adults that are indefinitely healthy, but rather a robust geopolitical deterrent that only requires its employees to be physical capable for about twenty years, after which their service life is over. Running is not the issue. Even a car designed for driving can be driven irresponsibly.
  • closewith 1y ago
    To be fair, it was the weight not the distance that destroyed my knees and ankles. But still, I've aged a lot better than many of my friends and family who were more sedentary, so who knows.
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• begueradj 1y ago
  > Compared to virtually any other animal, we can vastly outperform them in the most arduous environments. Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level. I'm not sure from where you got this because any documentary/book/article and simply real life experiences related to this subject states the opposite (take a common animal such as a dog as an example)
  • OskarS 1y ago
    This is not an obscure theory, it's called the "Endurance running hypothesis" [1], and it does seem that humans are one of very few species exceptionally well-adapted to very long-distance running (though dogs and wolves are another one). The idea is that ancient hominids in Africa practiced "persistence hunting"[2], where they would hunt e.g. antelopes and similar species by repeatedly chasing them down. The prey would sprint off when humans got close, but doing this repeatedly causes the animal to exhaust their energy or die of heat stroke, humans being much better adapted to running for many hours on end (this kind of hunting is known to happen to this day). It's plausible that persistence hunting also contributed to evolving our other super-powers, as it requires good spatial awareness, tool-use and communication. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
  • garden_hermit 1y ago
    Have you ever went running with a dog? Dogs can go fast over a short distance but they overheat quickly. People just keep on running way past the time the dog has collapsed.
  • toss1 1y ago
    This is specifically about long distance running, where basically no animal can keep up. A key hunan advantage was persistence hunting - track and run after a deer (or similar) prey. Tgey can burst outrun the human, burt hemshe keeps on running, eventually, often after double-digit kilometers, the human can just trot up to the exhausted nimal and kill it. That's what the tendons and evaporative cooling do. There's a famous Uktramarathon race, iirc, the Western States 100, 100 miles in the Sierra mountains that was a horse race, until some people started running without the horse, and winning.
• rsync 1y ago
  "We have ostensibly spent much of our evolutionary budget on the ability to run ~indefinitely no matter what." This appears to be the case and this idea is explained, in-depth, in the excellent book: _Born to Run_ ... by Christopher McDougall. I highly recommend it.
  • rynohack 1y ago
    A few books have changed my life, Born to Run is one of them.
• moltar 1y ago
  Yeah, I realized this one time while watching a documentary on some tribes hunting methods. They were hunting by running after the animal until it basically dropped from exertion. Hunters didn’t sprint. They paced but continuously and simply followed animals foot prints and droppings. They said these hunters would run for many hours each time. And sometimes they’d even be unsuccessful.