Interesting read about footstrike during running

[Scott Kustes]

It really makes sense when you think about it in an evolutionary framework. We were more sprinters and walkers, rather than distance joggers. You cannot sprint with a heel strike.

Dr. G, send someone out running barefoot with a heel strike and I bet injuries occur REAL quick.

[Mike ODonnell]

All the Paleo joggers were eaten by a T-Rex....the sprinters were able to live and repopulate....we are just lacking any T-Rexs nowadays....

[Darryl Shaw]

Originally Posted by Scott Kustes

It really makes sense when you think about it in an evolutionary framework. We were more sprinters and walkers, rather than distance joggers. You cannot sprint with a heel strike.

If you think about it almost all childhood running games are sprints. It's as though we know instinctively what our bodies need to learn in terms of exercise as children and we only start to screw things up when we hit adulthood. It's same with strength training; kids don't train to failure, adults do.

[Garrett Smith]

Scott,
I totally agree. I think most of the time it was walking OR running fast. Power law stuff.

This middle ground LSD stuff is mostly a modern thing, IMO.

[Dave Van Skike]

As much as I dislike running, the anthropological scientific record is not as clear as you'd like. Humans are uniquley adapted to long steady distances and there is ample evidence to suggest that low intesity and variable efforts are part of our unique abilty to migrate, hunt, forage etc.

As for LSD being modern, maybe modern like late paleolithic, early neolithic. ther are plenty of pre/non-agricultural cultures that relied on it. Indiginous N Americans and polynesians in open boat rowing for slave trade, hunting fishing, migration. Predecessors of the Masai and Nur of ethiopia hunting, driving cattle, goats etc.

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Mike ODonnell

All the Paleo joggers were eaten by a T-Rex....the sprinters were able to live and repopulate....we are just lacking any T-Rexs nowadays....

Seeing as paleo people were also missing T-Rex, I'm not sure how this is relevant.

I would encourage anyone who has doubts about the evolutionary fitness of endurance running to rent Disc 4 of The Life of Mammals with David Attenborough (the rest of the series is, of course, worth seeing as well).

After you see a Bushman literally running a Kudu to death, any neat theories about how endurance running is maladaptive will collapse like the prey...

[Darryl Shaw]

Originally Posted by Arien Malec

Seeing as paleo people were also missing T-Rex, I'm not sure how this is relevant.

I would encourage anyone who has doubts about the evolutionary fitness of endurance running to rent Disc 4 of The Life of Mammals with David Attenborough (the rest of the series is, of course, worth seeing as well).

After you see a Bushman literally running a Kudu to death, any neat theories about how endurance running is maladaptive will collapse like the prey...

I don't think we can use the example of a Bushman running a kudu to death as an example of evolutionary fitness because hunting in such a manner is quite a gamble in terms of calories expended against the risk that the kudu might excape which is why most hunter-gatherers rely on stealth or traps to put meat on the table. I think the only reason that a bushman would waste so much energy chasing a kudu would be if they were certain they had a ready supply of calories available from other sources which suggests to me that roots and tubers must be a staple part of their diet.
I doubt that LSD running would have been a major part of paleolithic life simply because it's too inefficient in terms of energy expenditure in comparison with walking. I think given that even the leanest individual has enough fat to walk for days but only enough glycogen to run for a couple of hours walking would have been the usual means of covering long distances leaving glycogen reserves intact ready for short sudden burts of activity eg. fight or flight, when speed could mean the difference between life and death.

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Darryl Shaw

I don't think we can use the example of a Bushman running a kudu to death as an example of evolutionary fitness because hunting in such a manner is quite a gamble in terms of calories expended against the risk that the kudu might escape which is why most hunter-gatherers rely on stealth or traps to put meat on the table.

It's worth noting references to the following studies:

http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/...e-hunting.html
http://www.publicanthropology.org/Archive/Ca1984.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-hrm111204.php

I'd also note that any form of hunting has a high energy expenditure and failure rate. The reason persistence hunting might have been efficient is that, once you separate the animal from the herd, the main challenge is keeping up and keeping the trail (as opposed to a once and succeed or miss sprint and strike).

It's further worth noting that once you run the animal down, you need drag the meat back a long freaking way to camp, so persistence hunters aren't frail.

[Dave Van Skike]

Sprinting deer hunters go hungry.

[Arien Malec]

Originally Posted by Darryl Shaw

I think given that even the leanest individual has enough fat to walk for days but only enough glycogen to run for a couple of hours...

It's worth picking on this sentence. The persistence hunter in the documentary was not carb loading, was as lean as any competitive body builder, and yet managed to run for well more than a couple of hours in the blazing heat.

It's a dubious proposition that man evolved solely under the pressures of persistence hunting, but the presence of persistence hunting is a strong counter-argument to the premise that endurance running is maladaptive.